When you’re walking down the hallway, or in class, how many of you have ever felt the weight pressing down on you? Hmm? I have. Everyone? Wow. Poe wrote about these things over a hundred years ago. So, as we read, we can see that “The House of Usher” is not merely an old decrepit castle in disrepair. It’s also a state of being.
«During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was – but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I looked upon the simple landscape of the domain – upon the bleak walls – upon the white trunks of decayed trees – with an utter depression of soul. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart.»
Detachment; Henry teaching “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe