The Fall of the House of Usher Fear Quotes Page 2
Citations follow this format: (Paragraph)
| Quote #4 An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all. (7) |
This air of gloom is akin to the actual fog that surrounds the mansion.
| Quote #5 To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. "I shall perish," said he, "I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results. […] I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect--in terror. In this unnerved—in this pitiable condition--I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR." (11) |
Roderick isn’t afraid of death or pain; he is afraid of fear. And as he predicts, this is precisely what he dies of, when Madeline comes back from her tomb and scares him to death.
| Quote #6 He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth--in regard to an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated (12) |
Over and over again, the narrator reiterates the impossibility of his accurately conveying the events of this episode on the written page. The story is too spooky, too other-worldly, too scary for him to get across in full.
