Literary Analysis On 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 he runs away from the crumbling building, he steps into the brightness of the day, leaving behind all the gloom and death that surrounded the Usher family (Poe). This shows how the story isn't just about death and darkness, it's also about rebirth and starting over. Poe uses the structure of the house and its deeper meanings to talk about how life can come from death, and how things can change for the better, even after the darkest times. The Fall of the House of Usher explores the concept of death through the crumbling mansion and mentally struggling

Mr. Usher represents the mind to her body and suffers from the mental counterpart of his physical illness, Mr. Usher inability to distinguish fantasy from reality resembles his sister’s physical weakness. The narrator knows little about the house of usher and is to visit the mansion in many years. “ I had been passing alone, on horseback...” (1) This basically saying how it has been many years that they haven’t seen the house and it looks very old and dull,

The story of “The Fall of the House of Usher by Edger Allan Poe shows that the narrator is having a nervous break down. The story is about the narrator going to the usher house do to the fact that his childhood friend Roderick wrote him to come help him and his sister who is mentally ill. Through the story Roderick shows how insane he is and his sister, the ushers ultimatally die and the house crumbles to the ground. The story had a disturbing and dark presents through out it just like the narrator’s mind. One might make the inference that the narrator is actually narrating what is happing in his mind and having a nervous break down. The narrator is projecting his symptoms on the imaginary Usher family.

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.

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).

Poe's gothic tale has inspired generations of readers with his unique style of rich detail and sheer horror. In, “The Fall of the House of Usher” one finds the house mysteriously connected with its inhabitants. As they slowly fall into a state of decay, both mental and physical, so also does its structure weaken, eventually collapsing into the tarn in which it was standing, as its tenants fall prey to the strain of body and mind. Without them, the house cannot stand.

It seems that auditory hallucinations affect both Usher and the narrator. Then Roderick becomes unnerved and confesses that he heard feeble movements in his twin sister’s coffin – meaning that they buried her alive – and yet did not dare to say anything. But why didn’t he? It might be argued that Roderick and Madeline had an incestuous relationship and Usher was either afraid that his sister (who now suddenly can talk and move) would tell, or because he was tormented by the guilt of having engaged in such a relationship and wanted to bury it — literally. This statement may seem far-fetched but that could explain why “the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain”, and Madeline and Roderick’s health problems in

All these things put together and a few others help to connect the house to Roderick and Lady Madeline. When the narrator first sees Roderick after a long period of time, he thinks that he resembles that of a corpse. Then Roderick tells him the reason for his appearance, why he looks so bad. He said he had an illness that was a “morbid acuteness of the senses.” The word morbid, when used anywhere, has very strong meaning and it is of the negative type. He uses the word tortured when he is describing his eyesight and says that even the slightest sound is almost unbearable. Thinking about having all of these symptoms put together is a very bad picture to paint in your mind. His condition, in this case, is very comparable to that of the condition of the house.

The Fall Of the House Of Usher is a short story written by Edgar Allen Poe in 1839. The short story is complexly written, with challenging themes such as identity and fear. Poe utilises many elements of the Gothic Tradition such as setting and supernatural elements to create a more mysterious story, and uses language to his advantage, employing adjective filled descriptions of literal elements that also serve as metaphors for other parts of the story.

When the narrator first lays eyes upon Roderick he is described as looking sickly with a, “ghastly pallor of the skin, and the miraculous luster of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me” (317). The narrator goes on to say he finds his old acquaintance barely recognizable and he feels a feeling, “half of pity, half of awe” (317). These same mixed emotions can be compared to how he feels looking out at the old disheveled house, just like Roderick, isn’t as well looking as it used to be, the house has seen better years. After the narrator meets and greets his old friend, Roderick Usher, it is revealed that he is suffering from a form of,

The downfalls of Roderick and the narrator juxtapose in order to emphasize the House’s true reign over the characters. The House began haunting the narrator from the moment he first viewed it. Yet it seems only to disturb him in subtle ways whereas Roderick, a resident of the House, seems to be degenerating at a pace similar to it. Just as the

The fall of the house of Usher clearly reflect us the meaning behind the death of Roderick and Madeline. This story is about some twins, Roderick and Madeline, that were living on the house of their ancestors but the house was in bad conditions, so at the final after the twins died, because they were mentally and physically sick, the house fall down, as you may noticed about this story we can conclude in what way does The fall of the house of Usher connect to the decay of the family. The fall of the house of Usher connect to the family in three important ways: the deterioration of the house, the sickness, and the fall of the house. The deterioration of the house.

Roderick suffers from a nervous illness which manifests itself both in his appearance and his temper. We soon find out that his sister, Madeline, is also wasting away and has an unknown sickness, the symptoms of which include cataleptic attacks. Soon after, Madeline dies and Roderick entombs her in a vault placed where there once had been a donjon-keep, with the narrator’s willing aid. He is quick to do so and does not take into consideration the fact that she might actually be still alive, which, as we will find out, is really the case.

Hence, Poe appropriates a setting that seems to contaminate the characters. Just as the atmosphere and landscape seem translated into the characters, the house, as another primary feature of setting, functions as a symbol for the Usher family. The narrator even mentions initially that “House of Usher” had come to represent both family and home. Therefore, the house itself can be seen as an embodiment of the family. Poe emphasizes this symbolism by personifying the house, providing it with the anatomy of humans: “eye-like windows” and clothing: a “veil.” Moreover, the house is deteriorating just as the family is. The Ushers, Roderick and his sister Madeline, have no relatives, only themselves, and both are suffering with unusual illness. Finally, after Roderick and Madeline die, likewise the house completely breaks apart, characterizing the fate of the family.