The Fall of the House of Usher and The Cask of Amontillado

#Day2
#Guest #Lecture
DrJay Mehta sir
#Poe's #short #stories
#The #fall #of #the #house #of #Usher
#The #Cask #of #Amontillado
The second day of guest lecture begins with the short story "The fall of the house of Usher", as there is singularity of effect, Poe begins story with so many negative words like dull, dark, soundless, autumn( according to archetype autumn is related to fall), oppresively low, dreary track of country, melancholy etc. In this way Poe remains on his track of giving singular effect. Melancholy is always there in the horror stories of Poe. There is a sense of insufferable gloom. Everything, whether a place or human being, all have its aura, it can be negative and positive. For the narrator the house of Usher brings negative aura. It seems a mansion of gloom. He also thinks that whether it is hallucination or reality. We can find all the characteristics of Gothic fiction in this story like, gloomy castle, ambience, sensational and supernatural occurence, macabre, terror, melodramatically violent etc. In this story Madeline ,the sister of Roderick suffers from #catalepsy. And she was buried inside the home by Roderick and the narrator, belieiving that she was dead, but in actual she was not dead, and comes out at the end and fall on his brother, in fear Roderick dies. The narrator flees, and saw the house falling down in two fragments. It completes his first vision when he enters the house, the reflection of house is inverted. And at the end it fall down by completing the inverted image. Poe has used #pre-#conceived effect, as every words of story creates specific atmosphere. This story also presents the belief in superstitions, the very beginning is about the inverted image of house which gives a sense of danger to the narrator, same thing corresponds to the end. There are two types of dissorder #Neurosis in which a person is responsible for his own fall and death, and #Psychosis in which a person kills other by being violent.
The next story is #The #Cask #of #Amontillado which is totally different from the previous story. This story is about a well planned murderer Montresor who murdered Fortunato to take revenge of his insult. The name of Poe's stories are very much #symbollic. But in this story the character Fortunato is totally opposite with his name "Fortunato" seems like fortunate one, but in story he is the most unfortunate one. He is master of tasting wines and his hubris leads to his own downfall when he thinks of tasting Amontillado by not allowing other to taste it. Montresor was aware about the weakness of Fortunato and used it as his weapon. He trowel him alive. He used the word task for his deed of murdering Fortunato. At the end there is one phrase which shows the guilty of Montresor "My heart grew sick". But not confess that he is guilty. There is dramatic irony in the story. When both these friends are cheering up, Montresor cheers for long life of his enemy to whom he is going to murder. He used the #passive #resistence theory to trap Fortunato, as whenever we are told to do not do this or that, we do it with enthusiasm. Similarly Montresor knows if he directly calls Fortunato, he may refuse and use trick to provoke him with his curved words.
In this way we get very fruiful lecture by Dr. Jay Mehta sir😊