FREE ESSAY ON FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER

FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER

The Fall of the House of Usher 
Edgar Allan Poe wrote, "The Fall of the House of Usher", using characterization, and
imagery to depict fear, terror, and darkness on the human mind. Roderick and his twin
sister, Madeline, are the last of the all time-honored House of Usher (Jacobs and
Roberts, pg. 462). They are both suffering from rather strange illnesses, which may be
attributed to the intermarriage of the family. Roderick suffers from "a morbid acuteness
of the senses"( Jacobs and Roberts, pg. 464), while Madeline's illness is characterized
by " a settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent all though
transient affections of a partly cataleptical character"(Jacobs and Roberts, pg. 465)
which caused her to lose consciousness and feeling. The body would then assume a
deathlike rigidity. Roderick believes the house is controlling his condition. He calls on
the narrator, a boyhood friend, in a last ditch effort to cheer his life up by giving him
someone to communicate with. The narrator arrives to a house of gloom and darkness with
decaying furniture. He immediately is afraid for his life and wonders how his friend can
live in a house of such darkness. Several days pass and it is filled with art
discussions, guitar playing, and literature reading, all trying to keep Roderick's mind
busy (Jacobs and Roberts, pg. 465). The narrator and Roderick prematurely unconfined
Madeline in a vault in hopes to alleviate his metal condition. She is either dead, in a
coma, or a vampire; Poe allows the reader to make his own assumption. She is possibly a
vampire because they bolt down the coffin hoping she will not escape. As some days pass
his mental condition worsens possibly related to the fear and terror of the noises coming
from the vault. The narrator is unaware if the noises are coming from the coffin, but he
believes they are all throughout the house. As they are reading literature in the study,
there is a loud knock at the door, it is Madeline at the door, embodied in blood from
scratching her way out of the coffin. The narrator realizes they buried her alive and
looks to Roderick for answers. Roderick, terrified, is unable to look at Madeline,
realizing that death has come for him. Madeline proceeds to walk towards Roderick and
falls on him, the reader assumes that she begins to eat him but the narrator flees in
fear of death. "A gust of wind blew the doors, and there did stand the enshrouded figure
of the lady Madeline...There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some
bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained
trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold, then with a low moaning cry, fell
heavily inward upon...her brother, and in her violent and now final death agonies, bore
him to the floor a corpse..." "Suddenly the wrath of the storm increased, and the mansion
began to shake and crumble. The friend frantically fled from the chamber and from out of
that mansion. Only once did he turn to glance back, when his attention was arrested by a
wild light..."The radiance was that of the full setting...blood red moon, which now show
vividly through that once barely discernible fissure..." " There was a loud explosion,
and the walls of the mansion came crashing down. Deep and dank tarn.. closed sullenly and
silently of over the fragments of the House of Usher. Poe introduces three characters:
Lady Madeline, Roderick Usher, and the narrator, whose name is never give. Lady Madeline,
twin sister of Roderick Usher, does not speak one word throughout the story. In fact, she
is absent from most of the story, and she and the narrator do not stay together in the
same room. At the narrator's arrival, she takes to her bed and galls into a catatonic
state. He helps bury her and put her away in a vault, but when she reappears, he flees.
