the fall of the house of usher explanatory essay

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Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 24, 2021

Long considered Edgar Allan Poe ‘s masterpiece, “The Fall of the House of Usher” continues to intrigue new generations of readers. The story has a tantalizingly horrific appeal, and since its publication in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, scholars, critics, and general readers continue to grapple with the myriad possible reasons for the story’s hold on the human psyche. These explanations range from the pre-Freudian to the pre–Waste Land and pre-Kafka-cum-nihilist to the biographical and the cultural. Indeed, despite Poe’s distaste for Allegory, some critics view the house as a Metaphor for the human psyche (Strandberg 705). Whatever conclusion a reader reaches, none finds the story an easy one to forget.

Poe’s narrative technique draws us immediately into the tale. On a stormy autumn (with an implied pun on the word fall ?) evening, a traveler—an outsider, like the reader—rides up to the Usher mansion. This traveler, also the first-person narrator and boyhood friend of Roderick Usher, the owner of the house, has arrived in response to a summons from Usher. We share the narrator’s responses to the gloomy mood and the menacing facade of the House of Usher, noticing, with him, the dank lake that reflects the house (effectively doubling it, like the Usher twins we will soon meet) and apprehensively viewing the fissure, or crack, in the wall. Very soon we understand that, whatever else it may mean, the house is a metaphor for the Usher family itself and that if the house is seriously flawed, so are its occupants.

With this foreboding introduction, we enter the interior through a Gothic portal with the narrator. With him we encounter Roderick Usher, who has changed drastically since last the narrator saw him. His cadaverous appearance, his nervousness, his mood swings, his almost extrahuman sensitivity to touch, sound, taste, smell, and light, along with the narrator’s report that he seems lacking in moral sense, portrays a deeply troubled soul. We learn, too, that his twin sister, Madeline, a neurasthenic woman like her brother, is subject to catatonic trances. These two characters, like the house, are woefully, irretrievably flawed. The suspense continues to climb as we go deeper into the dark house and, with the narrator, attempt to fathom Roderick’s malady.

Roderick, a poet and an artist, and Madeline represent the last of the Usher line. They live alone, never venturing outside. The sympathetic narrator does all he can to ease Roderick’s hours, recounting a ballad by Roderick, which, entitled “The Haunted House,” speaks figuratively of the House of Usher: Evil and discord possess the house, echoing the decay the narrator has noticed on the outside. During his stay Roderick tells the narrator that Madeline has died, and together they place her in a vault; she looks deceptively lifelike. Thereafter Roderick’s altered behavior causes the narrator to wonder whether he hides a dark secret or has fallen into madness. A week or so later, as a storm rages outside, the narrator seeks to calm his host by reading to him a romance entitled “The Mad Trist.” The title could be evidence that both the narrator’s diagnoses are correct: Roderick has a secret (perhaps he has trysted with his own sister?) and is now utterly mad. The tale unfolds parallel to the action in the Usher house: As Ethelred, the hero of the romance, breaks through the door and slays the hermit, Madeline, not dead after all, breaks though her coffin. Just before she appears at the door, Roderick admits that they have buried her alive and that she now stands at the door. Roderick’s admission is too late. Just as Ethelred now slays the dragon, causing the family shield to fall at his feet, Madeline falls on her brother (the hermit who never leaves the house), killing them both and bringing down the last symbol of the House of Usher. As the twins collapse in death together, the entire house disintegrates into the lake, destroying the double image noted at the opening of the story.

The story raises many questions tied to gender issues: Is Madeline Roderick’s female double, or doppelgänger? If, as many critics suggest, Roderick is Poe’s self-portrait, then do Madeline and Roderick represent the feminine and masculine sides of the author? Is incest at the core of Roderick’s relationship with Madeline? Is he (like his creator, some would suggest) a misogynist? Feminists have for some time now pointed to Poe’s theory that the most poetic subject in the world is the “Death of a Beautiful Woman.” Is Madeline’s return from the tomb a feminist revenge story? Does she, as the Ethelred of the romance does, adopt the male role of the hero as she slays the evil hermit and the evil dragon, who together symbolize Roderick’s character? Has the mad Roderick made the narrator complicit in his crime (saying we rather than I buried her alive)? If so, to what extent must we view him as the unreliable narrator? Is the narrator himself merely reporting a dream—or the after-effects of opium, as he vaguely intimates at points in the story? Or, as the critic and scholar Eugene Current-Garcia suggests, can we generally agree that Poe, like Nathaniel Hawthorne, was haunted by the presence of evil? If so, “perhaps most of his tales should be read as allegories of nightmarish, neurotic states of mind” (Current-Garcia 81). We may never completely plumb the psychological complexities of this story, but it implies deeply troubling questions and nearly endless avenues for interpretation.

Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s Stories

BIBLIOGRAPHY Current-Garcia, Eugene. The American Short Story before 1850. Boston: Twayne, 1985. May, Charles E. Edgar Allan Poe: Studies in the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne, 1991. Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” In The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Vol. 1, 3rd ed. Edited by Paul Lauter. Boston: Houghton Miffl in, 1998. Strandberg, Victor. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” In Reference Guide to Short Fiction, edited by Noelle Watson. Detroit: Gale Press, 1994.

The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe Essay

The understanding of the American Literary Canon is a fundamental aspect of literature that everybody should embrace. Reading through “the fall of the house of usher” by Edgar Allan Poe, I realized that the classification of artistic content based on the title might be misleading at some point. This article is a masterpiece guided by several aspects of society portraying multiple traits of a good story. Ideally, using the subjective understanding of Poe’s work, it is possible to evaluate some of the qualities of the story. I enjoyed reading the narrative, which seems to be dwelling on family, madness, supernatural powers, and the role of art in society. I think Poe is one the best authors in mysteries, romanticism, and perhaps social realities engulfed in imagery and symbolism.

While reading the story, I connected with much of Poe’s explanation of the setting, splendid environment. Poe sets the mood of the story right from the introduction, and I thought it was real life. In essence, the way he introduces the environment, the weather, and the event succinctly illustrate his prowess in mood-setting, which makes it relevant for all generations. One can vividly visualize the contextual implications of all the events unfolding within the introductory scene as a result of Poe’s diction.

At the same time, the setting of the story creates a lot of suspense for the reader as Poe describes his ordeal. I realized that the article provides a captivating scenario where one would want to know what happens next, from the physical location of the house, the owner- Roderick’s role, and how the two grew up together. This approach conveys a conventional picture of what would transpire in the life of modern youth, enjoying peer moments and enduring various climatic conditions. The mood is an essential aspect of story-telling because it attracts and retains the audience’s attention to detail.

In my view, the thematic choices also play a crucial role in determining whether the story should be in the canon or not. Poe focuses on the context of Usher’s family, where the members, including Roderick, are insane. Poe executes fear in almost every scene as the families go through traumatizing and pain-inflicting challenges within their community. Their belief in some supernatural power and the influence of nature indicates cultural aspects of their community. In my view, such elements of humanity exist in almost every society around the world. Therefore, the story seems to correlate with the real issues which occur in everyone’s life. The narrative triggered my memory of some horror movies I could watch as a young star because of the sufferings and bloodsheds.

The artistic values of the story are overstretching to include both political and moral values in touch with reality. For instance, the narrator talks about oppression and terror dominance as some of the main concerns in his community. He highlights the struggles they had to go through on a daily basis to survive the harsh conditions as a way of exposing how the systems of governance functioned during their era. In my view, such illustrations are pivotal in documenting the history of a country alongside the social ills endured by generations under different regimes. Notably, the allusions to Sir Launcelot’s narrations seem to point at the role of leadership in Poe’s community.

Unfortunately, the article fails to point out the historical moments within which the story would fall. Nonetheless, it is important to understand that much of what Poe writes relates to what America was facing during colonialism and provides a clear mimic of the scenarios which many citizens endured during the era.

The other aspect of the story standing out is its design of conclusion, which seems to showcase a symbolic ending. In my view, short stories should be readable within a single moment and indicate the climax of what authors would wish to achieve among the audiences. Notably, there appears critical use of symbolism in showing how Poe chooses to highlight the theme of family ties and social units. I would opine that the story ends in a satisfying state whereby the mansion is destroyed, and the characters die together as a household.

I like the way Poe makes the narration lively, bringing in the characters’ role in an enjoyable pattern. While reading the story, one can vividly imagine how Roderick faced the challenges, losing touch with reality at some point while another segment of the community continued with their life as usual. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t say I disliked the way the author portrays his role in the story as the villain, whose presence is articulated in the manners his people faced challenges throughout the story. There are multiple instances prompt to help the reader comprehend some of the major societal themes which affected ancient communities.

Succinctly, I feel this tale represents my notion of America, where life has a mixed taste. Although everyone would wish to live the American dream, a considerable number of people endured sufferings and difficulties, which would then be alluded to nature and supernatural beings. The use of blood and terror instance, in my view, would implicate the reigning challenges faced by minority groups because of the dominance of native colonial masters and Native Americans. Such forces still exist in modern society, which is marred by conspiracies and racial challenges.

Poe, Edgar Allan. The fall of the house of usher . Web.

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The Fall of the House of Usher

Background of the Story

“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.

Hezekiah Usher House could provide a source of inspiration for Poe’s story. The house was located in the Usher estate. The house was built in 1684 and was relocated in 1830. The sources indicate that the owner of the house caught a sailor and his young wife in the house and entombed them in their place of trysting. In 1830, when the house was torn down, two bodies were found in the cellar cavity.

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.

The characteristic element of Poe’s work is the presence of capacious and disintegrating houses; such houses in the stories symbolize the destruction of the human soul and the human body.

This short story illustrates the ability of Poe to create an emotional tone in his work by employing feelings such as guilt, doom, and fear. The emotions are central to the personality of Roderick Usher, who has been suffering from an unknown disease like many of the characters of Edger Allan Poe.

Like the narrator of the story of “Tell-Tale Heart,” the hyperactive senses of Roderick Usher are inflamed by his disease. Even though the illness is displayed physically, it is based on the moral and mental state of Roderick Usher. His sickness is suggestive because he is expected to be sick based on the illness in his family’s history. Moreover, he buries his sister alive to fulfill his self-creating prophecy.

The Fall of the House of Usher Summary

The short story opens with an unnamed narrator who approaches House of Usher on the dark, dull, and soundless day. The house belongs to his boyhood friend Roderick Usher. The house is mysterious and gloomy. The narrator noticed the diseased atmosphere and absorbed evil in the house from the murky pond and decaying trees around the house. He also observes that even though the house appears to be decaying, its structure is fairly solid. In front of the building, there is no small crack from the roof to the ground.

