Fall of the House of Usher

“Foreshadowing in one of Poe’s Great Tales”
Imagine hearing a song or reading a story that suddenly becomes your life and what is going on around you. This happens to one man in “The Fall of the House of Usher.” As the story opens, the narrator is traveling to his friend Roderick Usher’s home in response to a letter from Roderick. The letter sounded dire and important; therefore he could not deny him the visit (Poe 234). As the narrator arrives at the house, he is confronted with eerie surroundings. Days later, Roderick sings him a ballad about a palace that seems like the very house where they reside. Then, near the end of his visit, he reads a tale of a hero that is closely followed by the strangest coincidence of all. In his work “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Edgar Allan Poe makes great use of parallels and foreshadowing to contribute to the overall horror of the story.
On the first day of the narrator’s visit, he notices many strange similarities betw...