The Dark Romantics And Gothics Of The Fall Of The House Of Usher
He viewed them as being way to egoistical and optimistic and sought to redefine such views with some of his poetry and prose. The Fall of the House of Usher helped reintroduce some of the darker aspects of Puritan beliefs like original sin and the also brought up how every human being is capable of doing evil deeds. Edgar Allan Poe through the House of Usher and his other writings had believed that the truest form of reality comes from the spirit that having intuition is better than simply relying on logic and reason, and events taking place with humans are symbols and signs of the spiritual truths. Ironically, this is something that transcendentalist also have in common with dark romanticism. Where the differences arise with transcendentalism is that dark romanticism believes that human are often prone to commit sins and cause their own self-destruction.
For example, in the Fall of the house of Usher there are many obvious signs that Roderick had an incestuous relationship with his sister that many people back then and today would consider to be a major sin. Dark romanticism depicts the world as dark, gritty, dying, and very suspicious, and when it’s time to show man the truth it is often shown to be pure evil and have some sorts of representation of hell. This is shown in the beginning of the Fall of the House of Usher when the narrator describes his friend’s house as infected, filled with evil, with dying trees and dirty pounds that surround the property. Dark romanticism often times likes to show individuals failing to change for the better and being consumed by the darkness around them. Dark romanticism like the Fall of the House of Usher touched on many different themes that helped tell its story like the divine and the supernatural, tragedy, and horror.
One of the reason this works so well in the Fall of the House of Usher is because the human mind is on many occasions attracted to such things as tragedy, pain, and fear (Wasserman). According to Wasserman in the Fall of the House of Usher, “The absolute refusal to enter into relations with the Other is death, the fear of which haunts Roderick and prompts him to call the narrator in a last effort to avoid his fate”(Wasserman). This is one of the elements that dark romanticism emphasizes the most as a lot of its writings deal with people who naturally gravitate towards fear and self-destruction like Roderick. Practically all of Poe’s work is considered a part of the dark romantic genre in which he very frequently explored the conscious and subconscious of the human mind. Poe’s focus on the deep state of the human mind led to some of his other famous literary works like “The Black Cat,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” (Poetry Foundation).
Like in the Fall of the House of Usher and his other works he is telling the story from a first person point of view which allows Poe through his own voice get into the “character’s psyche”. According to Poetry Foundation “This technique foreshadows the psychological explorations of Fyodor Dostoevsky and the school of psychological realism” (Poetry Foundation). Dark romanticism often times gets confused with another genre called Gothic literature and while there are many similar aspects that get them to relate it is taken when step further in the Gothic literature.
