Fear In The Fall Of The House Of Usher

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

As the story progresses, the narrator also questions the unique relationship Roderick and his sister Madeline experience and how they participate in an immoral connection which is modern day incest. Furthermore, the insanity is present in Roderick when he expresses his desire for burying his dead sister in a tomb which is located under the house. This is also a direct connection for Poe between the title “The Fall of the House of Usher” and Roderick’s depleting sense of sanity. As described earlier, the external structure is starting to decay which is a direct link to Roderick’s mental capacity and the burial of his sister, who is believed to be dead, is a decaying of the internal structure due to the location of the tomb. “The brother had been led to his resolutions (so he told me) by consideration of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men” (Poe 1123). Here the narrator is commenting on the downward spiral he is observing in Roderick as the story progresses because he believes that the doctors that were unable to cure her sickness would inevitably dig up the body of Madeline and uses it for scientific research. As the story comes to a conclusion, the narrator petitions to Roderick that he has been hearing noises. Roderick exclaims that he had been hearing the noises that were being described for “many hours, many days” (Poe 1127). As the noises drew closer, both

The Fall Of The House of Usher is a terrifying tale of the demise of the Usher family, whose inevitable doom is mirrored in the diseased and evil aura of the house and grounds. Poe uses elements of the gothic tale to create an atmosphere of terror. The decaying house is a metaphor for Roderick Usher’s mind, as well as his family line. The dreary landscape also reflects his personality. Poe also uses play on words to engage the reader to make predictions, or provide information. Poe has also set the story up to be intentionally ambiguous so that the reader is continually suspended between the real and the fantastic.

Most times, anything abnormal or odd tend to be pushed under the rug. Edgar Allan Poe subtly brings attention to topics the are typically ignored. E. A. Poe had far from a perfect childhood. His father left when he was young and his mother died when he was three. Poe also seemed to have a lonely childhood after his parents were gone. He was separated from his relatives and didn’t appear to have many friends. He attended the army and after went into West Point. His academics there were well but he was eventually kicked out because of poor handlings of his duties. Before Poe died, he struggled with depression and a drinking problem. Some believe Poe’s tragic lifetime was the inspiration for some of his stories. Such as, “The Fall of the House of Usher”. A possible theory about this story is that Roderick and the Narrator were one in the same. This essay will discuss the possibility of them being the same through plot, characterization, and personification.

Fear is a feeling that most have experienced at least once in their lives. Despite the negative connotation often attached to the word “fear”, many people find themselves seeking the the thrill an adrenaline rush, caused by fear, gives them. This causes many “safe” ways to experience fear (reading a Gothic book, watching a horror movie, or even telling a scary story at a sleepover) to be popular. The short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher” clearly dictates the fundamentals of what causes the allure of fear, unexplainable or unnatural phenomenons and sudden changes that leave the subject hanging.

"'The Haunted Palace' provides another artistic image. The work precisely traces the devolution of the House of Usher from a palace governed in orderly fashion by 'Thought's Dominion' to a den of disorder in which demons flicker about like bats--except that these demons are in Usher's mind" (Timmerman 5). These demons are helping the house stay connected to the Usher's and is also responsible for the insanity of them. These demons inside Roderick's brain are giving him his heightened senses. They also connect Roderick to the supernatural world and which in turn connects him to the

Writer Edgar Allan Poe did an excellent job of exhibiting fear in his works. In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the title character Usher experiences a series of events corresponding with the fear he experiences in the story. He even says ”In this unnerved, in this potable, condition I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR (Poe 18).”Usher believes the house is making him suffer these delusions. He believes the house is going to kill him and is sensitive to sounds, colors, and elements like that. The narrator also experiences delusions. He sees Usher’s dead sister floating and watches her fall over and kill him. He also sees the house fall apart from the crack in the center and go in the river. It even states “The radiance was that of full, setting, and bloodred moon, which now shone vividly through that once barely discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the

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

Another theme that Poe explores in The Fall Of The House Of Usher is fear. It is fear that drives the story, fear that traps the narrator, and eventually fear that kills Roderick Usher. Poe foreshadows the paradox of Roderick’s fear early in the story: “There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition…is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis.” Roderick Usher is quoted as saying “I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect--in terror." This means that he is not afraid of death, but of fear itself. And it is this fear of fear that eventually leads to his death, when Madeline ‘returns from the dead’ and scares him to death.

Edgar Allan Poe short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” begins without a valid explanation of the narrator’s motives for arriving at the house of his childhood friend Roderick Usher. Starting the story with this mystery and unclearness sets the tone for a plot that compares the real world and the supernatural. The narrator is trapped in the way of behaving of his friend Roderick. Even if the narrator wants to escape, he cannot until the house of Usher collapses completely. Characters are, in a certain way, trapped.

One of Roderick's fears was death. He was from a well-known and honored family, and he and his sister were the last of the long line of Usher descendants. His sister, Madeline, had been fighting a severe and long-continued illness for quite some time, which had added to much of Roderick's gloom. " Her decease, would leave him the last of the ancient race of the Ushers." Roderick seemed not only to fear the death of his sister and ultimately of himself, but also the uncertainty of the future. "I dread the events of the future, not only in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul."

The truth of the characters in the story is revealed by the nature of the environment surrounding them. One such striking feature is isolation where the audience is exposed to a household that rarely interacts with the rest of the world. Usher’s house is but just an isolation and in fact, it becomes unusual when Roderick invites the narrator to their home. Death and decay has also been widely used as a setting of the story which shows the prowess the author had in employing key aspects of gothic literature (Timmerman and John, 170-172). In fact, the narrator constantly refers to the house as a ‘mansion of gloom’ showing the extent of decay present in the environment.

The narrator had a friend named Rodrick Usher. His dear friend wrote him a letter to invite him to “The Fall of the House of Usher”. From the time the narrator enters the House of Usher, he felt so weird going inside. He seems as that it was a closed up placed. The entire story is setting within the borders of the melancholy rooms on a cruel day where every object and sound is diminished to the over refined and over developed sympathies of Roderick Usher.

The narrator describes Roderick, the master of the House of Usher such: “….I could not, even with effort, connect its Arabesque expression with an idea of simple humanity” hinting at the fact that Roderick in un-human. Roderick becomes depressed and starts to act in a possessed manner almost as if he were no longer entirely human but rather half-human and half something paranormal directing the reader to the un-human features that he possesses. At the end of this short story when the Usher estate is swallowed up by the tarn, which was previously described as sinister looking, implying that the tarn is a representation of the un-human aspects of Roderick and his family. Using various aspects of the background and plot Edgar Allen Poe directs the reader through the narration to the hints that Roderick is

Roderick Usher is a victim of circumstance. The House he has known his whole life seems to have turned against him. Poe