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Allegory Of The House Of Usher Essay

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Poe, like Hawthorne, sees the effects of solitude as detrimental to human goodness, in particular, human reason. He uses allegorical symbolism, especially with regards to the house itself, and nature in and around the house, to tell this tale of the individual’s self-destruction. First and foremost, The house of Usher, including the twins, represents a single consciousness, one individual who has suffered the consequences of living alone in nature for too long. This is presented in the way the house is described with human qualities. It is said to have “vacant eye-like windows” just like a human face. Furthermore, the narrator points out “a few white trunks of decayed trees” and how they excite “an utter depression of the soul” within him. These features point out the two important allegories of the tale: the house as the individual, and the evil power that nature has over this individual. An important symbol of this evil is that of the Tarn, for it acts as a mirror, when “gazed down [..] upon [the narrator sees] the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.” The idea of the mirror is an important theme with Poe, and in this case represents nature as outside the individual, like a void ready to eat the …show more content…

He describes the depressing effect the walls have on him as if his brain is suffocated looking upon the confines of its skull. Clearly, having never left the house seems to be the source of his ailment. Alternately, he highlights the tarn as another source of his troubles, for he understands his dilemma as framed by the nature that will destroy him from within, and without. In this sense, Roderick is quite aware of the dangers that nature present to him in his solitude, however, we have yet to broach the most disturbing pervasion of nature in this tale—Roderick’s twin

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