Poe's short story "The Fall of the House of Usher" effectively conveys a unity of effect through the use of various narrative elements. The narrator, setting, and events surrounding the characters all contribute to an overall atmosphere of illness, death, and decay. Descriptions of the house and its inhabitants display physical symptoms of this condition. The story builds to the ultimate destruction of the house and the death of the Usher family, fulfilling the unity of effect established from the beginning.