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Edgar Allan Poe's Short Story Writing Theory as Reflected in The Fall of the House of Usher

As both a writer and a critic, Edgar Allan Poe not only has his unique, complete series of principles in literary works, but also demonstrates them in his own writings.  His ideas of writing short stories are best embodied in The Fall of the House of Usher, one of his most powerful masterpieces. 

But first let us have a general look at Poe's view in short story writing, which is found in one of his reviews named Twice-Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorn.  In Poe's opinion, what is most important, not only in writing a short story but also in almost all classes of composition, is the "effect or impression" the author makes on the mind of the reader.  To achieve this goal, an author must pay attention to many aspects.  First of all is the length of the story -- it should be one that can be completed by the reader at one sitting.  If it can not be read in "a half-hour to one or two hours", "it deprives itself, of course, of the immense force derivable from totality".  A wise author, Poe states, would not fashion his thoughts to accommodate his incidents, but invent and then combine such incidents as may best aid him in establishing the single effect he is to bring about to his readers.  And he should express this effect in a straight forward way.  "If his very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step."  Moreover, Poe points out, every word and sentence in the whole composition must serve this single effect.  There should be no irrelevant word. 

All these theories are exactly and faithfully reflected in The Fall of the House of Usher, which can undoubtedly be calle a "tale of effect".  The effect here is evidently "terror". 

At the very beginning of the story, with a long sentence, Poe directly introduces the melancholy, terrible House of Usher to the reder.  By piling up such words as "dull", "dark", "soundless", "oppressively", and "dreary", Poe successfully grasps the reader's heart with a nervous, tense and horrible atmosphere.  In the following description, Poe carefully selects his words to further settle the tone of terror, mystery, and melancholy: bleak walls, vacant eye-like windows, decayed trees, and a black, lurid tarn.  The effect of the desolate, insufferable scene is articulately conveyed to the reader. 

Inside the house is another lifeless and gloomy scene: a silent valet of stealthy step, dark and intricate passages, dark draperies upon the walls, and antique tattered furniture.  In such an "atmosphere of sorrow", the owner of the house Roderick Usher is presented to the reader, a man suffering from a severe mental disorder.  Usher and his twin sister Lady Madeline live lonely in this rotted disintegrating house; one of them collapsing in his spirit while the other perishing in her body.  By now Poe has painted so vivid a picture of both the decay of the house and the decline of its owners, that the reader, together with the narrator, have clearly felt the terror of their doomed, imminent destruction. 

With step-by-step development of the story, the atmosphere gets more and more tense.  The climax finally arrives at a tempestuous night.  Outdoors, the tempest is violent and frightening; indoors, the old house is ghastly and terrible.  Such effect is even further strengthened when the inscrutable echoing sounds inside the large house become counterpart of those described in the book that the narrator is reading.  At length it turns out that Lady Madeline, who has been buried alive by her brother, comes out of the coffin and dies in Usher's arms; while he, being totally crazy and frightened, dies at the same time, and becomes "a victim to the terrors he had anticipated". 

Throughout the whole story Poe engages himself in creating continuous effect of terror, which, serving as a link, chains up all the plots and descriptions.  As a result the story is perfectly coherent and compact, without any impertinent words.  All the portrayal -- of the natural scene, the old house, and the Usher twins -- all send out the single message: the terror of their inevitable fall.  Thus in The Fall of the House of Usher, Poe incisively and thoroughly shows his own principles in short story writing.