Poe seems to present her as a ghostlike figure. Before she was buried, she roamed around
the house quietly not noticing anything. According to the narrator, Lady Madeline "passed
slowly through a remote portion of the apartment, and without having noticed his
presence, disappeared"(668). Overall Madeline Usher appears to be completely overcome by
mental disorder. Roderick Usher, the head of the house, is an educated man. He comes from
a rather wealthy family and owns a huge library. He had once been an attractive man and
"the character of his face had been at all time remarkable" (667). However, his
appearance deteriorated over time. Roderick had changed so much that "the narrator
doubted to whom he spoke"(667). Roderick's altered appearance probably was caused by his
insanity. The narrator notes various symptoms of insanity from Roderick's behaviors: "in
the manner of my friend I was struck with an incoherence...an inconsistency...habitual
trepidancy, and excessive nervous agitation. His action was alternately vivacious and
sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision to that of the lost
drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium"(667). These are "the features of the
mental disorder of the narrator's friend"(672). Roderick's state worsens throughout the
story. He becomes increasingly restless and unstable, especially after the burial of his
sister. He is not able to sleep and claims that he hears noises. All in all, he is an
unbalanced man trying to maintain an balance is his life. In contrast to Roderick, the
narrator appears to be a man of common sense. He seems to have a good heart in that he
comes to help a friend from his boyhood. He is also educated and analytical. He observes
Usher and concludes that his friend has a mental disorder. He looks for natural
scientific explanations for what Roderick senses. Criticizing Usher for his fantasies,
the narrator claims that Roderick is "enchained by certain superstitious impressions in
regard to thee dwelling which he tenanted"(668). The narrator's tone suggests that he
cannot understand Usher. However, he himself is superstitious. When he looks upon the
house, even before he met Roderick Usher, he observes "here can be no doubt that the
consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition" (665). The narrator also
automatically turns away from an unpleasant truth by reasoning or by focusing of
something else. When he and Roderick go down to bury Madeline, he speculates that she may
not be completely dead yet. Studying her face, he notes "the mockery of faint blush upon
the bosom and the face"(672). Yet, rather than mentioning his suspicion to his friend, he
remains silent and continues the burial. Furthermore, when Roderick claims that there are
ghosts in the house, the narrator feels fear too, but hi dismisses Roderick's and his own
fear by attributing them to a natural cause. He tells Roderick that "the appearances are
merely not uncommon"(674). In the end, this fear finally overcomes him. Although he had
been able to suppress his fears all along, Lady Madeline's reappearance runs him out of
the house. The three characters of course are unique people with distinct characters, but
they are tied together by the same type of "mental disorder". All of them suffer from
insanity, yet each responds differently. Lady Madeline seems to accept the fact that she
is insane and continues her life with that knowledge. Roderick Usher appears realize his
mental state and struggles very hard to hold on to his sanity. The narrator, who is
slowly but surely contraction the disease, wants to deny what he sees, hears, and senses.
He, in the end, escapes from the illness because he flees form the house. Poe uses the
imagery and the life-like characteristics of an otherwise decaying house as a device for
giving the house a supernatural atmosphere. For example, from the very beginning of the
story, the reader can tell that there is something unusual and almost supernatural about
the building. As the narrator approaches the home of his long-time friend, Roderick
Usher, he refers to the house as the "melancholy House of Usher"(664). Upon looking at
the building, he even describes the feeling he has as "a sense of insufferable gloom
pervading my spirit"(664). The windows appear to be "vacant," and "eye-like" and the
narrator goes on to observe the "rank sedges," and the "black and lurid tarn," in which
he sees the reflection of the house. He later says, "when I again uplifted my eyes to the
house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew a strange fancy..."(665). Although
the narrator tries to view everything he sees in a rational manner, upon seeing the house
and its surroundings, he has a heightened sense of superstition. He goes on to say that,
"about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and
their immediate vicinity" (666). This statement indicates that perhaps the house does
indeed have supernatural characteristic. The narrator observes the details of the house
once more and finds that the house has fungi growing all over it and the masonry of the
building is decaying. He says, " there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its
still perfect adaptation of parts, and the utterly porous, and evidently decayed
condition of the individual stones"(666). This observation suggests that perhaps
something supernatural is holding the house intact, otherwise it would have fallen to the
ground long ago. Upon entering the house, the narrator sees the inside of the house as
well as the odd behavior and personality of its inhabitants and is increasingly convinced
that the house has some supernatural effect on those who live there. For example, while
walking through the passages he is confused as to why familiar objects such as the
tapestries on the wall or the trophies fill him with a feeling of increased superstition
and he even describes the armorial trophies as "phantasmagoric" (666). Upon meeting
Usher, the narrator remarks, "...the physique of the gray walls and the turrets, and of
the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had at length, brought about upon the
morale of his existence" (668). The narrator is remarking on Usher's strange behavior in
the house. He later describes his own superstition late one night before going to bed, "I
endeavored to believe that mush, if not all of what I felt, was due to the phantasmagoric
influence of the gloomy furniture of the room..."(673). He also describes feelings of
alarm which he has as causeless, perhaps indicating that the house may in fact be having
some effect on him. Throughout the story, Poe's imagery of the house and the inanimate
objects almost life-like characteristics, he is giving the house a supernatural quality.