The narrator has visited the house because Roderick Usher has sent him a letter that sincerely asks him to give him company. In the letter, Roderick has mentioned that he has been physically and emotionally ill due to which the narrator has rushed to help his friend.

The narrator then mentions the Usher family. He says that though they are an ancient clan, they have never flourished. From generation to generation, only one member of the family survives. Therefore, they formed a direct line of descent with no branches from outside. With its estate, the Usher family becomes so much identified that people often confuse the inhabitants with the home.

The narrator further mentions that the inside of the house is as scary and frightening as inside. He goes to the room where Roderick is waiting for him. He observes him be less energetic and paler. Roderick tells him that he is suffering from fear and nerves, and his senses get heightened.

The narrator also mentions that Roderick appears to be afraid of his own house. Madeline, the sister of Roderick, is taken with a mysterious illness that cannot be cured by the doctors. She is perhaps suffering from catalepsy in which one loses the control of his/her limbs. To cheer up his friend, the narrator spends several days with him. He listens to his friend and plays guitar. He also reads stories to him; however, he is able to lift the spirit of Roderick. Soon afterward, Roderick claims that the house is unhealthy.

Madeline dies, and Roderick resolves to bury her in the house temporarily. Since her disease was rare and unique, he fears that the doctors may take her dead body scientific research, so he wants to keep her in house. The narrator helps his friend to put Madeline’s body in the tomb and observes that her cheeks are rosy. He also realizes that Madeline and Roderick were twins.

With passing days, Roderick becomes more uncomfortable. The narrator was unable to sleep one night. Roderick knocks on the door in a hysterical state. He takes the narrator to the window. The see a bright-looking gas nearby the house. The narrator tells him that such gas is natural; there is nothing uncommon in it.

In order to pass the night, the narrator reads a story to Roderick. He reads Sir Launcelot Canning’s “Mad Twist,” a medieval romance. When he reads the story, he starts hearing the noises that resemble the description in the story. Initially, he ignores the noises thinking it to be his imagination. However, the noises become more clear and more distinct after some time that it cannot be ignored.

He also observes that Roderick has fallen over his chair and is muttering to himself. To listen to him, the narrator approaches him. Roderick discloses that he has been hearing such noises for days and thinks that they have buried Madeline alive. It is Madeline trying to escape. He cries that she is standing behind him. The door opens with the wind blowing, and Madeline was standing behind it in a white bloodied robe. She instantly attacks him, and he dies of fear. The narrator runs from the house. As soon as he escapes, the house of Usher cracks and crumbles to the ground.

Roderick Usher

He is the owner of the Usher estate. He is the last surviving male member of the Usher Family. He acts as a twin of his sister, Madeline. He illustrates himself as a mind to her body and suffers from the mental counterpart of his sister’s physical illness.

Roderick is one of the character doubles of Edger Allan Poe. He is a bookish and intellectual man while his sister is sick and bedridden. Roderick’s mental inability to differentiate from reality and fantasy correspond to his sister’s physical weakness. These characters are employed by Poe to explore the relationship and philosophical mystery between body and mind.

Poe imagines what would happen if the connection between the body and mind are served and assigned to different people. The imagery of the twin and the incestuous history in Ushers’ family line shows Roderick is inseparable from his sister. Poe maintains the idea that even though the mind and body are inseparable, they depend on each other for survival. When one of the elements suffers from a breakdown, the interdependence causes a chain reaction. The physical death of Madeline parallels the collapse of Roderick’s sanity and the house of Usher.

Madeline Usher

She is the twin sister of Roderick; she is suffering from mysterious illness catalepsy. When the narrator discovers that she is the twin sister of his friend, it points out the outsider’s relationship of the narrator to the house of Usher.

Unnamed narrator

He is the boyhood friend of Roderick. Roderick contacted him when he was suffering from emotional and mental distress. He does not know much about the house of Usher and is the first outsider to visit the house in many years.

The short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher” is an account of a madman whose sickness is suggestive because of the sickness in the family line. His fears are apparent and manifest themselves through the sentient and supernatural family estate. The story deals with both mental and physical illness and its effects on people who are close to you.

Much of the apparent madness in the story does not appear to be due to supernatural elements. The main character is not really crazy or mad. However, the house he lives in is haunted. Considering this, one can interpret that Roderick does not bury his sister alive, but she is back from the dead. One can also interpret that madness is imaginary.

“The Fall of the House of Usher” is an account of a family that is self-isolated, bizarre, and so remote from normalcy that the very existence of this family has become supernatural and eerie. The bond between the brother and sister is inexplicable and intense. It could possibly be supernatural or incestuous. This between them even surpasses death. One can interpret that twin siblings are actually one person that is split into two. That is why they are inseparable from each other.

The story deals with the family that is so remote and isolated from the world that they have developed their own non-existing barriers to interact with the world outside. The house of Usher has its own reality and is governed by its own rules, with people having no interest in others. This extreme isolation makes the family closer and closes to the extent that they become inexplicable to the outside world.

The idea of fear is worse for Roderick Usher than the object he fears. In fact, it is fear that causes his death in the story. One can interpret the last action in a way that fear of any occurrence manifests it in real life. Roderick has feared his death, and he brings his own death.

The short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” shows a split-personality disorder in a dramatized way. The tale explores the various aspects of identity and the means through which these aspects could possibly be fractioned. The story emphasized the difference between the mental and physical parts and how these parts interact with each other.

Literary Analysis

The short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” contains a quintessential characteristic of gothic fiction. There is a dreary landscape, haunted house, mysterious sickness, and double personality. Even though the gothic elements in the story are easily identifiable, some of the terror in the story is because of its vagueness. The readers cannot identify the location of the house or when the story takes place. Instead of using standard narrative markers, Poe employed gothic elements such as a barren landscape and inclement weather.

The readers are left alone with the narrator as it is such a haunted place. Even though the narrator is the boyhood friend of Roderick, he does not know much about him – even he does not know the basic fact about him that he has a twin sister. Poe makes the readers ponder on why Roderick contacts the narrator in his state of need and the persistence of the response of 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.

Edger Allan Poe also creates a claustrophobic sensation in his story. The narrator of the story is trapped in the charm of Roderick’s attraction, and he cannot escape it until the house of Usher completely collapses. Because of the structure of the house, the characters cannot act or move freely in the house. Thus the house is assumed to be a monstrous character/structure in itself. It is a mastermind that controls the actions and fate of its residents.

Poe also creates confusion between the inanimate and living objects by doubling the house of Usher to the genetic family line of the Usher family. The narrator refers to the house of Usher as the family line of the Usher Family.

Even though he metaphorically employs the word “house,” he also uses it to describe the real house. The narrator is not only trapped inside the house, but the house also describes the biological fate of the family as well, as the Usher family has no branches, all the genetic transformation takes place through incestuous relationships within the domain of the house. The people and peasantry also confuse the house with the family as the physical structure effectively portrays the genetic pattern of the family.

The claustrophobia of the house of Usher has a deep influence on the relationship among the characters of the story. Due to claustrophobia, the narrator is not able to realize that Roderick and Madeline are twins. He realizes when they prepare to entomb her dead body. 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.

Madeline appears to be suffering from the typical problems of nineteen-century women. All of her identity is invested in her body. While on the other hand, Roderick possesses intellectual powers. However, when Madeline comes out from the tomb, she possesses more power in the story and counteracts the weak, immobile, and nervous disposition of her brother.

Some scholars and critics argue that the character of Madeline does not exist at all. They have reduced her to the shared figment of the imagination of the narrator and Roderick. However, Madeline appears to be central to the claustrophobic and symmetrical logic of the story. Madeline suppresses Roderick by not permitting him to see her separate or essentially different from him. This attack is completed when she finally attacks and kills him at the end of the story.

Throughout the story, there is a doubling. The story emphasizes the Gothic character of the doppelganger. Doppelganger is the character double and portrays the doubling of the literary forms or inanimate structures. For example, the narrator observes that the mansion is a reflection in the shallow pool or tarn that joins the front of the house. The house is doubled through its image in the tarn; however, the image is upside down, which characterizes the relationship between Madeline and Roderick.

The story also alludes to many other works of literature. It alludes to the poems “Mad Trist” and “The Haunted Palace” by Sir Launcelot Canning. These poems are composed by Poe; however, in the story, he attributed these poems to the other sources. Both of these poems counteract and therefore predict the plotline of the story. The poem “Mad Trist” is about breaking into the dwelling of a hermit by Ethelred and mirrors Madeline’s escape from the tomb.

The overpass of the border is vitally related to the Gothic horror of the story. Poe’s experience in the magazine industry makes him excessively obsessed with word games and codes. This story highlights his obsession with naming characters. The word “Usher” not only refers to the family of the mansion. It is actually the act of crossing a border that carries the narrator into the tenacious world of Madeline and Roderick.

The letters of Roderick ushers the narrator into an unknowable world. And maybe the presence of narration – an outsider – leads to the destruction of the house. The narrator is excluded from the Usher’s fear of the outsider, a fear that highlights the claustrophobic nature of the story. The narrator unwittingly draws the whole structure by undermining the fear of the outside. The poem “Mad Trist” and Madeline escapes also show the similar yet playful crossing of the borders. Thus Poe buries the pun in tales in an invented severity of medieval romance, and this earned him popularity in the magazines of America.

The tone of the story “The Fall of the House of Usher” is deliberate. It is a terrifying story. The narrator of the story is the center of the strange parts of the story. However, an important point should be kept in mind that the story is narrated in retrospect; that is why the deliberate tone of the story is not compromised by the frantic mania of a terrified narrator.

For example, considering the second last paragraph of the story:

“For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold,—then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.”

Poe unfolds the story in a calm and careful manner by keeping a respectful distance from the inexpressible details and maintains the perspective of the narrator on the crazy events going on. Such a calm approach to terrifying and uncommon events is horrifying.

The story “The Fall of the House of Usher” belongs to the Gothic Fiction. There is a sentient house, an underground tomb, a dead body, and dark and stormy nights. All of these feature a tale as Gothic fiction. “Supernatural Gothic” is one of the subgenres of Gothic fiction. In supernatural gothic, weird, and strange things, happenings can be attributed to the supernatural happening.

