ded my frame; and . . .there sat upon my heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm." (Poe, "The Fall of the House of Usher"). It is this irrational fear which often leads Poe's characters to insanity, and even death.Poe's world is a nightmarish universe. You cross wasted landscapes, silent, forgotten lands where life and water have both stagnated. Here and there you might catch sight of medieval buildings suggestive by their very architecture of horrendous and unknown happenings, such as those in "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Masque of the Red Death," and "Ligeia." The interiors of these sinister habitats are just as disquieting as the exteriors. Everything is dark; the furniture is ebony and the ceilings oaken; there are heavy draperies hung on the walls to which drafts of unknown origin give "a hideous and uneasy animation;"even the windows are of a leaden hue, so that light, whether it be from the sun or moon, casts a ghastly aura on the objects within. To compound matters, theses stories usually take place at night, so that the rays giving light to the scene are often from a blood-red moon. Another common setting for his tales is in the midst of a terrible storm, with the only light coming from the intermittent flashes of lightning (a curious juxtaposition; the only thing which may illuminate, and thereby give life to the scene, also possesses the ability to destroy, and bring death to the scene). His heros are tortured souls who are often of a tainted ancestry and are addicted to drink or drugs, perhaps Poe's method of inserting himself into his works. They know that they are destined to lose their sanity and, eventually, their lives and do so under horrific and ghastly circumstances. "Metzengerstein is a victim of ‘morbid and melancholy' and ‘heredity ill-health.' The nervous illness of Roderick Usher passes from hypochondriacal hypersthesia to delirious telepathy. The odious protagonists of ‘The ...
