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 The house is terrifying and chaotic and disorderly. Vincent says he's "possessed by the house." The aesthetics of the movie is Romantic / Gothic. The setting is dark. The kid (Vincent) imagines things like the narrator. "It's all in your head." He cannot be trusted, he's got an overactive imagination. He even says he's "insane," sick with madness. Vincent reads and quotes E.A. Poe, and he's fond of horror actor Vincent Price. In Tim Burton's movies, there's an opposition between the Normal World and the Gothic World. The Normal World is impossible to live in because it's too symmetrical and materialistic and soulless. The Gothic World is preferable, but heroes cannot escape in it for too long. Tim Burton and Neil Gaiman reintroduced Gothic themes in the 1980s with their works ( Edward Scissorhands and The Sandman ) . In popular music, the Gothic genre also inspired musicians like The Cure, Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus or Siou...

Today we read the sixth paragraph. Here's what we understood : The narrator goes into the castle, is lead by a valet to the studio of his master, and he meets a physician on his way. What about the themes ? First, we noticed the narrator says the objects around him are familiar to him. Does he already know that place ? He uses fancy words like phantasmagoric. He also describes the house as having "many dark and intricate passages." This place feels like it's a labyrinth, a maze, a Daedalus where we can get lost. But considering the house is personified through a catechresis, that's it's evil and sick, that it also stands for the family (like a double), then maybe we could say that the family itself has "many dark and intricate passages," that's it's a labyrinth too. Like the narrator, we are entering a new place (the short story), and we must navigate its "dark and intricate passages" (Poe's complex writing). Likewise, there ar...

  First paragraph of The Fall of the House of Usher The writing of Poe is intricate and often difficult to understand. However the story itself is rather simple, and the themes are repeated all along. PLOT The narrator reaches a house. He's scared and impressed by it. Riding his horse, he contemplates the lake near the house. THEMES There are two characters in this paragraph: the narrator and the house. The house is personified several times : it is the "melancholy House of Usher," so it is sick, and its humours are deranged. It also has "eye-like windows." This seminal (first) catechresis has become highly influential in the horror genre and in the haunted house subgenre ( Amityville, The Haunting of Hill House , The Shining ...). Just like in these works, the House of Usher seems empty and evil. " Whoever fights with monsters should see to it that he does become a monster in the process. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into yo...

 A few words before the reading assignment :  a vocab list will help with some of the most difficult words, and a few of the themes found in pages 93-98. Likewise, there are two reproductions of engravings from Italian artist Piranesi, who was highly influential on Poe and other Romantics. One of these engravings it entitled The Gothic Arch . Thomas de Quincey (who wrote Confessions of an English Opium-Eater ) told of his trip to Rome with English poet S. Coleridge, and of their fascination for the intricate, impossible imaginary prisons of Piranesi, their dystopian and kafkaesque nature.  After that, we considered E. A. Poe's influence today. We watched Vincent from Tim Burton. Here are our observations : GOTHIC TROPES a bleak, dark atmosphere mental illness, loneliness a young beautiful wife dying an untimely death visions and nightmares intrusive thoughts (the perverse) evil double being possessed by a house The poem rhymes, and is narrated by horror movie actor Vincen...

Pp92-93 : Plot & Themes   In these paragrpahs, the plot is rather simple : the narrator as received a letter from an ill friend, and he decides to visit him. He reaches the house, but he's afraid : the house looks really bad. The themes from these paragraphs : 1. Time ( long lapse of centuries, through long ages, time-honoured) 2. Humour ( pestilent, mystical vapour, melancholy house, heart) 3. Incest/inbreeding/illness ( very ancient family, Usher race, from sire to son, patrimony, direct line of descent) 4. Decadence ( decayed tree, decay, rotten, crumble, fissure, neglected) Another question is : can we trust the narrator ? At first glance ( au premier regard ), it seems that we should. But the text shows us otherwise : impression, consciousness, superstition, paradoxical, sentiments, terror, strange fancy, imagination, ridiculous are all words connected with him. PLOT : the narrator goes in the house, meets the valet and the physician, and describes what he can see as he go...

  The first paragraph of The Fall of the House of Usher Reading this introduction, we got a feel for its poetic nature, and its sadness, its gloom. Then we wondered about the number of characters in this passage. We found two of them : the narrator, and the house itself. Indeed (en effet) , the house is " melancholy ," just like a human being ; and just like a human being, it's got " vacant, eye-like windows ." This last motif is a figure of speech called personification, or catechresis . The catechresis of the house in the opening of The Fall of the House of Usher has become extremely famous, and has inspired generations of writers and movie directors. For instance, the house in The Amityville Horror has windows that look exactly like eyes. Just like in Poe's story, these eyes are empty, and feel evil.    le narrateur arrive à cheval dans les environs de la maison, qui sont sordides. Il décrit la maison, et ses sentiments alors qu'il la contemple pour...