Moreover, the inexplicable diseases of the mind and body in Roderick Usher and Madeline Usher show the story belongs to the genre of Gothic or horror fiction.

The title of the story “The Fall of the House of Usher” can be interpreted in various ways. The first interpretation can be of the actual fall of the house of Usher. The House of Usher is the place or mansion that the narrator visits and the main action of the story occur. The house of Usher falls at the end of the story into the pool of water situated before the house. The small crack that the narrator sees when he enters the house foreshadows the fall of the house. Since from the beginning of the story, the readers see that there is something wrong with the house, and certainly, the fissure/crack splits the house and destroys it.

Now comes the symbolic interpretation of the house of Usher. The narrator tells the readers the term “The House of Usher” does not only refer to the house but also 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. Roderick Usher prophecies his death to the narrator in the manner it really occurs. Roderick claims that he will die of fear. However, it is worth noting that the death of Roderick is another literal fall.

All of the falls in the novel, the fall of Roderick, the fall of the bloodline of the Usher Family, and the fall of the house, occurs at the same time at the end of the story. This coincidence illustrates the fantastical nature of the story.

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. Poe creates a powerful atmosphere. The first of the many settings of the house, Poe describes the outside of the house as spooky. There is an ominous fissure that runs down the center of the house.

Poe creates a more scary setting inside the house. Even though the corridors in the house are filled with the apparently ordinary things, they scream out horror. Moreover, another horrific element of the story is the dank underground tomb. It is masterfully-crafted mini-setting the house of Usher.

The mansion is carefully crafted to emphasize the atmosphere and mood of the story. There are creepy furnishings and tapestries inside the house. The story becomes claustrophobic when the readers know that Roderick Usher has not left the house in ages. In fact, once entered, the narrator also does not leave the house until the story ends.

Writing Style

The writing style of the short story is ornate and rhythmic. Edgar Allan Poe is known for his melodramatic macabre. “The Fall of the House of Usher” indeed bears the mark of this authorial stamp. The story is widely admired for its nearly-poetic rhetoric. For example, the first sentence contains the phrase “singularly dreary tract of country.” The length and weight of the “y” sound are in contrast with the hard and cutting “c” sound in the next two sentences. Moreover, the last sentence also contains rhythmic style as “

“the deep and dark tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the ‘House of Usher.’”

There are lots of more rhythmic gems in the story.

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory

Reality and art.

In the story “The Fall of the House of Usher,” strangely mingles the real with the fictional. The artistic creation of Roderick is directly connected to what happens in the house of Usher. He creates an underground tomb and then entombed Madeline in the tomb. He then prophecies about the destruction of the house, and the house is destroyed. He yells that Madeline is standing behind the door, and when the door opens with the storm, she is standing. Even at the beginning of the story, Roderick claims that he will die because of fear, and he does indeed die because of fear.

One can assume that Roderick can see the future with his lustrous and magical eyes. He is aware of the upcoming events, and he speaks about them before. One can also assume that Roderick causes the things to happen; that is why he is preoccupied with the fear that he manifests in reality.

Besides art mirroring or foreshadowing reality in the story, the other thing such as “reflection” and “doubling” is also going on in the story. When the story opens, we see that the narrator observes the inverted image of the house of Usher in the water pool that lies in front of the house. Moreover, there is also an inverted dichotomy between Roderick Usher and Madeline Usher.

The House of Usher

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 Small Fissure

The narrator, while entering the House of Usher, sees a small crack in the house, this crack not only refers to the crack in the house, but also the crack in the Usher family. There is a symbolic connection between the literal fissure and the metaphorical fissure. This small fissure shows disruption in the family, specifically between Roderick and Usher. This small fissure splits the family and the house of Usher.

Narrator Point of View

The story “The House of Usher is narrated in the first person with the peripheral narrator. The narrator of the story is nameless, suggesting that his only job is to narrate the story. The readers are not provided much information about the narrator. Instead of focusing on the narrator, much of the interest of the readers are drawn towards the strange events that are being narrated.

The narrator insists on portraying all of the happenings in the house of Usher with vivid and accurate descriptions. This description is one of the most interesting things to note and very futile to observe. For example, the narrator writes that

“…an influence, whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated.

“I would in vain endeavour to reduce more than a small portion which should lie within the compass of merely written words.”

“I should fail in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies, or of the occupations, in which he involved me.”

One of the most interesting statements made by the narrator is:

“I lack words to express the full extent, or the earnest abandon of his persuasion.”

In this statement, the narrator is more like pointing out towards something. By claiming the events in real life are scarier and horrifying that it sounds like the story, Poe tries to render his story more horrifying. Whatever the narrator is telling is actually happening, and the real happening was even worse than that.

Moreover, there is a mixture of reality and fiction in the narration. Whatever the narrator is reading aloud to Roderick also manifests in reality. Over here, the narrator tries to explain that words are insufficient to describe reality. The words he reads to Roderick Usher turns real. So one can say that the fictional words, read by the narrator to Roderick, are prophetic words that foreshadow or prophesize the upcoming events. These words are similar to the words of Roderick in which he prophesied his death early at the beginning of the story. Thus one can say the narration of the story is prophetic in nature.

Short Stories

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The Fall Of The House Of Usher Essay

The Fall of the House of Usher is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. The story is about the fall of the house of Usher, and the events that lead up to it. The story is narrated by an unnamed person who tells the story of his visit to the house of Usher, and the events that transpired there. The house of Usher is haunted by the ghost of Madeline Usher, who died under mysterious circumstances.

The narrator is interested in finding out what happened to Madeline, and he begins to suspect that her brother, Roderick Usher, may have had something to do with her death. The narrator eventually learns that Roderick has been cursed by Madeline’s ghost, and that the house will soon fall apart.

The house of Usher eventually falls apart, and Roderick dies in the process. The story is a classic example of Gothic fiction, and it has been praised for its chilling atmosphere and suspenseful plot. The Fall of the House of Usher is considered to be one of Poe’s best works, and it has been adapted into a number of films and television shows.

The Fall of the House of Usher is a classic example of Gothic fiction. The story is set in a dark and spooky house, and it is filled with suspenseful scenes and mysterious characters. The plot revolves around the fall of the house of Usher, and the events that lead up to it. The story is narrated by an unnamed person who tells the story of his visit to the house of Usher, and the events that transpired there. The house of Usher is haunted by the ghost of Madeline Usher, who died under mysterious circumstances.

The House of Usher is a gloomy castle inside the city limits of Ravenswood, Illinois. The family has become sick with strange maladies that may be linked to their intermarriage.

The family estate, named Usher, is said to be haunted by the ghost of Madeline’s mother. The house itself seems to be alive and is in a state of decay. The story progresses with Roderick telling his friend, Philip, about the day that Madeline died. She was found in a pool of her own blood and there was a great gash on her forehead (Jacobs and Roberts, pg. 463). The servants refused to go back into the house, so Roderick had to bury her himself.

Roderick fears that he will also die and leave Usher without an heir. He tells Philip that he has been studying the secrets of life and death and that he may have found a way to cheat death. Philip is apprehensive about this, but goes to stay at Usher anyhow. Roderick shows him around the house and leads him down into the crypt. There, they find a hidden door that leads them down into the bowels of the earth (Jacobs and Roberts, pg. 465). They enter a dark and dreary chamber where Madeline’s body is entombed. The air is thick with moisture and it smells of death. The sound of dripping water can be heard from all directions.

Roderick tells Philip that he has been bringing Madeline back to life by giving her doses of a potion that he has made himself. He believes that he can bring her back completely by using an elixir that he has also made. Philip is horrified by all of this and tells Roderick that he needs to get out of the house. The next day, Madeline’s body is found in her bed and it appears that she has died in her sleep (Jacobs and Roberts, pg. 466). The funeral is held and Roderick mourns his sister’s death.

Shortly after the funeral, strange things start happening at Usher. The walls seem to be closing in on Roderick and he complains about the oppressive atmosphere of the house. The windows are boarded up and there is no way for any light or air to enter (Jacobs and Roberts, pg. 467).

Madness, the supernatural, and artistic purpose are all recurring themes in “The Fall of the House of Usher.” The Usher family is known for its history of incest, which has resulted in recent generations including Roderick being afflicted with madness.

The supernatural: The house of Usher is said to be haunted and is full of secret passages and hidden rooms. The narrator is not sure whether the events that take place in the story are caused by the supernatural or by Roderick’s mental illness, but either way, the house exerts a powerful grip on the family. Artistic purpose: The story is written in such a way that it blurs the line between reality and fiction.

The reader is never quite sure what is really happening, which may be intentional on Poe’s part. Some critics have interpreted “The Fall of the House of Usher” as a commentary on the Romantic movement, which was at its peak when Poe wrote the story. Romanticism prized emotion over reason and emphasized individualism and creativity. The story may be seen as an attack on these values, or as a warning against their dangers.

A man discovers a savage family curse while visiting his fiancée’s family home, and he worries that his future brother-in-law has prematurely entombed his bride-to-be. Philip Winthrop contacts his girlfriend Madeline Usher at her home. Roderick, Madeline’s brother, is particularly irritated by Philip’s presence.

The siblings have a strange, but close, bond. Winthrop learns from Madeline that their family is cursed and that Roderick believes she died prematurely. The locals whisper about the house’s malignant influence. Winthrop tries to persuade Madeline to leave the house for her own safety, but she refuses.

Roderick tells Winthrop about an incident in which he and Madeline were swimming in a nearby river. Madeline saw a vision of her death and became so terrified that she drowned while trying to get back to shore. Roderick was able to save her, but since that day he has been convinced that she has an “evil eye.”

Winthrop soon realizes that Roderick has entombed Madeline alive in the family crypt.

Roderick finally agrees to release Madeline from her tomb, but only if Winthrop stays and watches over her. The morbid agreement gives Winthrop just enough time to realize that he is also cursed and that he will soon join Madeline and Roderick in death. The mansion’s oppressive atmosphere overwhelms him, and he dies screaming. The story concludes with a description of the Usher family home crumbling into ruins.

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The Fall of the House of Usher

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Poe does not specify the House of Usher’s location. Is it important that the reader know this detail? Why or why not?

