As the narrator of Edgar Allan Poe's “The Fall of the House of Usher” thinks when he is unnerved by the sight of the titular of the house story, "although there are undoubtedly combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power to affect us in this way, the analysis of this power nevertheless lies among considerations beyond our depth » (Poe 200). Although the narrator of his story is unable to describe what particularly bothers him about the house, Poe himself does not seem to believe that such considerations are really "beyond our depth", and even wrote a humorous essay entitled “The Philosophy of Furniture” to describe the effects of different interior designs. Although the essay was written to mock the tone of contemporary philosophy essays, its assertions seem to be reflected in some of Poe's stories such as "Ligeia" and "The Fall of the House of Usher." Comparing the interior spaces of these stories with Poe's concept of the "ideal room" in his essay can shed light on Poe's process and explain why he made specific choices in his detailed descriptions of rooms and furnishings. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay One of the most remarkable things about the mansion visited by the narrator of "The Fall of the House of Usher" is its pervasive darkness and sadness. The narrator speaks of "the ebony blackness of the floors" he walks on on his way to his old friend's room, and there he finds a "black oak floor" (202). Without the context of the essay, this description already begins to create the feeling that there is something sinister or depressing in the house. However, Poe may have chosen to include dark wood flooring in the house. In his essay, talking about the use of carpets, he says: "A carpet is the soul of the apartment", and the floor seen so far by the narrator does not have carpet. If, according to Poe, the carpet is the soul of an apartment, then not only does the Usher house appear to be soulless, but there is a deep darkness in the empty place where the soul should be, a suggestion that might also have implications for the nature of the characters. Earlier in the story, the narrator says that "Usher House" is a "designation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasants who used it, both the family and the family manor" (201). If the physical House of Usher is soulless, this may imply that the House of Usher as a lineage is also soulless. Although it is difficult to determine how serious Poe intended "The Philosophy of Furniture" to be, and whether something seemingly insignificant like the absence of a rug was really meant to imply something as serious as soulless, this dark implication would not be out of step with the decline of the house throughout history. Besides the rug, the interior of the rooms in the Usher house differ from Poe's ideal room in several ways. Poe says that in the ideal room, "two large sofas of rosewood and crimson silk...form the only seating, except for two light conversation chairs." In Roderick Usher's room, the "general furniture" is described only as "abundant, comfortless, antique, and tattered" (202), leading to the assumption that the quantity of furniture in the room far exceeds the quantity which Poe considers ideal. Poe also describes the owner of the ideal room as being "asleep on a sofa", which should imply that the sofas in the room are comfortable enough that the owner can choose to sleepon it instead of a bed, which is also not the case in Rodérick's room. A profusion of uncomfortable furniture seems unnecessary, while Poe's ideal room seems more efficient. The windows also conflict with Poe's ideal vision. He states that in this ideal room there are "only two windows" which are "large, reaching down to the floor", the panes of which are "purple-tinted glass". The windows in Roderick's bedroom are "long, narrow, and pointy, and so far from the black oak floor that they are completely inaccessible from the inside" (202). Although they allow "faint glimmers of embodied light" into the room, they are the wrong size and placement, so high that for maintenance purposes they can seem impractical. Although none of these other discrepancies between Roderick's room and the "ideal room" seem to have as serious implications as the carpet, each difference seems to be another way for Poe to suggest that there is something that does not does not go into the room, into the house and into the house. the characters for allowing themselves to live in such a place. In his essay, Poe emphasizes the superiority of architecture and decoration in England. “In interior decoration,” he said, “the English are supreme. » It is interesting to note that the English abbey bridal chamber purchased by the narrator of “Ligeia” is much more bizarre and strange than the house described in “The Fall of the House of Usher”. The narrator actually makes the mistake that Poe most often attributes to his fellow Americans and which he believes greatly harms their sense of interior decoration. “In America,” he said, “dollars being the supreme badge of aristocracy, their exhibition may be said, in general terms, to be the only means of aristocratic distinction; and the people, seeking models, are gradually led to confuse the two entirely distinct ideas of magnificence and beauty. The narrator himself seems to be aware of this flaw, claiming that he “gave way, with childish perversity…to a display of more than royal magnificence within” the abbey (166). He calls the “magnificent and fantastic draperies…the solemn sculptures of Egypt” and “the Bedlam patterns of tufted gold carpets” “follies.” Poe, in his essay, goes so far as to say that people who decorate their homes with carpets of "huge, sprawling, radiating devices" are "children of Baal and worshipers of Mammon", once again seeming to use a character's rugs to suggest something sinister about them; this time, that he is a demon worshipper, as evidenced by the “Bedlam” motifs. Although this sentence from his essay was likely an exaggeration intended for humorous purposes, what it suggests does not seem far removed from the tone of his story. It is, however, the story's bridal chamber that departs most radically from Poe's ideals. First, the narrator describes the room as “pentagonal in shape and large in size” (167). Poe states that his ideal room "is oblong - about thirty feet long and twenty-five wide - a shape affording the best (ordinary) possibilities of fitting furniture." There is no doubt that the coin only has four sides. He doesn't feel the need to explicitly state that this is the best shape for a room. The shape of the bridal chamber is therefore supernatural, radically different from anything he describes in his essay, and does not allow for any of the "better (ordinary)" furniture arrangements due to the different angles. For each corner of the ideal room, Poe assigns “large and magnificent Sèvres vases, in which bloom a profusion of soft and lively flowers.” However, in the bedroom 2015