hen 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". (335) This first line also leaves many clues as to how the story will progress. One can sense that something negative is going to happen. The day is described as "dull, dark, and soundless"; this has a connotation of death. The lack of sound represents a lack of life. The heavens are described as hanging low, which means that death was near. The fact that the story takes place in autumn is no coincidence. In autumn trees go into a dormant, almost death-like state, much like the catatonic trance that Lady Madeline succumbs to. In another respect, autumn is commonly referred to as fall because leaves fall off trees, Poe could be alluding to the subsequent fall of the house of Usher. Poe uses imagery in a different way when he describes the Usher house. The words he uses make the house seem like it is alive or perhaps has supernatural powers. Either way, the house is treated as something to be feared. As the narrator describes the scene, one can almost sense his fear; "I looked upon the scene before me, upon the mere house and the simple landscape features of the domain, upon its bleak walls, upon the vacant eye-like windows, upon a few rank sedges, and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees…" (335). The narrator gives the house human characteristics, referring to its windows as "vacant" and "eye-like". He also makes it appear as an almost over-powering negative presence, like a demon that will be difficult to escape. Once he enters the house, the narrator sees the inside of the house as well as the strange way in which the people living there behave. He describes the atmosphere inside the house: "an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which h...