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19 “The Fall of the House of Usher” and the Architecture of Unreliability

Department of English, Université de Lausanne

Published: 10 July 2018
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This chapter examines what many scholars consider the most accomplished and representative of Poe’s tales, “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839). After a brief overview of the main axes of interpretation in the story’s reception history, it proposes an analysis of the tale’s main narrative strategy, the unreliable narrator, which is typical of Poe’s short fiction in general. Linking this device to the unstable architectonics of the house in the story, the chapter shows how the unreliability of the narrator lies at the heart of the text’s ability to choreograph active reader participation. It also historicizes the specific kind of unreliable narrators that Poe favors—those lacking a moral conscience or ethically informed perception—in the context of antebellum debates about slavery.

“ The Fall of the House of Usher” occupies a singular place in the Poe canon. Considered by many critics his best and most representative short fiction, the story appears in countless anthologies and collections. It is considered foundational for the American Gothic and, more specifically, Southern Gothic. 1 Despite its ubiquity and popularity among critics and readers alike, however, the meaning of “The Fall of the House of Usher” has proved elusive. Poe’s ability to create an undercurrent of suggestiveness is nowhere displayed more masterfully than in this story, and few texts have generated so many and such divergent readings. With its first-person narration, underground crypts, and multilayered literariness (including two embedded texts, an epigraph and many allusions to other texts), “Usher” epitomizes hidden depth and encrypted meaning. The result has been a dizzying array of critical interpretations claiming to offer the “key” to the textual house of Usher (as in Darrel Abel’s influential 1949 essay by that title). 2 Psychoanalytic readings held a central place in the story’s early reception history, followed by philosophical and historical allegories, and later by a range of poststructuralist readings suggesting that reading and writing themselves were the real subjects of the tale.

I propose to show that Poe constructed this story to offer both an implied meaning and an affective reading experience in which the “discovery” of the “hidden” meaning is carefully choreographed into the narrative’s temporal movement by its unreliable narration. In the critical history of “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the narrator has often been subject to scrutiny and debate—especially since he calls attention to his own subjective fallibility so often and so insistently—but readings that focus on the narrator often ignore the larger historical and cultural context of the tale. By looking at how the story’s narrative unreliability is linked to cultural debates about slavery, conscience, and moral insanity, I hope to explain both the tacit content of “The Fall of the House of Usher” and its intended aesthetic effect.

Although most readers will be familiar with the tale, a short synopsis might help to refresh our sense of the story’s enigmas. An unnamed narrator approaches the house of his childhood friend and reflects on the bleakness of the landscape, his own inexplicable dread, and his inability to coax the terrible scene into assuming a sublime aspect. His optical experiment of looking at the house through its reflection in the dark tarn anticipates both the motif of doubling that will recur throughout the story and the ending, when the house actually collapses into the tarn. Inside, he finds his friend greatly altered, in the grip of an extreme nervous agitation and a “morbid acuteness of the senses” (M 2: 403). In one of the few occasions when Usher speaks, he informs the narrator—and reader—that he is terrified of any incident that would excite his overwrought nerves—in short, he fears any unusual incident at all. Shortly after, his sister Madeline seems to die and is then entombed in a dungeon deep below the house, after which the two friends resume their pastimes of music and reading. Soon, however, Usher’s demeanor changes dramatically: he appears increasingly agitated, “listening to some imaginary sound” and “laboring with some oppressive secret” (M 2: 411). The last third of the story represents the suspense building over the course of a stormy evening as the narrator attempts to distract Usher by reading him a chivalric romance, while mysterious sounds from beneath the house echo noises in the narrative. Finally, in his second monologue, the distraught Usher confesses to hearing for days his sister’s struggles in the tomb and to dreading her probable desire for revenge. A moment later Madeline appears at the door and falls upon him, killing him, at which the house splits down along its fissure and disappears into the tarn as the narrator flees.

In addition to the status (and specifically, the reliability) of the narrator, the ambiguities that have inspired critics include the oddly evanescent character of Madeline, her relationship to Usher (the possibility of an incestuous union), and her uncannily impermanent death (with the issue of medical body-snatching and catalepsy in the background). As mentioned earlier, Poe succeeds in creating an aura of multilayered suggestiveness, leading many readers and critics to speculate on the meanings of seemingly innocuous details. The perennial question of tone (so masterfully treated by Jonathan Elmer 3 ) emerges with the curious play of the narrator’s excessive self-consciousness at some moments and utter obliviousness at others. The story also treats its embedded romance (“The Mad Trist”) with so much irony that a reader is left wondering if the equally exaggerated frame narrative can be taken fully at face value. Finally, readers have been intrigued by Usher’s belief that the stones of his house are alive and sentient, something that appears to be confirmed in the latter part of the tale, when the house collapses into the tarn in which it was initially reflected. These are only some of the suggestive details generating debate among critics and scholars, several of which I will address in the sections that follow.

Critical Overview

Since the early twentieth century, when an obsessive interest in hidden meanings took center stage in Anglo-American literary scholarship, Poe—with his explicit interest in madness, secrecy, and narrative indirection—has invited a range of psychoanalytical and psychobiographical readings. Marie Bonaparte, a member of Freud’s inner circle in the 1920s, argued that Poe’s work emanated largely from his unresolved sense of loss of his mother, and that Usher was a projection of this loss. 4 Reading the tale through the prism of his own psychological concerns, D. H. Lawrence argued that Madeline and Roderick exemplify the mutual destruction and loss of soul that can occur when two people love each other too much. 5 The psychoanalytic tradition continued throughout the century. In his 1973 monograph, Poe’s Fiction: Romantic Irony in the Gothic Tales , G. R. Thompson meticulously demonstrates the analogies between the house and Usher’s sanity, suggesting that the story chronicles a gradual descent into madness. 6 In 1981, J. R. Hammond argued that Roderick is “a mirror image of Poe or at least a projection, a doppel-ganger, of himself as he imagined himself to be,” 7 and in 1996, Eric Carlson discussed “Usher” in A Companion to Poe Studies under the rubric of “Tales of Psychal Conflict,” focusing on the many readings taking either Usher or the narrator as psychological case studies, confirming the popularity of this approach. 8

The other most common readings are also often allegorical, but they adopt a more philosophical, political, or historical focus. For example, in 1949 Darrel Abel proposed that the tale exemplified a contest between “Life-Reason” and “Death-Madness” for the possession of Roderick Usher. 9 Similarly, Michael Hoffman, in “The House of Usher and Negative Romanticism” (1965) , argued that the house in the tale is meant to represent the Enlightenment and therefore its demise signifies that the world is not as ordered and meaningful as the Enlightenment presumed. 10 Although many critics succumb to the temptation to read the story allegorically, lured by its explicit preoccupation with hidden depths and multilayered architectonics, there is little evidence in Poe’s fictional or critical work to suggest that he worked in an allegorical mode in his stories except on rare occasions. 11 In an 1842 essay on Nathaniel Hawthorne, Poe wrote that “there is scarcely one respectable word to be said” for allegory (ER: 582). “Under the best of circumstances,” Poe continues, “it must always interfere with that unity of effect which, to the artist, is worth all the allegory in the world” (ER: 583).

Unpacking this notion of “effect” for a moment, one infers that for Poe the impact of a work of art was largely a matter of choreographing the intricate interplay between expectation and discovery as a reader progressed temporally through a text. Poe’s stories rarely either announce an explicit meaning or hide one for critical excavation; rather, it is in between: a question of attending to the fairly obvious cues Poe provides the reader. For example, the story “William Wilson” is about a capricious boy who ignores his conscience to such an extent that when it returns in an externalized form to give him unsolicited advice, he fails to recognize it and ends up murdering it, thereby becoming a sociopath (referring at the beginning of the tale to his “later years of . . . unpardonable crime”; M 2: 426). The cues, or rather, clues , in this story include the opening epigraph, which explicitly names “CONSCIENCE” (M 2: 426) as a “spectre,” anticipating the way the narrator’s conscience haunts him like a ghost until he finally eliminates it once and for all.

In short, Poe often embeds a meaning that requires the reader to notice something that he does not state explicitly, but this reading is not a question of “interpretation” in the conventional sense of the word nor of allegory, but rather of connecting the dots in order to understand the basic elements of the plot. In the late tale “Hop-Frog,” the reader is made to understand—while the unreliable narrator pointedly does not— that the abused slave Hop-Frog is planning revenge upon the king who has kidnapped and tormented him. Generating strong dramatic irony, the tale requires the reader to infer from the situation (master–slave) and the visible but otherwise unexplained signs of Hop-Frog’s internal agitation (e.g., grating his teeth) that the seemingly innocent preparations for the king’s masquerade ball are actually a desperate plot for revenge and escape (M 3: 1353).

With poststructuralism in the 1970s and 1980s, allegorical readings made way for a new and intense attention to Poe’s craftsmanship, the complexity of his irony, and a fascination with his self-consciousness as a writer. 12 In fact, Poe’s linguistic playfulness was often read as a prescient anticipation of Derridean deconstruction itself. Though more reliant on close textual analysis than allegorical approaches, many poststructuralist readings tended to reach the same conclusion--namely, that the text has no single meaning or is in fact about its own meaninglessness. For example, Joseph Riddel’s 1979 essay sees in “Usher” a self-reflexive fable about the absence that lies at the center of any text, an absence of meaning, presence, and life, except as the simulacrum of a simulacrum. 13 Riddel argues this absence is allegorized in the story by the house of Usher itself, which is constructed upon a crypt, an architectural feature that allegorizes the notion that fiction is always constructed upon a “hollow coffin,” that is, an emptiness at its center. The embedded story and the other fragments and allusions to books and manuscripts are all attempts to defer the confrontation with the terrifying contents of the crypt, which, for Riddel, is not a prematurely buried woman but the missing body of the meaning of the text. 14

Focusing more on the reading process, Harriet Hustis has argued that Poe embeds an interpretive “gap” that calls for the reader’s participation. 15 In this sense, Poe is working within a larger tradition of “Gothic reading,” which, according to Hustis, creates a “disturbance” in the reading process, and which “bothers without quite spoiling narrative pleasure,” making readers active participants in the Gothic plot. The narrator is important to this process because he is the stand-in for the reader as well as a double for Usher, though he is also different from both in that he is a naïve reader, and this difference creates the gap that characterizes so-called Gothic reading. Like Riddell and most other poststructuralist critics, Hustis concludes that the point of all this effort is ultimately to show the “interpretive uncertainty” of texts. The ease with which poststructuralist critics find ambiguity and hermeneutic gaps in this story, and in Poe in general, stems from the fact that he deliberately embeds unreliable narration into almost every story, but the unreliability has a larger rhetorical purpose than to signify only itself, as I will show later.

