The Fall of the House of Usher Gloom and decay in Poes gothic parable

Table Of Content

• Character descriptions
• What to do with your old copies of Nat Geo? Here's one 'novel' idea.
• Fear
• The Fall of the House of Usher Gloom and decay in Poe’s gothic parable
• Popular pages: Poe’s Short Stories
• The Raven Poe's study on paranoia
• Be Tough on Dirt But Gentle on Your Body With the Best Soaps for Sensitive Skin

The narrator tells the readers the term “The House of Usher” does not only refer to the house but also the family dwelling in the house and the Usher bloodline. Moreover, the inexplicable diseases of the mind and body in Roderick Usher and Madeline Usher show the story belongs to the genre of Gothic or horror fiction. Doppelganger is the character double and portrays the doubling of the literary forms or inanimate structures. For example, the narrator observes that the mansion is a reflection in the shallow pool or tarn that joins the front of the house. The house is doubled through its image in the tarn; however, the image is upside down, which characterizes the relationship between Madeline and Roderick. Madeline appears to be suffering from the typical problems of nineteen-century women.

Character descriptions

The readers are left alone with the narrator as it is such a haunted place. Even though the narrator is the boyhood friend of Roderick, he does not know much about him – even he does not know the basic fact about him that he has a twin sister. Poe makes the readers ponder on why Roderick contacts the narrator in his state of need and the persistence of the response of the narrator. He is a bookish and intellectual man while his sister is sick and bedridden.

What to do with your old copies of Nat Geo? Here's one 'novel' idea.

The House of Usher is the place or mansion that the narrator visits and the main action of the story occur. The house of Usher falls at the end of the story into the pool of water situated before the house. The small crack that the narrator sees when he enters the house foreshadows the fall of the house. Since from the beginning of the story, the readers see that there is something wrong with the house, and certainly, the fissure/crack splits the house and destroys it.

Fear

Moreover, there is also an inverted dichotomy between Roderick Usher and Madeline Usher. Some scholars and critics argue that the character of Madeline does not exist at all. They have reduced her to the shared figment of the imagination of the narrator and Roderick.

Madeline is buried before she has actually died because her similarity to Roderick is like a coffin that holds her identity. Madeline also suffers from problems typical for women in -nineteenth--century literature. She invests all of her identity in her body, whereas Roderick possesses the powers of intellect. In spite of this disadvantage, Madeline possesses the power in the story, almost superhuman at times, as when she breaks out of her tomb.

As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the potency of a spell—the huge antique panels to which the speaker pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust—but then without those doors there did stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. His countenance was, as usual, cadaverously wan—but, moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes—an evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanour. In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence—an inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy—an excessive nervous agitation. The short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” shows a split-personality disorder in a dramatized way. The tale explores the various aspects of identity and the means through which these aspects could possibly be fractioned.

Madness

Within a few hours of the narrator’s arrival, Roderick begins to share some of his theories about his family. Much to the narrator’s surprise, Roderick claims that the Usher mansion is sentient and that it exercises some degree of control over its inhabitants. He declares that his illness is the product of “a constitutional and a family evil.” (The narrator later dismisses this as a cognitive symptom of Roderick’s “nervous affection.”) Roderick also reveals that Madeline, his twin sister and sole companion in the house, is gravely ill. According to Roderick, Madeline suffers from a cataleptic disease that has gradually limited her mobility. As Roderick talks about his sister’s illness, the narrator sees her pass through a distant part of the house. The narrator is mysteriously trapped by the lure of Roderick’s attraction, and he cannot escape until the house of Usher collapses completely.

The Fall of the House of Usher Ending Explained - TIME

The Fall of the House of Usher Ending Explained.

Posted: Thu, 12 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms, and the general manner of the narration had their weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odours of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy—a mere nervous affection, he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms and the general manner of the narration had their weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror. The decayed appearance of his friend particularly strikes the narrator, but not only.

Be Tough on Dirt But Gentle on Your Body With the Best Soaps for Sensitive Skin

It was the work of the rushing gust—but then without those doors there did stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold—then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated. His countenance was, as usual, cadaverously wan—but, moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes—an evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanor.

The night of the storm, Roderick comes tothe narrator’s room in a state of hysteria and shows him the glowing atmosphereemanating from the house and the grounds. When the narrator begins to read astory to calm him, Roderick sits in a chair and mumbles. In his mumblings hereveals that he has been hearing scrapings from Madeline’s vault all week, andhe fears he buried her alive. The prospect of burying Madeline prematurelyfills him with guilt, contributing to his descent into madness. All ofRoderick’s worst fears are confirmed when Madeline returns and collapses onhim, killing them both. The house sinks into the tarn, forever burying the lastof the Usher line.

It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eve, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.

It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of his malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy--a mere nervous affection, he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off.

A storm rages outside, and despite efforts to reason withhimself, he shakes with terror. He paces around the room, and Roderick entersin a state of restrained hysteria. The storm intensifies, and objects in theroom glow with unnatural light from the mist that surrounds the mansion. Usher moves hischair to face the door, murmuring under his breath while the narrator reads tohim.

Here is the genesis of this type of story, created almost one hundred and fifty years ago in plain, no-nonsense America, a new nation not even sixty years old. Whether the reader is trapped by the house or by its inhabitants is unclear. Poe uses the term house to describe both the physical structure and the family. On the one hand, the house itself appears to be actually sentient, just as Roderick claims.

Vampires had to be dealt with harshly; thus, this accounts for the difficulty Lady Madeline encounters in escaping from her entombment. In this view, the final embrace must be seen in terms of the Lady Madeline, a vampire, falling upon her brother's throat and sucking the last drop of blood from him. For some of the widely differing interpretations, the reader should consult the volume Twentieth-Century Interpretations of Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher." One key to the story is, of course, the name of the main character. Thus, the narrator is ushered into the house by a bizarre-looking servant, and he is then ushered into Roderick Usher's private apartment and into his private thoughts.