Mood is the prevailing feeling or emotion of a literary work. An author's choice of words is crucial to the mood that is created in his or her work. The author Edgar Allan Poe uses ornate diction to create a dark and morose mood in his stories "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Masque of the Red Death," and "The Tell Tale Heart".
In "The Fall of the House of Usher" Poe uses a great deal of ornate language to describe the setting of the story. He creates an extremely gloomy mood that he reader can actually begin to feel. The setting is described as "During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens"(160). Poe doesn't just say that the story takes place on an autumn day or that the clouds are hanging low. He describes the autumn day as "dull, dark, and soundless" and the clouds as "oppressively low." This gives the reader the picture of a dark autumn day where the clouds are so low that the reader can actually feel them and the only noise that can be heard is that of their self. This sets the whole mood for the rest of the story.
Poe uses elaborate words in "The Masque of Red Death," to repeatedly emphasize death. The seventh room of the mansion isn't described as just a black room with red windows. It is described as a black chamber with "the effect of the firelight that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes that was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all" (177). Using "blood-tinted" to describe the windows, "extremely ghastly" to describe the room, and describing the actions of the guests who went near the room a sense of death and morose mood is created. Near the end of the story, when the costumed figure that is supposed to be death starts to move towards Prince Prospero, the description of his movement creates a feeling of anxiety.