Emerging from poststructuralist concerns but far more attentive to textual specificity and detail, Scott Peeples’s essay on “Usher” for the Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe offers an account that focuses on the meticulous “constructiveness” of the tale. 16 Peeples examines the technical care with which Poe built his texts, like an engineer, carefully crafting correspondences between Usher’s house and the text. 17 Ultimately, the story is “about” its own construction, and specifically about the tension between the loss of control depicted in the story and the complete control that Poe the author keeps over his fiction as he enacts the “artist’s fantasy of bringing that dead house to life.” 18 Peeples begins with Poe’s authorial stance but also brings into focus the central importance of the house itself to any reading of the story, as is evident from the pun embedded in the title, where “house” refers to both the physical structure and Usher’s family line. This focus on the rhetorical complexity of “The Fall of the House of Usher,” where the setting is an agent as well as a backdrop, brings us to the question of the possible correspondences between the story, its uncannily volatile house, and the larger cultural context of the story’s production.

To conclude this review, the critical reception of “The Fall of the House of Usher” reveals two main trends: first, a psychoanalytic and philosophical trend of assigning a single meaning to the text, and another more recent trend of denying meaning altogether. Both tendencies arise from critical paradigms (e.g., psychoanalysis, deconstruction) that search for evidence of their own pre-existing assumptions while generally ignoring the historical and cultural issues that informed Poe’s work. Recent scholarship that benefits from the insights of poststructuralism and its attention to form and language but also introduces cultural studies approaches has produced a new generation of readings linking historical questions to formal ones, helping us read “The Fall of the House of Usher” against the backdrop of antebellum America.

Cultural Criticism and Cultural Context

Possibly the most important development in Poe criticism in recent decades has been the emergence of race and slavery as central preoccupations. Discussion of Poe’s views on these issues and how they might have affected his work—however obliquely—have reshaped Poe studies since the 1990s. John Carlos Rowe’s claim in 1992 that “Poe was a proslavery Southerner and should be reassessed as such in whatever approach we take to his life and writings” can be taken as the opening salvo to this debate. 19 The same year, Toni Morrison called for an investigation into the “Africanist” presence in American literature and identified Poe as one of the key figures who have shaped the chiaroscuro dynamics of the American literary imagination. 20 Other important contributions to this discussion include Teresa Goddu’s Gothic America (1997), which proposed a more nuanced approach to reading race in Poe, and questioned specifically the facile reduction of racism to an exclusively Southern issue. 21 Lesley Ginsberg’s claim that “The Black Cat” suggests how slavery corrupts owners raised the prospect of a far more complex Poe, one who understood that slavery was at the heart of the American “political uncanny,” a horror story rife with repression, projection, and various forms of collective psychosis. In Ginsberg’s influential reading, Poe emerges as a subtle critic of slavery despite his alleged “proslavery pronouncements.” 22

Yet even these few proslavery pronouncements have been called into question in recent years. One of the most important turns in the recent debate about Poe’s racism was the publication of Terence Whalen’s Edgar Allan Poe and the Masses (1999), which explored the literary marketplace in which Poe worked, offered plausible explanations for many of Poe’s aesthetic and political positions in light of the pressures impinging upon him economically as a writer and editor, and perhaps most important, refuted the longstanding claim that Poe wrote the proslavery “Paulding-Drayton” review. 23 Analyzing internal textual evidence, Whalen painstakingly demonstrated that Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, a Southern ideologue and writer, was its author. Whalen also pointed out that it is likely that Poe entertained a centrist view on slavery that combined an “average racism” with a belief that slavery should be gradually phased out. 24 This would have been a common view among educated Southerners, and one that allowed Poe to offend neither Southern nor Northern sensibilities in his book reviews.

Not easily resolved one way or the other, given Poe’s penchant for ambiguity and irony, the debate surrounding Poe’s racial politics has continued, producing, for instance, a collection of essays devoted to the issue, J. Gerald Kennedy and Liliane Weissberg’s Romancing the Shadow (2001). In this volume, Rowe once more argues that Poe’s representations of race consistently upheld antebellum racial hierarchies and stereotypes and thereby affirmed the imperial fantasies and ambitions of the era. 25 Most of the other essays, however, adopt a more nuanced view. Leland S. Person examines the subversive reversibility of black and white race markers—especially in terms of skin and hair color—in order to argue that Poe’s Gothic fictions function to destabilize “the psychological constructs of white male racism.” 26 Kennedy painstakingly combs through Poe’s oeuvre and biographical scholarship to find evidence of Poe’s contacts with slaves, exploring his “conflicted relationship” with the South’s “peculiar institution.” Comparing The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym to the Narrative of Frederick Douglass (1845), Kennedy concludes that Poe’s novel invites oddly subversive and pessimistic readings of encounters between natives and American whites, tacitly undermining Southern proslavery arguments of that era. 27

This tendency to understand a slave’s desire to revolt, based on an implicit recognition of suffering and discontent—universally denied or ignored by proponents of slavery—gives Poe’s depictions of bondage an antislavery tinge regardless of how grotesquely racist his physical descriptions of black characters could be. For instance, as described earlier, the late story “Hop-Frog” requires the reader to understand the natural desire of the slave to punish his master in order to guess what the eponymous character is plotting for the cruel king. The character himself is depicted as “a dwarf and a cripple,” walking in an awkward and comic gait, but the entire story hinges on the reader identifying with Hop-Frog’s rage and desire for revenge against the morally blind narrator, who is a court lackey unable to perceive the injustice of the situation he describes (M 3: 1345). The inevitable desire to rebel and take revenge on one’s master is also explicitly depicted in Poe’s early comic tale “Four Beasts in One” (1833), in which wild animals that have been domesticated as “ valets-de-chambre ” stage a mutiny and eat their masters (M 2: 123).

Poe’s recognition of the violence inherent in the master–slave relationship flies directly in the face of the most common arguments put forward by defenders of slavery in the South, especially in the wake of the Nat Turner revolt of 1831. The much later work of Southern lawyer and social theorist George Fitzhugh sums up the arguments that emerged in the 1830s and 1840s. These arguments, as Sam Worley has noted, moved away from the “necessary evil” view of slavery that had held sway in earlier decades and relied increasingly on the “virtual codification of strategies that posed slavery as a positive good.” 28 In Cannibals All! Or Slaves Without Masters (1857) , Fitzhugh argues that slavery is natural to human nature: “Man is a social and gregarious animal, and all such animals hold property in each other. Nature imposes upon them slavery as a law and necessity of their existence. They live together to aid each other, and are slaves under Mr. Garrison’s higher law. Slavery arises under the higher law, and is, and ever must be, coëval and coëxtensive with human nature.” 29 In other words, Fitzhugh claims that slavery is an inherent and natural part of human society and history. Going further, he argues that the state of dependence created by slavery is the natural precondition for true affection and kindness between people, because everyone knows his or her role and place, and there is no jostling for power. In fact, Fitzhugh avers, it is the slave who is really the master in the South, because it is the slave who is maintained and cared for:

The humble and obedient slave exercises more or less control over the most brutal and hard-hearted master. It is an invariable law of nature, that weakness and dependence are elements of strength, and generally sufficiently limit that universal despotism, observable throughout human and animal nature. The moral and physical world is but a series of subordinations, and the more perfect the subordination, the greater the harmony and the happiness. 30

Fitzhugh’s argument directly refutes Harriet Beecher Stowe’s influential argument in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts the slaveowners absolutely, making them cruel and blind to slaves’ suffering. 31

Despite warnings from writers such as Stowe, the issue of slavery in the antebellum United States represents one of history’s most glaring examples of collective moral blindness. As Lesley Ginsberg explains in her article on “The Black Cat,” the Southern response to Nat Turner’s 1831 rebellion was stupefaction, in particular with regard to his motives. For example, the Richmond Enquirer wrote that Turner acted “without any cause or provocation, that could be assigned.” 32 Thomas Gray, the man who extracted Turner’s confession, expresses sympathy with readers’ frustration at seeing the “insurgent slaves . . . destroyed, or apprehended, tried, and executed . . . without revealing anything at all satisfactory, as to the motives which governed them.” 33 Nothing highlights the absurdity of the slaveholding South’s failure to recognize the violence inherent to the institution of slavery more than Dr. Samuel Cartwright’s 1851 report in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal that among the “diseases and peculiarities of the Negro race,” as his article was titled, was a treatable illness called “drapetomania, or the disease causing Negroes to run away.” According to Cartwright, if slaves are kept “in the position that we learn from the Scriptures he was intended to occupy, that is, the position of submission,” and treated with kindness, then “the negro is spell-bound, and cannot run away.” 34 The notion that a slave would want to be free regardless of how kind his master might be, and that holding another human being in bondage is itself an extreme form of violence inviting the most extreme measures in return, seems not to have occurred to these self-deluded defenders of slavery.

Herman Melville’s 1855 novella “Benito Cereno” is a canny examination of precisely this kind of blindness, with the naïve Captain Amasa Delano failing to grasp that the distressed Spanish slave ship he has boarded is in the midst of a slave mutiny despite much strange behavior on the part of its crew and captain. Scholars and readers such as Toni Morrison have generally understood Captain Delano as an example of the “willful blindness” of the antebellum South. As Morrison puts it, Delano’s complacent myopia “is similar to the ‘happy, loyal slave’ antebellum discourse that peppered early debates on black civil rights.” 35 In contrast to such complacent myths, Poe’s depictions of relationships of subordination, in stories such as “Metzengerstein,” “The Black Cat,” “Hop-Frog,” and The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym , are, like Stowe’s and Melville’s, consistently rife with violence, deceit, mutiny, and mutual cruelty, undermining on every level the view of human nature as affectionately hierarchical advocated by proslavery ideologues like Fitzhugh and Cartwright.

