They're all mad here: a literary comparison between "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Masque of the Red Death" internationally known romantic author Edgar Allan Poe always depicted darkness, madness and death in his stories. With these depictions, Poe must provide this state of mind for the reader to be engulfed in madness. In his short story "The Fall of the House of Usher", Poe uses descriptive details about the dull color and sturdiness of the house and the Ushers themselves to create a dark atmosphere. It also details Roderick Usher's descent into madness and his fear of death. In turn, it depicts brightly colored rooms in “The Masque of the Red Death,” but the arrangement of colors provides the viewer with a chaotic aesthetic. The madness and fear depicted by Prospero in “The Red Death” can easily be compared to the madness and fear depicted by Roderick Usher in “The House of Usher”. Poe begins many of his stories by describing in great detail the setting and colors of the story. In “The Fall of the House of Usher” the setting is dark and gloomy with “shabby walls…empty eye-like windows…[and] decayed trees” (Poe). The house shows little to no color and has a dilapidated appearance. Upon entering the house, the narrator describes an inherent darkness and desolation everywhere. In the study where the narrator's childhood friend, Roderick Usher, waits for him, the room has an absence of light that gives it a desolate appearance, "an atmosphere of sorrow...and [an irredeemable darkness loomed and pervaded everything,” (Poe) The narrator also describes an inherent lack of color in the Ushers' physical appearance and personality. He describes Roderick Usher as having a thin face with thin lips, and notices... in the center of the card... Cobweb. March 21, 2014.Dudley, David R. "Dead or Alive: The Booby-Trapped Narrator of Poe's 'Mask of the Red Death'." Short Fiction Studies 30.2 (Spring 1993): 169-173. Rpt. in Criticism of short stories. Ed. Rachelle Mucha and Thomas J. Schoenberg. vol. 88. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resource Center. Network. March 21, 2014Lei, Jin. "Poe's Landscape: Dreams, Nightmares, and Enclosed Gardens." Forum for World Literature Studies 5.1 (2013): 36+.Academic OneFile. Network. March 26, 2014.Howes, Craig. “'The Fall of the House of Usher' and Elegiac Romanticism.” The Southern Literary Journal 19.1 (1986):68+.Academic OneFile. Network. March 24, 2014.Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Mask of the Red Death." The Jalic Literary Network Inc. 2000-2014. Network. March 25. 2014.Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Fall of House Usher." The Jalic Literary Network Inc. 2000-2014. Network. March 25. 2014.