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Edgar Allen Poe and the Uninformed Narrator

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Submitted By poyerd
Words 1978
Pages 8
Edgar Allan Poe is known as the master of horror and gothic writing. In a sense, he has taken the meaning of the word “horror” and turned it into an entirely different definition, even a different world. Poe's narrators do not make the reader scared, per se, but they make him or her inquire about things around them. Although people should never assume, they should always speculate and investigate. In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe uses an imperfectly informed narrator because he wanted the reader to play with – and question – reality, to use their senses and imagination, and be able to tell the difference between dreams and reality. One theory on why Poe makes his narrator limited is that he wants the reader to search for the truth, not just have it handed to them. For instance, the reader – nor the narrator – knows anything about Roderick Usher. The narrator says, “Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really knew little of my friend”. What, then, would cause the narrator to travel to the House of Usher after Roderick had written him a letter? A person such as the narrator can only truly call Usher an acquaintance. In reality, who would drop everything and anything for an associate? The unknown information on Roderick Usher only causes more questions that, in the end, still remain unanswered. Little by little, as the tale goes on, the reader, as well as the narrator, discovers that Roderick and his late sister, lady Madeline, are twins. After nights of turmoil, Madeline appears to the narrator and Usher, who she ends up killing. The death of the twins causes the Usher House to fall. One can only wonder why the death of the inhabitants would cause a house to crumble. James W. Gargano says that, “Through the irony of his characters' self-betrayal and through the development and arrangement of his dramatic actions, Poe suggests to

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