Although “The Fall of the House of Usher” does not seem to be as directly concerned with race as Hop-Frog or The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym , numerous critics have seen a link between the story and the slavery debate. 36 In 1960, Harry Levin suggested that “The Fall of the House of Usher” could be read as a prophetic comment on the plantation system of the South. Specifically, he saw the South’s “feudal pride and foreboding of doom” mirrored in the story, and Usher as “driven underground by the pressure of fear.” 37 While Levin’s reading acknowledges the vague sense of threat informing the tale, Maurice S. Lee has suggested that more specifically it is “slave rebellion” that “potentially lurks” in the story. 38 This is not to argue that the story is meant as a simple allegory of Southern slavery and the threat of revolt. Instead, the issue of slavery should be regarded as a cultural framework for understanding the emotional charge of the story’s principal tensions and tropes. For example, the subterranean crypt where Madeline is placed as a precaution against grave-robbing physicians had once been a dungeon and has subsequently been used as a store-room for gun powder or “some other highly combustible substance” (M 2: 410). As I have argued elsewhere, this oddly detailed history of the room links its past function as a site of feudal-style imprisonment to the idea of combustibility, an association that would have resonated suggestively with the fear of insurrection in the post-Turner South, though its immediate function in the story is to allow a plausible explanation for the collapse of the house. 39

Although the story anticipates the implosion of the nation around the issue of slavery twenty years later, the more immediate aspect of the text that invites reading it in terms of slavery is its preoccupation with revenge for imprisonment and premature burial (reflecting figuratively how slavery constitutes what Orlando Patterson has called “social death” 40 ). Much of the story’s powerful conclusion derives its emotional charge from the fact that Usher ignores for days Madeline’s struggle with her coffin and crypt. In fact, her long struggle is what Poe himself cited as the point of the story. In an 1845 review article of his own work, Poe wrote that the main effect (or “thesis of the story”) can be described as “the revulsion of feeling consequent upon discovering that for a long period of time we have been mistaking sounds of agony, for those of mirth or indifference” (ER: 871). 41 Literally, this refers to the sounds of Madeline’s struggle to escape her tomb, sounds which Usher has deliberately ignored and which the narrator has mistaken for the sounds in “Mad Trist.” Structurally, it recalls the masquerades and other festivities used to mask the sounds of suffering in other Poe stories, as in “The Mask of the Red Death” or “Hop-Frog.” The effect he describes here is complex, assuming both a process in time (“sounds we have been mistaking ” followed by a “consequent” feeling of revulsion) and an ethical framework (“revulsion” here being essentially an affective response akin to horror, arising from a realization of having failed to act ethically). The word “mirth” in this passage is used in the technical sense that chivalric romances, like the story the narrator reads to Usher, are a form of amusement. Moreover, the fact that the narrator chooses to read a chivalric romance would have a special purchase in the context of the South, which tended to imagine its cultural roots in the medieval and Scottish chivalric traditions. The term “indifference” is equally freighted with cultural resonance, bringing us to the issue of conscience and its absence that many abolitionists argued was a natural result of the slave relationship—namely, that it dulled the moral faculty of the master and of the culture that tolerated slavery in general, inexorably pulling it toward a kind of moral numbness and idiocy.

Bad Conscience, or Moral and Epistemological Unreliability

If slavery forms a backdrop to the story, the more immediate subject of the tale’s construction and specific effect is the issue of conscience and moral apperception. This is a concern of Poe’s in many of his short stories and is a key feature of the unreliability of his narrators. 42 Conscience, as a specific cognitive faculty, was the subject of particular interest and attention in the 1830s, as the debate over slavery was heating up. Francis Wayland devoted five chapters to “Conscience, or the Moral Sense” in his tract on moral philosophy, Elements of Moral Science (1835), describing its specific function as “repelling vice” and contesting a subject’s “lower propensities” but lacking the power to do more than advise. Wayland’s language gives conscience an independent existence and agency, conceptualizing it as an entity separate from the decision-making subject. He repeatedly stresses the importance of “hearkening” and “obeying” the “impulses” of conscience and argues that one’s conscience could be strengthened or atrophied, like a muscle, by use or disuse. Moreover, not only could individuals weaken and destroy their conscience by failing to obey it, but entire communities could collectively deaden and lose their moral sense by repeated acts of cruelty or violence. Citing gladiatorial Rome and revolutionary France as examples, Wayland argues that failure to heed conscience on a collective level produces a collective loss of moral sensibility. 43

In light of the great political issues at stake in the question of conscience in a slaveholding society, it is no surprise that a writer as acutely aware of the subtleties of power, exclusion, and social repression as the once privileged and then disowned and nearly destitute Poe would take this up as a key concern. 44 What is surprising is how Poe scholarship has largely overlooked the fact that lack of conscience is the main form of unreliability that many of his first-person narrators display. Poe uses morally unreliable first-person narrators in stories such as “William Wilson,” “The Business Man,” “The Black Cat,” “The Imp of the Perverse,” and “The Cask of Amontillado,” and their function is always to describe but then to neglect crucial elements of a specifically ethical nature. An obvious example is “The Tell-Tale Heart,” where the narrator betrays his moral insanity quite quickly by avowing at the end of the second paragraph that he is a murderer (“I made up my mind the take the life of the old man”; M 3: 792). At the other end of the spectrum, the narrator of “Berenice” is revealed only at the end of the story to be the perpetrator of a horrible crime. When we learn that Berenice’s teeth are in his possession, we are forced to infer that he has pulled them out from her alive (as her body is disfigured and his own clothes are “clotted with gore”; M 2: 218). Even the ending is narrated “unreliably” by never using the word “teeth.” Instead, the narrator describes “thirty-two small, white, and ivory-looking substances” falling to the floor (M 2: 219). This absurdly indirect description (after all, who could recognize that there are thirty-two of anything in a single glance?), like all unreliable narration, requires the reader to produce the final meaning himself or herself by recognizing them as teeth, even though the narrator does not name them as such. In “The Cask of Amontillado,” by contrast, the reader gradually discerns that the seemingly congenial narrator is a sociopath intent upon revenge. His sadism is only fully revealed at the moment near the end when he mocks his victim’s pleas for mercy by repeating them sarcastically (“ For the love of God, Montresor !” “Yes” I said, “for the love of God!”; M 3: 1263).

Similarly, the narrator of “The Fall of the House of Usher” betrays the limitations of his unimaginative subjectivity gradually during the course of the last section of the narrative. It could be argued that the narrator plants doubts in the reader’s mind with his initial lengthy descriptions of his unexplained emotions upon first seeing the house, and his provocative comparisons to narcotics (repeated again soon after when he tries to describe Usher’s manner as that of an “irreclaimable eater of opium”; M 2: 402). This is because the entire narrative is structured to prepare the reader for the specific effect that Poe wanted to create—as mentioned above, “the revulsion of feeling consequent upon discovering that for a long period of time we have been mistaking sounds of agony, for those of mirth or indifference” (ER: 871).

To create that temporally complex effect, involving “a long period of time” during which “sounds of agony” are mistaken for sounds of “mirth,” Poe structures the story in roughly two parts, with Madeline’s apparent death as the fulcrum. In the first section, he establishes all the necessary cues and clues to help the reader make sense of what is happening, but which the narrator will fail to understand, namely, that Madeline has been entombed alive and has managed to escape the underground crypt. These clues include references to the narrator’s unreliability, Madeline’s catalepsy, and her lifelike appearance but also the explanations foreshadowing Usher’s own “unreliability,” since he is the first to fail to attend to Madeline’s struggle. Thus, Usher’s most extensive speech occurs in this section, partly paraphrased and partly quoted. Usher informs the narrator (and the reader) that he has preternaturally sensitive hearing as well as a general acuteness of the senses, and then explains his fear of any incident, “even the most trivial,” which would operate upon his “intolerable agitation of the soul” (M 2: 403). In short, he is hypersensitive and morbidly perceptive of sounds, and terrified of anything that would upset him. These elements, along with some suspicion that the narrator’s judgment is not entirely transparent and reliable, are all that are needed after Madeline is entombed and Usher’s manner dramatically changes—as he appears to be “listening to some imaginary sound” and “laboring with some oppressive secret”—for the reader to guess that the cataleptic Madeline was not dead when she was entombed and that Usher can hear her stirring (M 2: 411). We know that he is terrified of any unusual incident, and we are given thereby a motive for why he does not dare to tell anyone what he hears. Usher’s strange behavior thus constitutes a hermeneutic gap that invites the reader to fill it with a plausible explanation, which Poe has carefully prepared.

The long last section of “The Fall of the House of Usher,” in which the narrator describes hearing “low and indefinite sounds” that continue to grow louder and more alarming as he reads the “Mad Trist” to Usher in order to distract him, is the dramatic and emotional heart of the story (M 2: 411). Its rhetorical power depends on the fact that most readers—even first-time readers, I would contend, if they have read attentively—are aware or suspect that Madeline has been buried alive and that the narrator and the brother seem (or pretend) to not recognize this fact. I say “pretend” because Usher turns out to have heard her struggles all along. He is, in fact, the sociopath at the heart of the story, who has suppressed his conscience and moral judgment, like the narrator of “William Wilson.” In contrast to Usher’s deliberate failure to rescue his sister, the narrator is merely blind (and deaf) to her suffering. The seeming stupidity of the narrator is illustrated in at least one film adaptation by making him into a myopic, bumbling fool. 45 The effect for the reader is a curious combination of uneasiness about Madeline’s torture and resurrection and epistemological pleasure from drawn-out scenes of dramatic irony (the reader knows something crucial the protagonist seems unable to grasp). Poe prolongs this scene to amplify its uncanny effects: an angry Madeline laboriously draws closer while the two men read and listen to sounds of her approach in a state of denial. The situation generates a peculiar, ethical position for the reader, aware of suffering that the main characters ignore or fail to recognize.

The climax coincides with Usher’s revelation, prompted by the “distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous” sound of Madeline’s tomb door being opened. This noise makes the narrator jump to his feet but leaves Usher “undisturbed,” once more proving that he has already been listening to—and ignoring—the sounds of Madeline’s struggle. Now, characterized by a “stony rigidity” and “sickly smile,” Usher confesses his self-deception and failure to act: “Not hear it?—yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long—long—long—many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it—yet I dared not—oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!—I dared not—I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them—many, many days ago—yet I dared not— I dared not speak! ” (M 2: 416). Here Usher fills the hermeneutic gap in the conclusion, which the reader had been invited to guess at as soon as the narrator mentioned that Usher seemed to be “laboring with some oppressive secret” and “listening to some imaginary sound” (M 2: 411).