Fear is a basic element of human emotion that is caused by the expectation or realization
of danger. The existence of fear is essential for establishing our beliefs and the
actions we take throughout our lives. "The Fall of the House of Usher: revolves around
this realm of fear, and reveals the importance of facing and overcoming our fears. Poe
suggests in the story that the denial of our fears can lead to madness and insanity. This
message is especially clear as we follow the deterioration of Roderick Usher's mind and
the resulting impact on the narrator of the story. Upon entering the house, the narrator
discovered the true source of Roderick's illness. "I feel that I must inevitably abandon
life and reason together in my struggles with some fatal demon of fear"(668). Roderick is
overwhelmed by the fear he is experiencing and it affects every aspect of his life. It is
the constant presence of fear that has caused his illness. Roderick does not know how, or
is unwilling to try to overcome his fears. One of Roderick's fears is death. He is form a
prestigious family. Roderick and his sister are the last of the long line of Usher
descendants. "Her decease would leave him the last of the ancient race of the
Ushers"(668). Roderick seems not only to fear death but also the uncertainty the future
holds. The narrator of the story states that Roderick's fear may be linked directly to
the house. "He is enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the
dwelling which he tenanted, and from which for many years, he had never ventured
forth"(668). The narrator is implying that Roderick's mental condition may be relieved by
him leaving the house and facing his fears. Because of Roderick's fear, however, he is
restrained from leaving and does not make the attempt to defeat this enduring power that
holds him captive. After Madeline is placed into the vault, Roderick's fear increases and
his insanity becomes more evident. "He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried,
unequal, and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance has assumed, if possible, a
more ghastly hue"(673). The narrator closely studied Roderick and tried to understand his
fears, while at the same time he was ignoring the inception of his own fears. Inevitably,
the dramatic and intense fear was passed on to the narrator. "It was no wonder that his
condition terrified-that is agitated me"(573). This statement indicates the character
that has maintained his rationality has, at this point, also succumbed to fear. The
narrator does not recognize that his feeling are derived from the fear within him. When
Madeline returns from her supposed death both characters become paralyzed by fear.
Roderick is ultimately destroyed by his biggest fear, that is, fear itself. He brings
about his own illness and death by refusing to face and conquer his fears. The narrator
escaped form the house and its eventual collapse, but there is no indication that this
escape frees him for his fears. This seems to suggest that fear is continuous and that no
salvation exists. The recurring concept of fear in the story show its power and impact on
humanity. Poe show us that ultimately we must recognize our fears to be able to overcome
them. The narrator of the story, an old friend of Roderick Usher, is shocked by the
ghastly appearance and odd behavior of his long time acquaintance and it is from this
impression and several odd occurrences that he becomes increasingly uneasy. For example,
upon seeing Roderick, the narrator remarks, "cadaverous of complexion; an eye large,
liquid and luminous beyond comparison; lips pallid hair of web like softness" (Poe, 667).
Although Roderick is very much alive, his appearance would indicate death and his
behavior show signs of deteriorating sanity. "The fissure in the house seen earlier by
the narrator symbolizes Roderick's deteriorating mental condition, as well" (Burduck,
72). Upon the narrator's entrance into the room, Roderick remarks on "the solace he
expected to afford him"(Poe, 668). Perhaps Roderick knows of some evil to come and he
occupies his time with reading, music and the company of his old friend so that he will
not go crazy. In addition superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he
tenant"(Poe, 668). This indicates that perhaps Roderick is aware of some supernatural
element belonging to the house. In addition to Roderick's appearance and behavior, the
narrator is shocked to see the similarity in Madeline and Roderick's appearance. The fact
that the two remaining members of the House of Usher appear so deathly, may be a sign of
the final end to the House of Usher. Later, upon putting Madeline's supposedly dead body
in a crypt, the narrator notices the unusually healthy complexion of the deceased
Madeline, he tries to rationalize what he sees by concluding that is must have been
caused by her particular illness. The fact that the color in her face is even mentioned
may be a sign that perhaps she is not rally dead and that Madeline may appear in the
story later. The narrator remarks, "There were times, indeed, when I thought his
unceasingly agitated mind was laboring with on oppressive secret, to divulge which he
struggled for the necessary courage"(Poe, 673). The narrator also comments on how
Roderick seems to stare at nothing and appears to be "listening to some imaginary
sound"(Poe, 673). Again, this may be another hint of some evil occurrence yet to happen
and Roderick does in fact lose his sanity as well as his life when Madeline reappears
before Roderick and the narrator at the end of the story. In conclusion Poe excellent use
of characterization and imagery to depict fear and darkness, truly make The Fall of the
House of Usher a story of the battles the we must face our fears in order to free our
mind.