The Fall Of The House Of Usher Essay

Poe has us question the reasons both for Roderick’s decision to contact the narrator in this time of need and the reason of the response that the narrator gave. While the author provides the obvious building blocks of the tale, he changes this standard form with a plot that is inexplicable, sudden, and full of unexpected disruptions. The Fall of the House of Usher begins without complete explanation of the narrator’s motives for arriving at the house of Usher, and this ambiguity sets the tone for a plot that continually blurs the real and the

Though he is not truly a frightening man, little things such as his ghostly appearance and various disabilities that prevent him from everyday life such as severe sensitivity to light make him as a person unnerving and slightly disturbing. Even the narrator’s understanding of Roderick and the home are shown to be similar when he recalls that “the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling” (267). Not only are there various nooks and crannies in the mansion, but the narrator also understands that there are many things about Roderick that are so personal that he will never be able to understand him completely. Poe uses the narrator to show the audience that making connections between living and non-living

“I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in an unruffled luster by the dwelling, and gazed down--but with a shudder even more thrilling than before--upon the remodelled and inverted images of the grey sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows” (Poe). In the exposition of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”, the narrator travels to the house of his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher, and in an attempt to rectify the rise of negative emotions, gazes at a small lake, at the reflection of the eerie house surrounded by dead trees. Like the narrator, who uses unorthodox methods to obtain a clearer image, Roderick Usher’s strange behavior, surrounding his twin sister and the forms of art that he partakes in, appear as madness, but actually reveal deep insight.

Roderick Usher sends his childhood friend a letter, crying for company and good memories. As his friend passes the dark tarn and nears the House of Usher, all that is seen is a land of the dark and decaying. The Usher family within “The Fall of the House of Usher,” have lived in the house for generations, a house at one time filled “by good angels, (Being a) radiant palace-reared its head.”

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 reader can have a sense of melancholy, fear, and depression as the narrator describes the circumstances in which he was summoned to the house. The reader can feel the melancholy, and mental state thru the owner of the house Roderick Usher, as he explains the illness that affected his sister. In times the narrator speaks as if Roderick was out of touch with reality, that he was lost in mourn, and despair. As the narrator tells us what Roderick says; “To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. “ I shall perish”, said he, “I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost; I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the though 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 its absolute effect—in terror. In this unnerved—in this pitiable 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, The Fall of the House of

The “House of Usher” draws parallels to Roderick’s condition, for both indicate fear and dullness. Upon entering the house, the narrator could immediately sense the “air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom [hanging] over and [pervading] all” (315). Such darkness is a key detail that explains how the house inflicts fear on the narrator. As a result, it is only fitting that Roderick’s condition originates from fear. The dreadful nature of the house is crucial, but its constantly changing state additionally embodies its ability to spread.

In The Fall Of The House of Usher, Poe explores challenging themes, the most prominent of which is the theme of identity. Throughout the story, the narrator tells us of his experiences with what is left of the Usher family at their estate. The theme of identity is clearly stated right at

     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.

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 “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Poe, an unnamed narrator is convened to a mansion that had a “sense of insufferable gloom” (poe) when seen. The man who summoned the narrator was a friend to who he had known as a child, Roderick Usher. Despite how the house gives him “an utter depression of the soul.” (poe ), he reunites with his boyhood friend. Roderick is experiencing exceptionally weird psychological disorder and his sister, Madeline is going to die on because of a mysterious infection.

In fact, we do not know which is the setting of the story. House of Usher shows a gothic side. Its surroundings are described by the impressions that the author has created with his own mind. The narrator shows that he is also very nervous because of the landscape in front of him. He defines the windows as “vacant-eye like windows” but he takes worse fright from its image reflected in the “black and lurid tarn” which lurks around and beneath it.

The deaths and sudden appearances and disappearances of characters in the story create a mystical and shimmering mood that aims to capture the attention of the audience by making them utterly interested in the story. Dark and shady words have been widely employed in the text, which symbolically adds to the vibe one gets after reading the text. Often than not, the author has presented several strange and sinister events in the story all of which draw to the gothic atmosphere he has been widely accredited for in his collection (Timmerman and John, 163). However, it is the story The Fall of the House of Usher that succinctly gives

Roderick is getting worse each day. The text states, “His countenance was, as usual, cadaverously wan --but, moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes-- an evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanour” (Poe 10). The narrator is getting more worried about Roderick and isn’t doing too well himself. This is making the narrator similar to Roderick and his disease. Poe is trying to create a setting inside the reader’s brain.

The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe was filled with noteworthy ideas. One of the prominent ideas in this story is the title of the story itself, “The Fall of the House of Usher.” The title forebodes that at some point in the story a house, whether metaphorical or realistic, will fall. Poe establishes this at the end of the story when “the mighty walls” are “rushing asunder” meaning the house has finally broken down (90, 91). The title is a colossal part in establishing the basis of the story.