Usher’s monologue illuminates the latter part of the story in more detail:

[“]And now—to-night—Ethelred—ha! ha!—the breaking of the hermit’s door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangour of the shield!—say, rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault! Oh whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!”—here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul— “Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!” (M 2: 416)

Usher here reveals the specific fear at the crux of his agitation, namely, that Madeline is coming to reproach and possibly punish him for his failure of conscience and will. The climax simultaneously evokes the unspoken but pervasive anxiety about slave rebellion—that men and women prematurely consigned to the social death of slavery will refuse to stay dead and instead seek justifiable retribution—that hung over the antebellum South and that still gives this story its peculiar frisson , even if the cultural particulars remain unspecified. 46

One odd aspect of this final speech is Usher’s calling the narrator “madman.” We have been led by the narrator to regard Roderick as verging on insanity, and yet this accusation from Usher reminds us of the many clues the narrator had dropped about his own mental instability: his references to opium consumption, to his “insufferable gloom,” his “superstition,” and to his long familiarity with “the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as their basis” (M 2: 399). The fact that the term “madman” can easily apply at this point to either Usher or the narrator himself is also one of many instances of the radical convertibility that characterizes Poe’s work (as Joan Dyan has noted 47 ), namely, that things and people are oddly convertible and interchangeable, like Rowena and Ligeia in the tale titled after the latter.

Another odd thing about this speech, as many critics have noted, is the overly formal expression “ without the door ” for “outside the door.” This curious phrase has been used to argue that Usher has had incestuous relations with his sister while she was alive, or even after she has been entombed, since “ without the door ” could be read to mean that she has lost her hymen (the figurative door to her physical self). 48 While it is true that Poe may have followed Gothic tradition in permitting suggestions of incest to arise, the curious expression shows again how narrative content is mirrored by and inseparable from the oppressive and unreliable architectonics of the house. For instance, the door of the dungeon produces portentous sounds that the narrator and Usher hear and/or ignore.

Similarly, the whole structure of the house proves a source of crucial ambiguities. For example, while giving “little token of instability,” the house is nevertheless doomed to collapse (M 2: 400). The narrator early alludes to the fracture that ultimately causes the collapse of the house—and does so in that highly subjectivized and uncertain way that characterizes his sensibility from the outset. He reports the crack while appearing not to see it: “Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn” (M 2: 400). Both the conditional tense (“might have”) and adverb evoking uncertainty (“perhaps”) call attention to the fact that the narrator is precisely NOT the “scrutinizing observer” needed to convey the meaning of the “barely perceptible” flaw in the structure.

The house is central and present to the story in other ways as well, from the pun of the title, collapsing the family and the physical building into one entity, to the suggestively black (“ebon”) floors, hinting at the black substratum of Southern society, and the general gloom both inside and outside the mansion, as well as the crucial details of the placement of the crypt underneath the house, which causes Madeline’s muffled sounds of struggle to arise from below . John Timmerman has argued, “In no other work . . . has Poe structured this sentience, or interconnectedness, between the physical world and mental/psychological world more powerfully and tellingly” than in “Usher.” 49 In fact, Poe emphasizes the importance of the house by including the poem “The Haunted Palace,” recited by Usher in a moment of “artificial excitement,” hinting that Usher and the narrator have possibly indulged in “artificial”—that is, narcotic—diversions. Despite Poe’s reluctance to use allegory in fiction, here, as in other poems, he indulges in another artificial pleasure—an extended comparison of the face-like castle inhabited by the “monarch Thought” with Usher’s mind and reason “tottering . . . upon her . . . throne,” as the narrator remarks (M 2: 406). With this embedded poem, Poe traces connections between house and mind as explicitly as possible, framing the story—on one level—as a descent into madness by Usher, or the narrator, or both, triggered by mechanisms of denial, repression, and lack of conscience. Lindon Barrett’s association of reason with whiteness in antebellum America opens the door to a more tacitly racialized reading of “The Haunted Palace,” while Betsy Erkkila explicitly sees the “hideous throng” of the poem, which invades and overcomes the reign of reason behind “the pale door,” as an allusion to American fear of insurrection by “Negroes and lower classes.” 50

Another example of the house’s importance to the unfolding of the story is the strange importance given to Usher’s theory that the atmosphere around his house derives intimately from the fungi covering the stones of the house and the trees around it, linking all together in a close network of charged and sentient matter. This theory (discussed in a later chapter by Branka Arsić) evokes further evidence of the narrator’s unreliability. He keeps insisting that Usher’s theory is untrue and even beneath notice (“Such opinions need no comment, and I will make none”; [M 2: 408]), and yet the end of the narrative bears out Usher’s version. During the final scene, a thick gaseous and glowing cloud indeed envelopes the house before vanishing with it into the tarn.

Usher’s belief in the sentience of the physical mansion and tarn takes on a still more ironic significance when read in light of a culture whose laws defined certain human beings as things. If we consider that African Americans were bought and sold as chattel on the premise that they were not human, the debate about Usher’s belief in the consciousness of his physical environment assumes a sinister suggestiveness. It was, after all, the condition of the white Southern master to be surrounded by sentient beings whose intelligence and emotions had to be denied in order for the plantation and the slave economy itself to endure.

To conclude, “The Fall of the House of Usher” is the keystone to Poe’s later work. With suggestive indirection, the story evokes sympathy for the sufferer of a grave injury, namely, living entombment accompanied by abandonment—conscious malice on the part of the sociopathic Usher and heedless neglect in the case of the “inept” narrator, as Timmerman characterizes him. 51 Like many of Poe’s stories (including, notably, “Hop-Frog”), “Usher” betrays what Kennedy has described as “potential empathy for those in bondage.” 52 It is perhaps also no accident that Poe’s later work Eureka makes a strangely moving case for the absolute equality of all souls and all animate beings as mere figments of a larger “Divine Being” into which all will one day melt (“the sense of individual identity will be gradually merged in the general consciousness” [L1: 106]). In any case, although the narrative is dense with details and allusions never entirely accounted for by any single reading or interpretation, the emotional effect of the tale clearly depends on the horror and repugnance that readers are invited to feel as they discover the cruelty on which the unstable House of Usher stands.

1. Dennis R. Perry and Carl H. Sederholm , Poe, “The House of Usher,” and the American Gothic (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

2. Darrel Abel , “A Key to the House of Usher,” University of Toronto Quarterly 18, no. 2 (January 1849): 176–185.

3. Jonathan Elmer , Reading at the Social Limit: Affect, Mass Culture, and Edgar Allan Poe (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), 90–91.

4. Marie Bonaparte , The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe: A Psycho-Analytic Interpretation , trans. John Rodker , foreword by Sigmund Freud (London: Imago, 1949), 237–250.

5. D. H. Lawrence , Studies in Classic American Literature , ed. Ezra Greenspan , Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 66–80. Similarly, Patrick Quinn saw incest as the secret heart of the story, proposing that the main conflict staged by the tale is “the warfare taking place in Roderick . . . by his consciousness against the evil of his unconscious.” See Patrick F. Quinn , The French Face of Poe (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1954), 245.

6. G. R. Thompson , Poe’s Fiction: Romantic Irony in the Gothic Tales (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1973), 96.

7. J. R. Hammond , An Edgar Allan Poe Companion (London: Macmillan Press, 1981), 71.

8. Eric W. Carlson , “Tales of Psychal Conflict: ‘William Wilson’ and ‘The Fall of the House of Usher,’ ” in A Companion to Poe Studies , ed. Eric W. Carlson (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), 188–208.

Darrel Abel, “A Key to the House of Usher,” 179.

10. Michael J. Hoffman , “The House of Usher and Negative Romanticism,” Studies in Romanticism 4, no. 3 (Spring 1965): 158–168.

This is not to say that Poe never uses allegory at all. He certainly uses it in his poetry, and stories such as “The Masque of the Red Death” lend themselves well to allegorical readings, but the emotional and aesthetic effect of a tale is far more likely to be his main focus.

For more on Poe’s irony, see Elmer’s Reading at the Social Limit.

13. Joseph N. Riddel , “The ‘Crypt’ of Edgar Poe,” boundary 2 7, no. 3 (Spring 1979): 117–144, 130.

Riddel, “The ‘Crypt’ of Edgar Poe,” 128–129.

15. Harriet Hustis , “ ‘Reading Encrypted but Persistent’: The Gothic of Reading and Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher,’ ” Studies in American Fiction 27, no. 1 (March 22, 1999): 3–20.

16. Scott Peeples , “Poe’s ‘constructiveness’ and ‘The Fall of the House of Usher,’ ” in The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe , ed. Kevin J. Hayes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 178–190.

Peeples, “Poe’s ‘Constructiveness’ and ‘The Fall of the House of Usher,’ ” 182.

Peeples, “Poe’s ‘Constructiveness’ and ‘The Fall of the House of Usher,’ ” 188.

19. John Carlos Rowe , “Poe, Antebellum Slavery and Modern Criticism,” in Poe’s Pym: Critical Explorations , ed. Richard Kopley (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992), 117.

20. Toni Morrison , Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 31–33.

21. Teresa Goddu , Gothic America: Narrative History, and Nation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 93.

22. Lesley Ginsberg , “Slavery and the Gothic Horror of Poe’s ‘The Black Cat,’ ” in American Gothic: New Interventions in a National Narrative , ed. Robert K. Martin & Eric Savoy (Iowa City: Iowa University Press, 1889), 123, 122.

23. Whalen, Terence. Edgar Allan Poe and the Masses: The Political Economy of Literature in Antebellum America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 111–146. For an earlier discussion of the controversy surrounding the “Paulding-Drayton” review, see Dana D. Nelson , The Word in Black and White: Reading “Race ” in American Literature, 1638–1867 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 90–92. Stefan Schöberlein confirms that N. Beverley Tucker wrote the review in “Poe or Not Poe? A Stylometric Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s Writings,” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 32, no. 3 (2017): 643–659.

Whalen, Edgar Allan Poe and the Masses , 111.

25. John Carlos Rowe , “Edgar Allan Poe’s Imperial Fantasy and the American Frontier,” in Romancing the Shadow: Poe and Race , ed. by J. Gerald and Liliane Weissberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 100.

26. Leland S. Person , “Poe’s Philosophy of Amalgamation: Reading Racism in the Tales,” in Romancing the Shadow , 207.

27. J. Gerald Kennedy , “‘Trust No Man’: Poe, Douglass, and the Culture of Slavery,” in Romancing the Shadow , 225–257.

28. Sam Worley , “ The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym and the Ideology of Slavery,” ESQ 40 (1994): 222.

29. George Fitzhugh , Cannibals All! Or Slaves Without Masters (Richmond, VA: A. Morris, 1857), chap. 32, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35481/35481-h/35481-h.htm .

Fitzhugh, Cannibals All! Or Slaves Without Masters , Chap. 22, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35481/35481-h/35481-h.htm .

31. Harriet Beecher Stowe , Uncle Tom’s Cabin , ed. Elizabeth Ammons (New York: W.W. Norton, 1994), 7.

Quoted in Ginsberg, “Slavery and the Gothic Horror of Poe’s ‘The Black Cat,’ ” 100.

