24. Respond to one of the following essay prompts:
A. Poe believed that good short stories require a single, unifying effect. Evaluate one of the stories in the
American Romanticism unit using Poe's standard of unity. Do the descriptions, incidents, and images all
contribute to the single effect of the story? Is there a single effect? Feel free to evaluate Poe's own story.
B. Consider what you have learned about American history during the period of 1820 to 1864. How do the
stories in the American Romanticism reflect what was going on in the country then?
C. Read and analyze "When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer" by Walt Whitman. What Romantic ideas
does it express, and how does the structure of the poem reinforce the meaning?
When I heard the learn'd astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wanderd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

- Edgar Allan Poe believed that a good short story must have a single, unifying effect. He did apply that concept to his own short stories. Let's briefly analyze "The Fall of the House of Usher."

- In the story, every element contributes to the story's effect: the setting, the characters, the dialogue, the word choice and the mood, among others.

- From the beginning, the narrator describes an "oppressive" weather. He proceeds to let us know that his friend Usher looks sick and strange. The house where Usher lives is also quite eerie. And to top it all, Usher's sister, who was buried alive, has returned for revenge.

- As seen above, each element unifies the story, producing a single effect. Readers cannot help but feel tense and anxious as they read on.

Edgar Allan Poe was an American Romantic writer famous for his Gothic short stories.

Poe believed a good short story should possess a single, unifying effect, and that everything in the story should contribute to that effect.

He achieves that in his short stories, where every element (characters, setting, imagery, word choice, etc.) contributes to the feeling of tension, anxiety, even horror.

That is what happens in "The Fall of the House of Usher," for example. Readers cannot escape the terrifying effect Poe builds.

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