Imagination in The Fall Of The House Of Usher and House Taken Over (Essay Sample)

People often use their imagination to predict future events or even escape a miserable reality. Although imagination can be helpful, an overdose of it can cause a lack of validity. In appalling situations, all the same absence of reason appears and one gets consumed in his own delusions. In one’s plight of fear, fantasy takes over and all reasoning escapes them, they get caught up in the exotic, unfamiliar surroundings that cause great horror to rise within their consciousness and fail to see the logic in the situation.

The effect of fear on one’s imagination can consume one’s nature and control a situation in unreasonable ways. A release of adrenaline can cause these hallucinations or perhaps paranoia that isn’t logical in any means. An example of this can be seen in The Fall Of The House of Usher in which, the narrator, having learned much about Usher’s twin Madeline, has just helped entomb her body in the donjon, has started to feel a sense of perturbation. He hears slight noises through the storm and gets worked up over thoughts of the past events. This causes him to be overall irrationally anxious as he states “An irrepressible tremor  gradually pervaded my frame…”(Poe 31) - being in utter disturbance without a true cause. This type of example in which imagination overcomes reason is slightly similar to that seen in House Taken Over. The story of the brother and sister who live in seclusion has a bitter end when they are forced out of their house, claiming it’s been taken over. The characters' continuous isolation leads to their imaginatory senses when they slowly retreat out of their precious home. The reader begins to ponder the idea that whatever force this might be must be powerful enough to keep the siblings from roaming around the taken over sections. The logic in this situation would’ve been to go and gather their valuables, but their reverie has taken over and makes the reader imagine what horrid creature or person is behind the walls. Their panic stricken mood prohibited them from even investigating if there truly was danger as the narrator states “One thing among the many lost on the other side of the house.” suggesting they are incapable of defending their house; getting back what was lost (Cortazar 16). I myself have been in a situation in which my growing fear allowed my imagination to run loose, resulting in unorthodox thoughts to consume my mind. Spring 2022. I woke up realising I had been laying in the same stiff-necked position for the past 2 hours. It was now 1:30 in the morning and I couldn’t go back to sleep. The events of the past day- the man I had seen while on my midday walk who had scared the living daylights out of me had been haunting my dreams all night. I turned in my rigid position slightly when I heard a tumultuous noise right outside the door to my dark room. Shivering vaguely I tried to brush off my own exaggerated alarm and attempted to fall back asleep. The noise came back moments later and I could've sworn I saw a tenebrous figure slide across the hallway through the ajar crack in my doorway. I sat up abruptly clutching my blanket when finally, as expected, my overthinking intellect started and the great measure of “what-if’s” initiated through my head as If my brain was an appliance that has been waiting to be fed bucketfuls of anxiety. “It's him” I thought, the same man I had seen wearing a hospital gown, playing with toys outside of a random house two streets away from my current position.I knew how crazy that seemed since my parents had invested tons of money in security precautions and my dog couldn’t let a scorpion in the house but still, the image I had created in my mind told me I was wrong and caused panic to intensify within me. TimidlyI got up and opened my door to find everything exactly as I left it, cold and empty. I had let my fear take the best of me, the part that could recognise such irrational thoughts. 

Imagination, as seen in The Fall Of The House Of Usher and House Taken Over has proved to be able to overcome one’s sense of reason in frightening situations. The characters analized in both short stories had encountered such affairs. I myself have lived in this perception of having great fear within me, but being unable to think judiciously. These short stories assist in understanding how and when exactly one's Imagination or delusions take over their reason, their ability to use their knowledge to calm themselves in their worst moments.