Mansion, Several Dark and Stormy Nights

Mansion, Several Dark and Stormy Nights

   While I was doing my readings of the chosen story for the next time, totally concentrated on my assignment, I've made the conclusions given below:

 - the author doesn't mention neither the geographical position nor a specific year when these events took place. The fact is, the mood and atmosphere in the setting is very important - it is certainly  a powerful atmosphere that Poe creates;

 - the outside of the mansion is one which full of scare settings Poe renders in his tale. We imagine an ethereal glowing cloud,  a dark and eery lake, not to mention the ominous fissure running down the center of the mansion. He creates a different but equally scary setting inside the mansion, where everything screams “YOU ARE IN A HORROR STORY.” 
 - the house itself is created to show the mood and atmosphere of the story, like the creepy tapestries and furnishings inside. The fact that Usher hasn’t left the house in ages lends the tale a sense of claustrophobia. In fact, the narrator himself doesn’t leave until the end of the story – he is as  trapped as Roderick. The house’s sentience is also a big deal – the physical setting of the story is as supernatural as its action and themes. 
   The following stylistic means are noticed to create the dull and dark atmosphere of the story:
a)  Lexical: metaphors in the sentences given below suggests the narrator’s evaluation of the atmosphere around him and helps us to get inside the depressing images, which the house, the lake made us to feel:
     "DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher ".

      "It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered".

       "Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of some weeks".

b) Syntactical: the idea expressed through the use of asyndeton is to show the weirdness and inaccessibility of what was going on in the House for the strangers and non-inhabitants:
    "While the objects around me--while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy--while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this--I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up".

c) Graphic: capitalization and hyphenation are taken by the author to show the readers the continuity and consistency of the actions developing there in the mansion for centuries:
    "DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher."

   "I looked upon the scene before me--upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain--upon the bleak walls--upon the vacant eye-like windows--upon a few rank sedges--and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees--with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium--the bitter lapse into everyday life--the hideous dropping off of the veil" (this also the case of anaphora is present here)

  The description of gloom and despair which overcame the building inside and ouside is done in detailed way, what we can see through the use of stylistic means commented above.