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The narrator tells the readers the term “The House of Usher” refers to the house and the family dwelling in the house and the Usher bloodline. The title does not only refer to the literal fall of the house but also to the fall of the Usher family with the death of Roderick Usher. The narrator mentions that Roderick and his sister Madeline are the only two surviving family members, so their death makes the death of the family line. The decline of the Usher family is also foreshadowed in the story.
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The narrator tells him that such gas is natural; there is nothing uncommon in it. The short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” is regarded as the best example of the totality of Poe as every detail and element in the short story is relevant and related. Reduces "The Fall of the House of Usher" to a "relatively meaningless"horror story which serves principally as a case study in morbid psychology andlacks any quality of pathos or tragedy. Baym offers a brief analysis of the three characters and their mentaldisorders.
Literary Theory and Criticism
Unlike the other Ushers, she loves her mother, so she decides to expose her father’s crimes, no matter the consequences. She tells the police everything, and her mother is taken to the hospital. When his children die one after the other, Roderick discovers that he has CADASIL, the disease that killed his mother. The deaths make Madeline meet Verna, who had left an address for the siblings. It is important to know Roderick and Madeline’s past to understand their relationship with Verna.
by Edgar Allan Poe

They carry her coffin into a small, damp dungeon-like room in the basement. The narrator notes that the vault is directly below his sleeping quarters. Only then does the narrator notice how similar Madeline and Usher look. Usher tells him that they were twins and always shared an uncanny sensibility. They replace the coffin’s lid, and the narrator shudders at Madeline’s flushed face and slight smile, as if she could be alive.
‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ is an 1839 short story by Edgar Allan Poe ( ), a pioneer of the short story and a writer who arguably unleashed the full psychological potential of the Gothic horror genre. The story concerns the narrator’s visit to a strange mansion owned by his childhood friend, who is behaving increasingly oddly as he and his twin sister dwell within the ‘melancholy’ atmosphere of the house. The setting of the novel is several dark and stormy nights and the haunted mansion. Any particular geographic location of the story or the time of occurrence is completely unknown to the readers. However, the atmosphere and the mood of the setting are far more important than the time and place of the setting.
Roderick Usher
He paints a dark underground tunnel with beams ofstrange light shining through. Usher writes songs on his guitar, and thenarrator recounts one entitled “The Haunted Palace.” In the song a prosperouspalace falls, and only dancing ghosts remain. Roderick admits he believes theUsher house is sentient and that a foul atmosphere grows from the grounds. Hestates that the house has moulded generations of the Usher family and hascaused his current state.
What CADASIL Is & What It Does To Roderick In The Fall Of The House Of Usher - Screen Rant
What CADASIL Is & What It Does To Roderick In The Fall Of The House Of Usher.
Posted: Sat, 14 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Further reading
To cheer up his friend, the narrator spends several days with him. He also reads stories to him; however, he is able to lift the spirit of Roderick. “The Fall of the House of Usher” is a short story published in 1839 in American writer Edgar Allan Poe. It was first published in Gentleman’s Magazine by Burton and later included in the collection Tales of Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840. The story is a work of Gothic Fiction and deals with the themes of isolation, madness, family, and metaphysical identities.
Study Guide for The Fall of the House of Usher
It is Usher himself who seems to represent the weak, the over-sensitive, the over-delicate, and the feminine. In contrast, Lady Madeline, as many critics have pointed out, possesses a superhuman will to live. When Usher appears at the narrator's door looking "cadaverously wan" and asking, "Have you not seen it?," the narrator is so ill at ease that he welcomes even the ghostly presence of his friend.
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Here, the effect is electric with mystery; he says twice that the windows of the house are "eyelike" and that the inside of the house has become a living "body" while the outside has become covered with moss and is decaying rapidly. Furthermore, the ultimate Fall of the House is caused by an almost invisible crack in the structure, but a crack which the narrator notices; symbolically, this is a key image. Also central to this story is that fact that Roderick and the Lady Madeline are twins. This suggests that when he buries her, he will widen the crack, or fissure, between them.
Moreover, he is confined, and the cramped setting of the tomb metaphorically characterizes the characters. The twins are so similar, and it is impossible for them to develop separately. Because of Madeline’s similarity to Roderick, she has been buried before she is actually dead, and this similarity is shown by the coffin that holds her identity. After some days of bitter grief, Usher changes appreciably; now he wanders feverishly and hurries from one chamber to another. Often he stops and stares vacantly into space as though he is listening to some faint sound; his terrified condition brings terror to the narrator.
Though Poe gives the identifiable elements of the Gothic take, he contrasts the standard form of a tale with the plot that is sudden, inexplicable, and filled with unexpected interruptions. The story opens without providing complete information about the motives of the narrator’s arrival at the house of Usher. This ambiguity sets the plot of the story that vague the real and the fantastic. The idea of fear is worse for Roderick Usher than the object he fears. One can interpret the last action in a way that fear of any occurrence manifests it in real life.
The main conflict that drives the story is the narrator’scoming to help Roderick recover from an illness. Action rises with Madeline'sapparent death and Roderick's descent into madness over his fears about thehouse being sentient. The raging storm, Madeline’s rising from the dead, andher subsequent collapse onto Roderick, which kills them both, acts as theclimax. Action falls when the narrator flees the house and watches it sink intothe tarn. Because Poe intentionally leaves the story without a lesson, the onlyresolution is the sight of the tarn and the realization that neither the familynor the house will ever be seen again. No one mentions Madeline, and Roderick spends his time painting, playingmusic, reading, and writing.
He claims that his children told him about their deaths after they died and that he can still see them. The Fall of the House of Usher study guide contains a biography of Edgar Allan Poe, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. His behavior becomes even more erratic and distracted, and it begins to affect the narrator’s own mental state. One stormy night, the narrator cannot sleep and begins to have inexplicable feelings of terror.

The door opens and Madeline stands with blood on her robes, trembling. Shecries out and falls on her brother, and both die as she drags him to the floorwith her. The narrator flees the house with the storm still raging around him.He looks back to see the crack in the house widen and the tarn swallow theHouse of Usher. The story begins with the narrator on his way to visit his old friend, Roderick Usher, who has sent a letter requesting the narrator’s company. Usher is suffering from a physical and psychological illness and hopes his friend’s presence will help him recover. The narrator has not seen Usher in years and is somewhat perplexed by the letter, nevertheless, he decides to honor his friend’s request.
The decrepit interior reflects thestate of mind of both Roderick and Madeline as isolation eats away at theirsanity. The house eventually sinks into the tarn, signifying the end of theUsher line. The symbolism of the house and the family highlight the fact thatall things decay.