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House Of Usher Manipulation

Decent Essays

The Fall of the House of Usher is a story written by Poe that demonstrates the ability for the rational mind to rapidly deteriorate upon influence, as it represents the fall of reasoning. The narrator’s mind begins to lack the ability to make sense of the strange things occurring in the house, and by the end he has lost his mind, but manages to escape the brink of mental insanity upon the collapse of the House of Usher. In the beginning, the narrator shows up to the house upon request from one of his childhood friends, Roderick Usher. Immediately he takes note of the strange phantasmic aura the house gives off, and the peculiarities of Usher and his sister/wife. Throughout the story, he notes the feeling of agitation given off by his friend, …show more content…

His complexion has become extremely pale and sunken in, resembling that of a corpse. Sitting down to speak with him, Roderick Usher explains his mental state and how the house has affected him, saying, “I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul… 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, 27) This foreshadows the eventual death of Usher, and suggests that the narrator too will suffer from the “phantasm” that lingers. The fear that has engulfed Usher soon begins to swallow the narrator as well, as he correlates the agitation Usher experiences to that of his …show more content…

In addition to the eerie happenings within the house contributing to the insanity of both the narrator and Usher, the phantasm of Madeline and the daily readings of Gothic literature begin to rapidly submerge the narrator in doubtful hallucinations and the questionability of his own sanity. Thus, The Fall of the House of Usher is a story that represents how the mind under influence performs, and how reason no longer becomes a mental aspect once the mental state begins to see things that may or may not be

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