Question

Read the excerpt from "The Fall of the House of Usher."

Answer 1

Answer:

The effect of parallelism in this excerpt is:

3. It emphasizes Usher's psychological fixation.

Explanation:

"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a horror short story by Edgar Allan Poe. The narrator is summoned by his friend to keep him company. Usher, the friend, lives in a strangely gloomy house. In addition, his sister has an uncommon disease which makes her catatonic, looking dead when she is in fact alive. As the narrator tries everything he can to cheer his friend up, he realizes Usher has a fixation that is making him ill, bordering on crazy. Especially after the sister supposedly dies and they place her in the tombs under the house, Usher keeps on hearing noises around the house. He believes those noises come from his sister. He thinks they've buried her alive and she is now trying to escape. Such thought tortures him constantly, repeatedly, as the parallelism shows:

Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart?