Earthly Vs. Mythical, By Edgar Allan Poe

When writing “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe used the setting outside of the mansion to illustrate the theme of the fear of death. From the outset, the Rodrick Usher’s home is portrayed in a way that gives the reader a feeling of alarm. For example, the narrator mentions the house gives him a feeling of “insufferable gloom” (Usher 1). By pointing this out, the reader begins to feel on edge as the connotation of “gloom” is unwelcoming and distressing. The home is also said to have “vacant eye like windows” (Usher 1) which make the narrator

The Usher mansion is slowly deteriorating, just like Roderick Usher himself. The “sombre tapestries,” “ebon blackness,” and “phantasmagoric armorial trophies” did not just start showing in the house; these elements have had time to develop and is now represented as a never ending darkness, which is just like Roderick Usher’s mental illness. Not only does Poe create an image of the house, he also uses lucid details describing the Usher’s mansion and the rooms inside the home to show that Roderick’s mental illness has physically and mentally trapped him. Roderick is a gloomy and mysterious character who looks as if he is dead. Poe describes Roderick’s appearance as one to not easily be forgotten (Poe 152). In Roderick’s mind, he feels as if he has no escape from this illness, which terrifies him. His biggest fear is fear himself. The evil that has overcame his body will take a toll on his life and he is aware of it because he says “I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed no abhorrence of danger, except in it absolute effect-in terror” (Poe 153). As described in the story, the Usher house has rooms that create a somber life and with this creation, Poe is able to portray the kind of life that Roderick Usher is living and will live. Not only is this technique used in “The Fall of the House of

A concern of Roderick Usher is the waning health of his twin sister, Lady Madeline. Usher explains to his dear friend, the narrator, that she is the only surviving relative he has. He further explains that his sister’s health condition baffles any physician that has come to the house. After a few days of the narrator’s visit, Lady Madeline dies. Usher explains to the narrator that he wishes to preserve her body by placing her into the underground crypt of the house. I believe that Poe is trying to use symbolism in Lady Madeline’s death in relation to Roderick’s faltering mental stability. For example, Lady Madeline represents a part of Usher that he has lost; a part of him that has become so strange and frightening to him. When he and the narrator place Lady Madeline’s body into the crypt, it is a desperate act to help preserve a part of himself.

     One of the central themes underlying the short story, The Fall of the House of Usher, is that of the nature of the house. The way it is described and the way it is so mysterious. Another central theme about this story is the nature of the people that live in the house. They are portrayed very much in the same manner throughout the story. Thus, they have several similarities with each other. All of which are of a bad feeling, showing how bad things are for the people and the house. These similarities are very well laid out in the story and are, I believe, meant to be something to be considered when reading it.

Filled with a sense of dread by the sight of the house itself, the Narrator reunites with his old companion, who is suffering from a strange mental illness and whose sister, Madeline, is near to death due to a mysterious disease. The Narrator provides company to Usher while he paints and plays guitar, spending all his days inside, avoiding the sunlight and obsessing over the sentience of the non-living. When Madeline dies, Usher decides to bury her temporarily in one of his house's large vaults. A few days later, however, she emerges from her provisional tomb, killing her brother while the Narrator flees for his life. The House of Usher splits apart and collapses, wiping away the last remnants of the ancient family. Edgar’s inspiration for this story might have come from true events of the Usher House, located on Boston's Lewis Wharf. As that story goes, a sailor and the young wife of the older owner were caught and entombed in their trysting spot by her husband. When the Usher House was torn down in 1800, two bodies were found embraced in a cavity in the cellar (Neilson).

In the story, “The Fall of The House of Usher”, there are many mysterious happenings that go on throughout the story between the characters Roderick Usher and the narrator. Throughout the story, Edgar Allan Poe uses themes such as madness and insanity to connect the house back to Roderick Usher. In the “Fall of The House of Usher”, the narrator goes through many different experiences when arriving to the house. The narrator’s experiences start out as almost unnoticeable in the beginning, turn into bigger ones right before his eyes, and end up becoming problems that cause deterioration of the mind and the house before the narrator even decides to do anything helpful for Roderick and his mental illness. In “The Fall of The

The narrator comes to the House to aid his dying friend, Roderick Usher. As he arrives at the House he comes upon an “aura of vacancy and decay… creating a pathologically depressive mood” (Cook). The state of the House is daunting to the narrator – he describes it with such features as “bleak walls”, “eye-like windows”, “rank sedges”, “decayed trees”, and “an utter depression of the soul”. These images foreshadow a less than pleasant future for the narrator and his dear friend Roderick. Poe continues to foreshadow the narrators turn of events with a description of the House’s “dark” and “comfortless” furniture. The House becomes a living hell for the narrator as he watches Roderick’s condition evolve and struggles to understand the mystery tying unfortunate events together. However, as the narrator gradually becomes more enveloped in Roderick and the House’s malady, he seems to develop a malady of his own. While the narrator’s illness is less prominent than that of Roderick and his sister Lady Madeline, the sicknesses are one in the same.

In the story “ The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe, has an American romanticism with its characters. Edgar Allan Poe is considered a Dark Romanticism because of the way he writes his poems and short stories centered around the concept of evil human nature, darkness, and death. Roderick and Madeline Usher were said to be related during the middle of the story; they were twins. It explained how they were sick, Roderick had a mental disorder and Madeline was physically sick. As the narrator enters the desolate house, he finds both Roderick and his sister in a severe state of depression and they both appear sick like. The narrator tries to make Roderick feel better, but Roderick wouldn’t budge. Roderick thinks that the house is making him sick and making him to appear crazy.

In “The Fall of the House of Usher” the story starts with the narrator saying that he is overcome with a feeling of gloom upon first seeing the house. He compares the windows to vacant eyes. The narrator goes on to tell how the house appears to him but then tries to explain it away as his overactive imagination.

In the text “The Fall of the House of Usher” there are supernatural events throughout the short story. From the rapidly decaying house that is quite literally connected to the main character Roderick Usher, to the ghost of Roderick's twin sister Madeline. “House of Usher” -- an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion. This line gives us a hint from the title toward the supernatural link between the physical house collapsing and the metaphorical “fall” of the Usher Family. I believe Edgar Poe did this to evoke an uncanny feeling in the reader and to add to the sublime of the short story. This link between living and inanimate gives the story an extra gothic element. “There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. 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.” The supernatural element of Madeline “coming back from the dead” or being a ghost creates conflict within the plot and therefore leads to the inevitable fall of the Usher Family. I believe this ghostly figure struck fear into the reader creating a suspenseful follow up, allowing the imagination to take off and picture this supernatural occurrence. This was never an explained supernatural event. It was left up to the reader's imagination and their assumption as to what is real and what is a figment of the characters imagination. “There was a long and

“The Fall of the House of Usher” follows a similar symbolic storyline. Throughout the story, the narrator uncovers significant details regarding the mysterious childhood friend of his and many of the important elements are revealed. Specifically, Poe designed the plot in such a way that the Usher siblings represent two sides of the same individual; Madeline and Roderick as the body and the mind respectively (Miller par 32). Since the twins are the first in their family, it shows the separation from original unity (genetically) and foreshadows that the twins must die in order for the restoration of peace. The House of Usher also has a significant symbolic value in the story; it represents Roderick’s psychological state of mind and is described by the narrator as having disturbing realistic qualities (Poe 893). Nevertheless, toward the end of the story, the epitome of the symbolic nature of this story is revealed and is concluded by an epic turn of events. Madeline collapses on Roderick as the narrator rushes to leave the house; the siblings death at the end symbolize the destruction of the physical world as shown by Madeline and the destruction of the spiritual world as displayed by Roderick’s immediate death

Not to mention the Vitamin D deficiency, a perpetual gloomy and bleak ambiance is clearly beneficial to neither the mind, body, nor soul. However, the Ushers are doomed to such a dark environment in a house is so dilapidated and dreary that “The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within.” (3-4) These windows give a sense of sensory and social deprivation, as if it would be impossible to reach the outside world. In addition, the cheerless environment is made obvious from the first paragraph when the clouds are described as “oppressively low” (1) as the narrator journeys through “a singularly dreary tract of country.” (1) The lackluster location took a severe toll on the physical stability of Roderick and Madeleine, but the lack of friendly faces was the real deciding factor of their downfall.

From the narrators’ perspective, The House of Usher was “mansion of gloom” (Poe 4) that entrapped its occupants and in an “atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity—an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven” (Poe 6). There is no guessing as to what mood both Roderick and the narrator were in, granted the House of Usher only exhumed an aura of doom and gloom. The Fear in the heart Roderick along with his madness left nothing to the reader’s imagination. Similarly, but on a subtler level, the village folks on the day of the Lottery were filled with a feeling of uncertainty, even among the children who were freshly out of school for the summer season succumb to the fear of events to follow as “feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them” (Jackson 1). In both stories, we find characters in an environment they would rather not be in, but certain circumstances prevent them from leaving at will, clearly conflicted.

When the unnamed narrator of “The Fall of the House of Usher” first arrives at the Usher household, he refers to the building as being “melancholy” before adding that upon seeing the structure “a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit” (49). Through the narrator referring to the building as being “melancholy,” rather than simply saying that he feels “melancholy” looking at it, the house is personified by being ascribed human emotions. Whereas if he had said that he felt “melancholy” from looking at it, his explaining that the house makes him feel a “sense of insufferable gloom” would merely be an elaboration upon his own feelings upon seeing the house (49). However, because the “melancholy” is being attributed to the house itself and not to the narrator, what is being communicated is that because the house itself is “melancholy,” the narrator feels gloomy through a sense of empathy (49). The

The long family line has imprinted its aura onto the house, and in turn, the house conduces the inhabitants towards a predetermined lifestyle. The Usher family, as the narrator says, despite its age, has always been feeble, because it has never been able to generate an enduring branch. Just as the family, the house has a sturdy appearance, given by its endurance through time, but it is marked by decay and so are its surroundings: the crumbled stones, the trees and the spooky tarn all add to the oppressive, uncanny atmosphere. Just as the individual parts which shape the domain are marked by decomposition, so is each member of the family plagued by some form of disintegration.