Beginning of Essay
Fear, terror and suspense are the most vivid emotions created by Poe's stories and by Hitchcock's films. Several themes are common to both: the madness that exists in the world, the paranoia caused by isolation which guides people's actions, the conflict between ....

Middle of Essay
.... He suffers from schizophrenia — he acts as both himself and his dead mother. Roderick Usher appears strange from the beginning, almost ghost-like, with his "cadaverousness of complexion" — however, he is not a murderer. He suffers from a mental disorder which makes him obsessed with fear: fear of the past, of the house, of the dead. He finally dies, "victim to the terrors he had anticipated." The way in which madness is projected in both stories is quite similar as well. The short story and the movie both take place in a dark and gloomy house, a "ghostly house" — "a mansion of doom," writes Poe. In both houses there is the pres ....