Close Reading
The passage is a complete description of a deserted, dark and gloomy house. A vague image is visualized where we find the narrator in an intense situation. Thrilling language is used by a single narrator to portray a fearful and excellent description of the house. The first sight of the house evoked ‘utter depression’. The storyteller describes his incident with the words, ‘with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit’. He after observing the house and the surroundings feels unbearable murkiness floating above the huge house and immediately discerns that something is erroneous. The looks of the mansion is related to the surrounding landscape found around the isolated house. The narrator is upset and fearful, creates a grotesque and mysterious scene which seem deserted and ghostly, as quoted, “the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible.”
He uses personification to describe the window e.g. "eye like" making the readers feel that the house is alive. The words, ‘Upon the vacant eye-like windows – upon a few rank sledges- and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees with an utter depression of soul’ describes the house and the symbolism used is a resemblance to a human to show that it is haunted. The narrator’s apprehensions can be sensed by the readers and the feelings that the house is evil as the walls are unwelcoming or something supernatural exists in it occur after reading these lines because he cannot explain by any ‘earthly sensation’. The ambiance of depression and agony is created by the writer due to the words. The putrefying tree trunks create a sickening atmosphere pertaining to the writer’s inner feelings.
The melancholy theme in the passage reminds of a very disturbed state of mind. "Opium" symbolizes gloominess pictured in the "dreary landscape" that surrounds the mansion. The narrator compares this imagery to the sickness caused by the withdrawal from the addiction to opium. With his use of poetic sentiments, the narrator finds an escape out of the feeling of depression in contrast to “a sickening of the heart”, which symbolizes death and decay.
The writer uses a number of alliterations in the description of the house, so as make the readers think that it is living. Moreover he uses metaphorical exaggerations to arouse the factor of terror in the hearts of the readers. All the darkness in the imagery along with negative exaggerations creates the background of grief. The alliterations from the passage, ‘there was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart’ portray the viciousness of the house. It produces a gothic disposition, prehistoric decomposing palace is creepy and rotten.
