Enclosed Spaces in Poe

With Poe we enter an enclosed, confined universe, whose elements, both natural and material, seem to provide boundaries, to impose limitations on the hero. Poe’s hero appears circumscribed to a space he cannot escape from, a space that has nothing to do with other spaces and that becomes par-ticular to the hero. As Richard Wilbur remarks, “ Almost never, if you think about it, is one of Poe’s heroes to be seen standing in the light of common day; almost never does the Poe hero breathe the air that others breathe; he requires some kind of envelope in order to be what he is; he is always either enclosed or on his way to enclosure.” Thus, the hero appears trapped—but he accepts his isolation and his prison without any feeling of alienation. He has no energy or desire to leave his enclosure, which becomes the only life-sustaining environment for him.
In “The Fall of the House of Usher” the circumscriptions are successive: Roderick Usher is found by the narrator in a dark s...