Characterization is at the heart of the story, for it is the people in a story a reader loves or hates. Characters can be described by what they say and do themselves and by what others say about them. The protagonist is the mover in the story and the action surrounds her. The antagonist is the character who gets in the protagonist's way and stalls her progress. Characters can be dynamic or flat. Dynamic characters show growth and change throughout the story. In "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe, protagonist Roderick Usher is trying to keep his sister alive. She is going mad and serves as the antagonist. The house also is considered an antagonist because it eventually falls and kills the family line of Ushers.
The plot is the action of a story, the stepping stones of events leading to the climax or turning point. After the climax, the action winds down and leads to the resolution. Integral to the plot is the conflict. Conflict types include person vs. self, person vs. person, person vs. nature or person vs. fate, depending on what the protagonist is grappling with. In Poe's classic tale, the narrator returns to the boyhood home of his friend Roderick Usher, which is falling apart around him. Roderick reads, plays guitar and paints while his sister Madeline gets sicker and sicker. The narrator helps his friend Roderick deal with his twin's mysterious disease and eventual death. When the men bury her, she comes back to life and kills her brother while the house falls down around them. The conflict is considered person vs. person because Madeline kills her twin, and person vs. fate because the Ushers could not outrun their demise.
The setting of a story encompasses the time, place and atmosphere. The house of Usher is a dilapidated house that falls apart even as its inhabitants lose their minds and die. The story takes place in a past time when family burials were common. The predominant element of the setting is the dark, foreboding atmosphere Poe creates through the house and the mental instability of the characters. He writes, "The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves." From the moment the narrator drives up to the house, the sense of doom welcomes him.
Several other elements of fiction affect the story. Theme is the lesson learned about life after reading a story. This story, as many of Poe's do, deals with the themes of mortality, madness and fear. The twins both go mad, and the fear of Roderick certainly is widespread. Next, point of view is the distinction of who is telling the story. Short stories usually are told in first-person, with someone who is inside the story, or third-person, featuring someone who is on the outside. This story features first-person point of view, with a narrator who is not part of the Usher family but who finds himself embroiled in the action. Perhaps because he is not related, or perhaps because the story is so bizarre, he explains that telling the whole of it is not possible. He says, "I lack words to express the full extent, or the earnest abandon of his persuasion." Finally, tone is the author's attitude about what he is writing about. Poe's tone obviously is very serious, and almost reverent about the course of events.