POD Weekly reading response 1 - Book Report/Review Example

The house holds the scene of the action that turns the plot from beginning to end. The house of the Montresors is the setting, but the vaults are where the action mostly occurs. Poe describes the underground of the house with “walls of piled bones, with casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost recesses of the catacombs” (7). The house is not only a house of wine, but also the history of the Montresors, a history that the protagonist seeks to preserve and to avenge. Through and in this house, the protagonist commits his murder.

The house also acts as a setting for the haunting of two ghosts in “The Empty House.” Shorthouse and his Aunt Julia know their purpose- to find out the truth about the empty house. Blackwood uses irony when he says that the empty house “looked exactly like the houses on either side of it” (1), when in reality, it is a place of an endless cycle of death. The house tells its grim story to all, including Shorthouse and Aunt Julia. These houses are settings of gloom that turn the story toward its deadly finish.

Apart from serving as a setting, the house also acts as a character that reveals the intentions and deeds of the protagonist or the ghost. The house in Poe’s story has a distinct character of coldness and rage. Poe describes the grounds of the house as “damp” “catacombs” (5) that has the “foulness of the air” (Poe 7). These descriptions underline the house a something that feels anger and indifference enough to kill without second thoughts. Moreover, Poe notes that the house is watching over the protagonist.

He says: “Its walls had been lined with human remains, piled to the vault overhead…” (Poe 7-8). This description suggests that the whole clan of the protagonist is waiting for their honor to be avenged. It has adapted the character of the protagonist, whose murderous, vengeful intentions can no longer be stopped. The house in Blackwood’s story serves as a character too because it manifests the evil intentions and actions of an angry spirit. Blackwood describes the house as no different to other houses with histories of violence because they “…seem to communicate an atmosphere of secret and wicked thoughts” (1).

Indeed, Shorthouse and Aunt Julia realize that the house is truly a house of evil because of ghosts who cannot attain peace at all. The house is evil because of the evil done in it, and this evil remains angry and alive beyond death. These houses depict rage that cannot be stopped and madness that cannot be contained. Finally, the houses function as a cipher because they expose the ghastly truth through the climax. In Poe’s story, the vaults smell strongly of nitre which is bad for Fortunato, providing clues that the house reeks of death.

When the protagonist pretends to care for Fortunato’s health, Fortunato rejects the invitation to leave the vaults (Poe 5-6). Fortunato’s pride that he knows wine better than Luchesi is ironically his own nitre. The mounds of bricks and skeletons further reveal that Fortunato will be buried alive. When the protagonist touches the “solid fabric of the catacombs,”