The Fall Of The House Of Usher Comparison Essay

In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and Julio Cortazar’s “House Taken Over,” the settings are similar because they both take place within an ancient,lonely mansion. However, in Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the setting is gloomy and dark. In contrast, Cortazar’s setting is more natural and mysterious.
Gothic Literature is “a literary genre that began in England in the late 1700s”(33). This literary genre contains elements such as weird or violent plots, gloomy and eerie moods, characters in torment(physical and psychological), and desolate settings. In Poe’s story, Poe writes, “upon the mere house, … an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the subline.”(Usher 14). This citation shows the element of gloomy and eerie moods, creating an element of Gothic Literature. Therefore, proving
Magical Realism is another literary genre that contains elements of realistic settings, recognizable characters, and “fantastic events that coexist with realistic characters and action”(45). Within Cortazar’s short story he wrote “We liked the house because, apart from its being old and spacious, .., it kept the memories of … childhood”(37). Magical realism stories contain realistic settings, for this story it’s the memorial house. Thus, Cortazar’s story of two siblings getting their house taken over by some unknown, mysterious creature, is considered Magical Realism.
Gothic Literature and Magical Realism are similar because they both contain twists and turns within their stories creating a feeling/element of the unknown. In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” Usher’s sister dies, the narrator helps Usher place her in her tomb. Though at the end of the story, Usher goes insane, claiming he buried his sister to death. The story ends with the fall of the house crushing both Usher and his sister, who went after him in