The themes are presented to us

Structure and style / poetics

Domination contitioning the développement right from the start
A proposition which is singularly use

This particular point at the beginning and the point of view - supposed to lead us in the
question of point of view

Let’s get into the analysis of the first paragraphs

- Surrounding
- House

Surroundings :

Second paragraph tells us something ab the place of the narrator

The place is far from the narrator home
Ushers place l29/30 « distant part of the country »

the second element to signify the distance, the fact that many years l29 have lapsed since
Usher and the narrator last met.

Which tell us something important in a oblique way is that the narrator alone finds himself cut
of from home so from what is familiar to him and known to him and therefore we have to take
care of this phrase « I found myself » l3

It means that he doesn't seem to know how he got up here . He got lost . Therefore there
might be a blank in his way to usher’s place he can possibly draw a link between what is
familiar to him and usher’s place . Unfamiliar .

Is a topos of epic literature (like Lancelot in his quest to find the graal and his lost in the
waste forest)

The narrator is lost simply because the text tells us « singularly dried of country »
Singular - place we’ve never seen before which is not a repetition in a sense that this place
can’t be related to any place that the narrator has been before . He can’t find his way .

Singularly dreary - means dismal

Dreary - contains the whole story / both refers to blood , gore and as we know the story start
and end of the theme of blood .

The problem is a problem of consanguinity and at the end there is this reference to blood .
This adjective is very important .
Dreary - drop fall

What is particularly remarkable and unexpected is that the narrator seems to be possessed /
infected by the house no sooner did he catch sight of it .
Link between the first appearance of the house and the gloom that absorb him .

Within - we moi get had in

Difference between within and in
Within : highlight the insidedness of the view

Simply because it is the narrator who catches the sight of the narrator and the house
catches sight of the narrator .

The view - not the narrator view is the view of the house in other words the narrator is looked
at by what he sees .

This house has windows that look like eyes. What is particularly relèvent is that in the
paragraph twice the windows are compared to eyes . L9 « the vacant eyelike Windows »
L? « The vacant and eye like windows »

- First one - what is vacant are the eyes in others these eyes are empty vacuous
blank and it leads to stupid means eye without expression

- Second one - vacancy is applied to the windows of the windows are empty it means
that the house is empty or inhabited by nobody in there but the windows are eyes but
these eyes are no longer vacant it means that we can read an expression in the eyes
staring the narrator .

It is because of the windows the power of the eye is vacant and yet it can see .
What kind of house is that ? Isn’t that the definition of a ghost ? Of a spirit ? Unsubstantial
looking at you.
This house is a haunted house presented as a haunted house .
It is precisely p5 first paragraph.

« Si tôt qu’entre en scène la notion de perte l’ombre de la mélancolie tombe sur la
réflection »
A seminal book
- l’encre de la mélancolie par jean starobinski

The scene is shrouded in shadows which shadows ? The shadows rising from the narrator
fences
But these shadows more interestingly are shaped by the darkness .
They come from usher - usher’s mind pouring

Etymology of gloom - dark first

An old English word means a solemn/sand look or to stare somebody frown
Idea of sight

Attracted by what catches your attention is attracted by what is looking at you

We’ve got to understand the association with the eye of usher p3 L28
What the narrator call these fences - are usher’s fences usher’s world he created by himself
for himself that’s the world find himself locked in a worlds radiating in gloom cut off from the
outside p4 l18 « usher never ventured forth »
He remained in this house secluded in this house
That small picture he’s painted p5

Usher’s world is a world of illusion - fantasms these fences intimated by the comparison over
the possibility of a link confronted to the world of usher with the situation of an opium eater
L12

A world which is not substantiated by anything especially by beauty

This house is melancholy deprived of beauty

The sublime is a scent from usher’s world the possibility to get out with imagination

This poetic sentiment is an echo of the éternel act of creation

We could say that the narrator is homodiegetic because he observe the fall of the house of
usher
He tells us not so much usher’s life what we got about his feelings it would be much more
autodiegetic narrator in terms of relation to the story it’s ambiguous
The story is in an internal focalization
Difficult to decide if it’s external or internal