Symbolism In The Fall Of The House Of Usher

The fracturing and collapse of the house acts as a symbol for the end of the Usher family. The escape from the mansion acts as a symbol of rebirth. Examining the Fall of the House of Usher through the Structural/Archetypal Lens

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.

In comparison to the family, when he first witnesses Roderick, Poe portrays Roderick to be seemingly normal, vivacious and genuine. But, it is only until the narrator takes a closer look, that Roderick is obviously crumbling internally. Madeline, Roderick’s sister, is also crumbling physically by her unknown sickness and being physically weak. After her supposed death later in the novel, Roderick had a look of wanness. For example, Poe wrote, “No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones” (Poe 113). What I took from this quote is; the individual stones may likely be a representation of each member of the Usher family. When Poe decided to include this as a part of the story; the stones, that are crumbling could be a reference to the family dying. But, Poe mentions a key indication that the masonry has not yet fallen (113), this is due to the fact that the two remaining Usher’s; Roderick and Madeline, have not died.

Men, of course, were seen as the mind and intellect of the household, and the one qualified to receive an education and work in the outside world. A woman’s mental ability was regarded as essentially limited to superficial sensing, while a man would have been seen as the one responsible for complex thought and reflection in a household. In a way, Madeline’s suppression by her twin brother and the way she generally presents herself reflects this. Madeline does not speak, and simply obeys the orders of everyone else in the house. Roderick, on the other hand, always has the final word. This is exemplified once again the Roderick’s live burial of Madeline, in which Madeline could not do anything to change her fate.

Roderick’s illness is unmistakably bad, but his fear of his sister dying frightens him more than his own death. Roderick and Madeline have an obviously close bond, but the narrator soon realizes “the evidently approaching dissolution - of a tenderly

While the narrator is there, he experiences strange noises and occurrences. “The Fall of The House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe show’s that fear can take over people’s life. Firstly, there are multiple symbols in “The Fall of The House of Usher”. The narrator says, “...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” (Poe 476).

After evaluating the work of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, he utilizes with imagery to build up the feeling of terror. First of all, the passage is about an ill man, Roderick Usher, who invites his old friend of his to come meet him. In this passage both him and his sister, Madeline Usher, are the last remaining of the Usher race and is diagnosed with an unnatural illness. The narrator begins to feel terror with the supernatural things going on in the house of Usher and the illness of the Ushers. Although the narrator feels the sense of terror from the moment he entered the house, through the use of imagery, Poe is able to bring emotion to the reader. Throughout the passage, the author continues to build up the sense of terror by asserting the image and setting of both the passage and the atmosphere. For instance, he starts the passage by stating “a dull, dark, and a soundless day...clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens” (Poe 194). In relation to the previous quote, the quote illustrates the image of the atmosphere and the setting of the story. In particular, because Poe expresses the sense of terror by describing the atmosphere as dark, quiet, and gloomy, the reader can get an image of the surroundings and get the feeling of the darkness and horror. In addition, according to Poe, during the first glimpse of the house of Usher, the narrator describes it as gloomy and unpleasant. In particular, Poe states “the shades of the evening drew on… a sense of insufferable gloom” (Poe 194). Additionally, the description of the house adds on to the sense of terror that Poe established in the beginning of the story. Based on the past two quotes stated by the author, the reader can begin to picture a dark and dull day with a gloomy house adding on to the darkness. Lastly, in regards to Edgar Allan Poe, the house of Usher is

The house symbolizes this because it constantly changes throughout the story at first it has just one crack, but it seems to have a solid foundation. He first noticed the crack when he comes upon the house to visit his friends he sees it, but doesn't think it would have an effect on the large house. It’s as if the house was just waiting for the right moment to show its true foundation that it was more than just a tiny crack. Notice throughout the story the house gradually degenerates just as the name “Usher” did in the end. The crack started out as a small problem, but at the end it came falling down just like Madeline and Roderick started out as the last two left, which was a small problem, but she was sick and that made it a bigger problem then they both died leading to the end of the “Usher” name; the name and house both ended all in one

Faithful to the principles of the author, the first detailed words of description of the setting announce the decadent character of the composition- “All the main lines of action are supported by a systematic elaboration of detail” (Robinson, 79). The Fall of the House of Usher begins with the description of the place where all the facts of the story will develop: “It was a dark and soundless day near the end of the year, and clouds were hanging low in the heavens… through country with little life or beauty; and in the early evening I came within view of the House of Usher” (Poe, 22). At exterior levels, the presence of a crack crosses the whole structure of the house: “a crack making its way from the top down the wall until it became lost in the dark waters of the lake.” (Poe, 23). The dark aspect is present in the obscure interiors of the house: “Dark covering hung upon the walls. The many chairs and tables had been used for a long,

The theme in "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allen Poe is that Poe argues marrying too closely to the family line can bring misfortunes. Historically, aristocratic families intermarried with relatives too closely to continue their family tree. The narrator mentions that "the entire family lay in the direct line of descent and had always with very trifling and very important variation, so lain" (Poe 2). From this comment, Poe is suggesting that there might have been marriages between relatives. As such, the Usher family has had numerous misfortunes, such as not setting out "an enduring branch" (2), and Roderick and Madeline being diagnosed with unusual mental disorders.

In “Fall of the House of Usher”, Edgar Allan Poe uses parallels between Roderick Usher and the House to illustrate how one affects the other. The House particularly compares to the physical appearance with Roderick Usher. To illustrate, Rodericks physical appearance is crumbling, much like the Houses “crumbling condition of the individual stones” (Poe 323). With human like qualities, the Houses “vacant eyelike windows” are a direct parallel to Rodericks “large eye, liquid and luminous” (Poe 322-324). In other words, the Usher family is so connected to their home that Roderick begins to physically look like the worn down, dark and mysterious House that is his abode. Not only does the House have similar physical parallels, but Rodericks

Poe’s use of foreshadowing, the act of providing hints of future actions, in “The Fall of the House of Usher” foretells the “death” of Madeline Usher, along with her grandiose return. “She succumbed (as her brother told me at night with inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the destroyer”. The "destroyer" here is Roderick Usher, referring to the end of the story, when he buries his sister alive. Poe uses foreshadowing again when Roderick “stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight, in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls of the building”. By “preserving” Madeline’s corpse, Roderick leads the audience, as well as the narrator, to believe that she is still alive, thus giving her the ability to “rise from the dead”.

To showcase how Roderick and Madeline see the world, the setting of the house is very strange and borderline fiction. The narrator often asks themselves if this is a dream, because of all he is seeing around him and how strange and out of reality the House of Usher is. The home is straight out of one’s nightmare and this helps the reader visualizes furthers the house as a symbol to see just how deeply disturbed, dark, and morbid the Ushers are. Then, the isolated nature of the house describes how lonely, disconnected, and sheltered the Usher family is. The strange ambiance of the setting helps the reader see, that through the broken lens of the Ushers, just how lonely they are. Roderick, not able to have offspring, goes insane, thus leaving him to feel alone cause his rampage of burying his sister alive. The disconnect and brainwashing the Ushers went through not only hurts them but kills the family in the end. Only having relationships within the family is what leads to the demise of the beautiful mansion which is described by the narrator in his youth, and is also the gloomy palace we see in the story. Without caring for the house because of the incapable family members, helps the reader understand and see how greatly mental illness and distancing have affected the storyline.

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.

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.