4. In "The Fall of the House of Usher" notice how the atmosphere of horror is fixed in the opening paragraph by a series of adjectives and adverbs expressive of ever increasing gloom and culminating in the word "torture."
5. Compare the nightmare dread that is attained both at the end of "The Fall of the House of Usher" and in "The Cask of Amontillado" with De Quincey's description of the dreams caused by opium and the attendant melancholia. IV, 171-181.
6. However, Poe was not merely recording fragments of opium dreams; the earliest prose work of the romantic period, now forgotten because of its many weaknesses and imperfections, consisted largely of just such tales of horror. Bürger's "Lenore," Walpole's "Castle of Otranto," Mrs. Radcliffe's "Mysteries of Udolpho," and Mrs. Shelley's "Frankenstein" were among the foremost of these.
7. Can you discover any suggestions of religious or moral feeling in either of these tales? If so, do they impress you as Poe's actual conviction or as a part of the picture which he is drawing?
8. Is this type of tale worth preserving apart from its excellence in style? Do you think it easy or difficult to tell such a story? Why?
9. Is Poe immoral or unmoral?
"THE RAVEN"
1. Why is the raven chosen as the bird of ill omen?
2. Compare the raven with the albatross in Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner."
3. It has been often claimed that the poem was written by Poe in a fit of delirium. As a matter of fact it was composed during his wife's illness and then polished into its present shape during subsequent months of grief. "The Bells" was written at the same time.