2/96 The short story writer which I have chosen to research is Edgar Allen
Poe. After reading one of his works in class, I realized that his mysterious
style of writing greatly appealed to me. Although many critics have different
views on Poe's writing style, I think that Harold Bloom summed it up best when
he said, Poe has an uncanny talent for exposing our common nightmares and
hysteria lurking beneath our carefully structured lives.
( 7) For me, this is done through his use of setting and narrative style. In
many of Poe's works, setting is used to paint a dark and gloomy picture in our
minds. I think that this was done deliberatly by Poe so that the reader can make
a connection between darkness and death. For example, in the Pit and the
Pendulum, the setting is originally pitch black. As the story unfolds, we see
how the setting begins to play an important role in how the narrator discovers
the many ways he may die.
Although he must rely on his senses alone to feel his surroundings, he knows
that somewhere in this dark, gloomy room, that death awaits him. Richard Wilbur
tells us how fitting the chamber in The Pit and the Pendulum actually was.
Though he lives on the brink of the pit, on the very verge of the plunge into
unconciousness, he is still unable to disengage himself from the physical and
temperal world. The physical oppreses him in the shape of lurid graveyard
visions; the temporal oppreses him in the shape of an enormous and deadly
pendulum.
It is altogether appropriate, then, that this chamber should be
constricting and cruelly angular (63). Setting is also an important
characteristic is Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. The images he gives us
such as how both the Usher family and the Usher mansion are crumbling from
inside waiting to collapse, help us to connect the background with the story.
Vincent Buranelli says that Poe is able to sysatin an atomosphere which is dark
and dull.
This is one of the tricks which he laregely derived from the tradition of the
Gothic tale (79). The whole setting in the story provides us with a feeling of
melancholy. The Usher mansion appears vacant and barren. The same is true for
the narrator. As we picture in our minds the extreme decay and decomposistion,
we can feelas though the life around it is also crumbling.
