The Fall of the House of Usher- Poe

The narrator is visiting his friend, Usher, who sent him an earnest letter to visit because he is sick. When he gets to the house, he notes how gloomy and spooky it is. Usher's sister is sick as well and Usher suspects that the house is bad. After the sister dies, Usher is even more loony. He can not sleep and wakes the narrator. The narrator reads to him and starts hearing noises. Usher says that he suspects that they are from his sister, for they might have buried her alive. Usher screams that she is behind the door and then the door opens and she is! She attacks Usher and he dies, the narrator runs away as the house breaks and falls to pieces.

This, like the other Poe stories, shows Gothic attributes with the gloomy, mysterious landscape and the possibly insane minds of the characters. The story begs the question if the house is really possesed by some evil spirit or if the people in the house are just crazy. What if the narrator imagined the whole thing? This depicts how unknown the human mind is and how it can trick someone. All of Poe's stories have been very fun to read because they make you feel like the narrator and that it is happening to you. This makes the reader feel like their mind is insane and I like how Poe is so good at putting you in the situation.

Why does Poe never give names to the narrators?

The Tell-Tale Heart -Poe

The character in this poem lives with an old man who is blind in one eye. This eye drives the character mad and he decides he must kill the man to rid of the eye. Every night the character would sneakily watch the man sleep, hoping to see the eye but it was always closed. The character feels that he must affirm that he is not mad because a mad man would never take such thought into this process. One night the old man wakes as the character is watching him. He shines the light on the dull eye and when he finds that it is open, he is infuriated by this dull eye. Then troubled by a new nuisance, the old man's beating heart filled with terror, the character feels he must rid of this man tonight for the neighbors might hear his treacherous, raging heart beat. The character unshielded the lamp, the old man screams and the bed is thrown on top of him, killing the old man. The character is filled with joy as he has rid of the dull eye and heart beat. The character dismembers the body, hiding it under the planks of the old mans very own floor. As police come later, alarmed by the shriek heard from neighbors, the character remains calm showing them the house, being so bold to sit in the old man's room. As he talks, a quiet beat gets louder and louder, convinced that they hear the beating too he confesses, no longer being able to handle the dreadful heart beat.

This poem shows the American Gothic theme distinctly. Through the mad character, Poe demonstrates how frightening the mind can be. Reading this can make it seem like the reader is the character, making them feel mad. This work puts the reader inside the mad, mysterious, mind of a killer. The most frightening part is that the character does not think of themselves as mad, they consider themselves justified and actually smart to act so precisly. This is scary, for this shows that the mind can convince the mad that they arn't actually mad. Poe is saying that we could all be mad in the mind and not even know it.

Is the point of not giving the character a name or gender to make the reader think they are the mad person?

The Raven- Poe

The main character in The Raven, a man, is sitting in his house, thinking, depressed over his dead lover, Lenore, and nodding off. Then he hears a tapping on his door, he goes to it, hoping it is she, when he finds nothing there. There is then a tapping on his window and when he opens it a raven comes inside. When he asks the raven its name it replies, "Nevermore." As he continues to ask it questions it only replies, "Nevermore." He thinks that it is sent from God to help him forget Lenore or it is an evil prophet. He asks if she is in heaven and the raven only says, "Nevermore." He is angered and tells it to leave since it is not helping him with his loneliness but the raven states it's only word, "Nevermore." The man now feels that the raven will never leave and that his soul will forever be stuck in it's shadow, cast by the lamp, forever.
The raven is something from the afterlife ("Night's Plutonian shore") that was sent to the man to help him understand that Lenore will be gone forever. The man fears, in the tenth stanza, that this too will leave him as his other friends did but the raven ensures that he will not. Words like Disaster, Despair and Hope are capitalized leading to believe they are names. "so, when Hope he would adjure,/ Stern Despair returned, instead of the sweet Hope he dared adjure-/ That sad answer, 'Nevermore.'" When the man expresses his hope that Hope, or Lenore will return, yet he only got Despair, the name of the raven; the raven tells him she will not come back, "Nevermore." The raven could be seen as an evil presence that brings the man frustration because he will never leave or as a comforting presence that helps him heal over Lenore's death and will not leave him in his time of loneliness. Either way, the man's soul is stuck with the raven, nevermore to leave.
Is the raven some sort of death since the mans soul is stuck with him?