[Alix]

Poe’s Short Stories

In literature, writers often reconstruct the real world to tell their stories. To build and manifest those environments out of ink and papers, the authors utilize many figurative devices. The most common three of the devices are metaphor, symbolism, and personification. Most importantly, symbolism should be considered as the very important and the most common device that is used in literature. Symbolism is a method that uses a specific object to give meaning and imply significant ideas for the entire story. In other words, a story's symbol is tied closely with the story's theme. A house is a physical structure that provides shelter for at least one person. A house can have many shapes and sizes. It can be as small as a hut or as large as a medieval castle. The structure becomes a safe haven for the owner and his or her associates because its structural integrity protects them from the harmful environment, natural disasters, wild animal, and to a certain degree, enemies. Due to the close ties between a house and its owner, it often manifests the owner’s mental and physical appearance by showing the characters, ideas, and wishes of the people living in it. Thus, in literature, this image is wildly adapted a device for depicting main

In the story The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allan Poe utilizes the Usher’s degrading mansion to reveal the fate of the owner and also the last member of the Usher’s family. In another short story The Masque of the Red Death, the author uses the castle of Prince Prospero to describe the desperate attempts of rich and powerful people trying to avoid the death. Therefore, Poe reveals the expressions of weakness of people hold before they encounter their ultimate fate.

In the short story The Fall of the House of Usher, the image of the mansion of the house of Usher depicts precisely the impending death of its owner and the end of the Ushers. The poor and barren surroundings of the decaying house indicate that Roderick Usher, the mansion owner, rarely has contact with the outside world. Additionally, the house’s small crack from the rooftop to the foot of the building represents Roderick’s physical and mental illnesses caused by his self-isolation and depression. The disease is draining Roderick’s vitality from the inside-out just like the small crack silently weakening the building’s structural integrity. Therefore, Poe neatly ties a strong correlation between the house and its dying owner.

In the story, Poe states, “No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones” (Poe). The author uses the condition of the house to describe the illness of his childhood friend. The fact that the mansion can still stand on its own foundation implies that Roderick is still alive. However, the condition of the brick is indicating the opposite. Fundamentally, bricks are the building blocks of the mansion. Using the word “crumbling” to indicate the condition of the stones, Poe allows the reader to have a feeling that these stones can de-structure in any moment without a sign. Thus, the author implies that Roderick’s health condition is in the same state as his house using symbolism. From outside, he is still living, singing, and making art works. Yet, deep inside, his loneliness and isolation erode his will to live on. In the other words, Roderick would pass away at any moment. This utilization of the linkage between the image of the mansion and Roderick’s disease becomes clearer at the end of the story, as the author shows Roderick’s violent death and the destruction of the house splitting in half. Therefore, throughout the story, the author wants to emphasize the power of death over a person by using the destruction of the house as symbolism of the corruption and the end of a human’s life.

In the story The Masque of the Red Death, Poe describes seven rooms with seven different colors starting from blue, purple, green, orange, white, violet, and black. The first room is blue and toward the east, while the last room is completely painted in pitch-black and toward the west. The writer uses the rooms’ decoration and gives a feeling of decreased light intensity from the first room to the seventh room to manifest a course of a human being. Moreover, the arrangement of seven rooms from east to west symbolizes the life cycle of a human from birth to death. The author intends to let both of the prince and the unwelcomed guest pass through seven rooms and later face the pitch-black room in order to imply the human journey reaching the final destination, which is death. Thus, by using the decoration and the positions of seven rooms in the castle as symbolism, the author illustrates that the aging process is internal and objective; everyone has to face death at the end of one’s life, and it has total and absolute power. In fact, no matter how rich and noble one is, one’s death is always certain and merciless. The author carefully chooses the name for the main character, Prince Prospero, because it implies he is a noble man with a lot of money. More than that, he is living in a castle that is built for a sole purpose of repelling enemy forces. In a very common sense, Prospero has a power where no human can defeat him. However, even a person with that kind of power, trying to defense himself from the reality of the Red Death, he must face the reality that the death still comes to fulfill the person’s fate.

When the author describes the sound of the clock of ebony in the seventh room, he states, “while the chime of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused reverie or mediation” (Poe) to emphasize humans’ fearing when they face their death. When each hour passes, the clock sounds extremely loud and suddenly so that everyone must notice its presence in the black room. The fact that elders become panic when they hear the sound of the clock implies about people’s weakness when they know their lifetime reaching the end. Hence, by utilizing the clock present in the black room, the author successfully expresses the powerlessness of people before their fates.

Through the two short stories The Fall of the House of Usher and The Masque of the Red Death, Poe discusses the ultimate relationship between human beings and their death. The author mainly utilizes the connection between the place the main character is living as symbolism to demonstrate the fact that the journey toward death is inescapable. In the first story, he shows the powerfulness of death through describing the abrupt and quick death of Roderick. In the second story, the writer emphasizes how the power a person holds cannot even cheat death. Therefore, though the use of symbolism relating death to the situations of the characters, Poe shows that death is certain, objective, and merciless.