The Fall of the House of Usher is a story in Edgar Allan Poe’s famous Gothic style, with the setting as eerie as one would expect. Poe builds on several horror staples, such as the haunted house of the Usher family, the bleak landscape around, and the mystery disease. Apart from the story itself, the setting is incredibly ominous. The house, decaying together with its inhabitants, is personalized with the descriptions of “vacant eye-like windows” (Poe). The gloomy house with “bleak walls” and “minute fungi overspread [on] the whole exterior” sends shivers down the readers’ backs (Poe). The interior is just as dreary, with the “comfortless, antique, and tattered” furniture and “dark draperies hung upon the walls” (Poe). The author deliberately uses the setting to create a depressing and melancholy atmosphere.
On the other hand, To Build a Fire is a story based in a very natural setting, about a traveler and his canine companion. The entirety of the story, which happens in one day, takes place outside. Although this story, too, ends with a death of a character, the build-up is much less eerie. The main character travels around Canada, in the snow and cold, with a lot of Jack London’s focus going into the description of the extreme weather. London describes the setting as “cold and uncomfortable” (65) and proceeds to repeat the word “cold” on numerous occasions throughout, emphasizing it.
The two short stories, very different in their context and settings, both create an unsettling atmosphere in their own ways. Poe’s T.F.O.T.H.O.U, as mentioned above, is “comfortless,” which is similar to London’s “uncomfortable” setting (65). Both of the settings increase anxiety in the characters, unnerving them, and preparing for the untimely deaths at the end. This effect is created with the different, although clever in both cases, approaches to the setting descriptions, which both of the authors put a lot of emphasis on.
Works Cited
London, Jack. To Build a Fire. 1902. American English.
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Fall of the House of Usher. Project Gutenberg, 2010. Project Gutenberg.