Quoted in Ginsberg, “Slavery and the Gothic Horror of Poe’s ‘The Black Cat,’ ” 101.

35. Toni Morrison , “Melville and the Language of Denial,” The Nation , January 7, 2014, https://www.thenation.com/article/melville-and-language-denial/ .

36. See, for example, J. Gerald Kennedy’s short overview of these approaches in Strange Nation: Literary Nationalism and Cultural Conflict in the Age of Poe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 67.

37. Harry Levin , The Power of Blackness: Hawthorne, Poe, Melville (New York: Vintage Books, 1960), 160–161.

38. Maurice S. Lee , “Absolute Poe,” in Slavery, Philosophy, and American Literature, 1830–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 23. Stephen Dougherty has also recently read the tale as a “nightmarish prophecy of the cultural and political defeat of American slave society,” only with a Foucaultian focus on “modern, bourgeois identity” and miscegenation, in “Foucault in the House of Usher: Some Historical Permutations in Poe’s Gothic,” Papers on Language & Literature 37, number 1 (2001): 19.

39. The chief abolitionist newspaper took Nat Turner’s revolt as the beginning of the end for the South, writing dramatically that “the first drops of blood, which are but the prelude to a deluge from the gathering clouds, have fallen” ( The Liberator , Boston, September 3, 1831). The writer warns that the entire country will be the scene of bloodshed and righteous vengeance if slaves are not immediately freed, and that more revolts like Turner’s will naturally follow: “Woe to this guilty land, unless she speedily repents of her evil doings! The blood of millions of her sons cried aloud for redress! IMMEDIATE EMANCIPATION can alone save her from the vengeance of Heaven” (reprinted in Henry Irving Tragle , The Southampton Slave Revolt of 1831: A Compilation of Source Material [Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1971], 64 ). My source for the implications of the combustible dungeon is G. R. Thompson, Poe’s Fiction , 94. For my own discussion of this, see The Poetics and Politics of the American Gothic (Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2010), 51.

40. Orlando Patterson , Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985).

Although this review was anonymous, and Thomas Mabbott attributes it to someone else, G. R. Thompson has argued that it is “almost certainly” written by Poe, and as editor of the Library of America volume of Poe’s Essays and Reviews so included it.

42. An excellent discussion of conscience in antebellum literature is Richard H. Brodhead, in “Sparing the Rod: Discipline and Fiction in Antebellum America,” Representations 21 (Winter 1988): 67–96 , where he quotes an antebellum guidebook in which the conscience is described as something that seems uncanny for children: “another than themselves, and yet themselves” (79).

43. Francis Wayland , The Elements of Moral Science , ed. Joseph Blau (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1963), 49.

44. J. Gerald Kennedy even muses that “without employment or income, Poe must nevertheless have drawn occasional, ironic comparisons between his circumstances and those of the slave.” See “A Brief Biography,” in A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe , ed. J. Gerald Kennedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 31.

Most notably, Jean Epstein’s La Chute de la maison Usher (1928).

46. Madeline’s role as embodiment of repressed conscience is also paralleled by similar characters in other Poe stories, such as William Wilson’s double, already discussed, or the “mummer” who stands in the shadow of the “ebony clock” (one more allusion to the black slave population of the South?) in “The Masque of the Red Death” and causes the death of Prince Prospero, who had also tried to lock his people’s suffering outside his castle gates and mask the sound with revels. All these figures function as personifications of stifled conscience returning to exact justice. For a discussion of Southern anxieties about black violence and revenge, see Elizabeth Young , Black Frankenstein: The Making of an American Metaphor (New York: New York Press, 2008).

47. Joan Dayan , “Amorous Bondage: Poe, Ladies, and Slaves,” in The American Face of Edgar Allan Poe , ed. Shawn Rosenheim and Stephen Rachman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 179–209.

48. See David Leverenz , “Poe and Gentry Virginia,” in The American Face of Edgar Allan Poe , 221.

49. John H. Timmerman , “House of Mirrors: Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher,’ ” in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and Other Stories , ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009), 163.

50. Lindon Barrett , “Presence of Mind,” in Romancing the Shadow , 172 ; Betsy Erkkila , “The Poetics of Whiteness: Poe and the Racial Imaginary,” in Romancing the Shadow , 58.

Timmerman, “House of Mirrors: Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher,’ ” 160.

52. J. Gerald Kennedy , “‘Trust No Man’: Poe, Douglass, and the Culture of Slavery,” in Romancing the Shadow , 237.

Goddu, Theresa A. Gothic America: Narrative, History, and Nation . New York: Columbia University Press, 1997 .

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Hayes, Kevin J. , ed. The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002 .

Kennedy, J. Gerald , ed. A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001 .

Kennedy, J. Gerald , and Liliane Weissberg , eds. Romancing the Shadow: Poe and Race . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001 .

Martin, Robert K. , and Eric Savoy , eds. American Gothic: Interventions in a National Narrative . Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1998 .

Perry, Dennis R. , and Carl H. Sederholm . Poe, “The House of Usher,” and the American Gothic . London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009 .

Rosenheim, Shawn , and Stephen Rachman , eds. The American Face of Edgar Allan Poe . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995 .

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The Fall of the House of Usher Edgar Allan Poe

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The Fall of the House of Usher Essays

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Gothic Influences of The Monk on “The Fall of the House of Usher” Kellie Veltri College

Matthew Lewis’ The Monk , published in 1796, built on the Gothic tradition established by the earliest authors in the genre, including Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe. Although it was not the first Gothic novel, it was one of the earliest and...

The Ghosts, The Mad, and The Undead: A Search for Elements of Gothic Literature in Jane Eyre and “The Fall of the House of Usher” Joe DiConsiglio College

Charlotte Brontë and Edgar Allen Poe use elements of the gothic in Jane Eyre, and “The Fall of the House of Usher,” respectively, to provoke individual feelings of suspense and fear. As is common to the gothic tradition, both writers use choppy,...

Home — Essay Samples — Literature — The Fall of The House of Usher — Comparing “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “House Taken Over”

Comparing "The Fall of The House of Usher" and "House Taken Over"

Categories: House Taken Over The Fall of The House of Usher

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Published: Aug 31, 2023

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Atmosphere and mood, themes of isolation and decay, narrative techniques: first-person vs. third-person, symbolism and allegory, exploration of the unseen and supernatural, cultural and historical contexts, conclusion: reflecting on dual dimensions of fear and mystery.

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Comparative Essay Example: The Fall of the House of Usher and House Taken Over

When reading a piece of literature there could be any type of mood. In two stories “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “House Taken Over” there were two very different moods. The connotations of each of these stories make each reader express a different feeling. In the story by Edgar Allen Poe “The Fall of the House of Usher”, we are introduced to Gothic literature. The story by Julio Cortazar, “House Taken Over”, we find Magical Realism. Even though the moods of these two stories are diverse they do have some similarities along with their differences.

Gothic literature is a literary genre that began in England in the late 1700’s. This style refers to medieval times which were represented by being dark and gloomy. The story “The Fall of the House of Usher” was a piece of Gothic literature. In this story a brother, Rodrick Usher, and sister are both near death living in an eerie old house. Poe states in, “The Fall of the House of Usher” that “I know not how it was--but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit” (Poe 1). That evidence shows that the whole setting of this story is creepy and gloomy. Another example of this story being Gothic Literature is in paragraph 45 through 46 it exclaims “A sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I saw that he spoke low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my presence,” it then goes on to say, “We have put her living in the tomb.” These quotes are explaining how the brother in this story, Rodrick Usher, buried his sister alive. The effect this story has on the reader is appalling and intriguing at the same time. This story draws readers into the plot with use of words of a scary connotation to keep them wanting more.

Magical realism is a literary genre closely related with some Latin American twentieth century authors. It came to terms as fantasy and reality that adds some unrealistic elements to real life. In “House Taken Over” there are many elements that make it a good example of Magical Realism. This story is what happens to a brother and sister spending their lives in a house together. In this short story it quotes, “We rose at seven in the morning and got the cleaning done, and about eleven I left Irene to finish off whatever rooms and went to the kitchen” (Cortazar 2). This clearly shows the reality in the story because this happens all the time in everyday life. The next element expressed in the story is supernatural and unreal. In paragraph six of Cortazar's “House Taken Over” it states, “The sound came through muted and indistinct, a chair being knocked over onto the carpet or the muffled buzzing of a conversation.” This fantasy in this story is what makes it a good example of magical realism. The effect this story gives the reader is a mix between fiction and nonfiction, which makes the piece of literature enjoyable to read.

Despite the different connotations of these stories, both stories have the same original storyline. Both “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “House Taken Over” there is a set of siblings, both sister and brother. The two pairs both live in old spacious houses that their family passed down to them. In “The Fall of the House of Usher” it quotes, “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 3). Also in “House Taken Over” it says, “...simple marriage of sister and brother was the indispensable end to a line established in this house by our grandparents” (Corazar 2). These two pieces of evidence show how these two pieces are similar.

In conclusion, in “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “House Taken Over” there are two very different moods. Each story has its own connotation that it gives its reader. Poe’s story, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, introduces us to Gothic literature. In the story by Cortazar, “House Taken Over”, we find Magical Realism. Both stories are perfect examples of their literature type. Although the moods of these two stories are different, their stories are comparable.

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Trump Has Long Prized Certain Tactics. His Trial Has Highlighted Them.

The former president’s criminal trial has underscored what he values: loyalty, beauty, press coverage and using allies as bullies.

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Vivek Ramaswamy speaks into several news media microphones as Cory Mills, Byron Donalds and Doug Burgum look on from behind him. All of the men are wearing a dark suit, white shirt and red tie.

By Maggie Haberman and Jonah E. Bromwich

There are few distractions in the courtroom while Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial is in session. Lawyers and witnesses talk. Onlookers are tense and silent. And a squadron of armed court officers and Secret Service agents guards the room.

But as Michael D. Cohen explained this week why he had broken with his former boss in 2018, after saying he spent more than a decade doing Mr. Trump’s bidding, reporters turned away from him to stare at one of the trial’s most noticeable interruptions.

A parade of Mr. Trump’s Republican allies — a governor and a former presidential candidate, among others — marched into the courtroom, living examples of the loyalty that Mr. Cohen had just described, and would soon disavow.

Central aspects of Mr. Trump’s operating style are key to the complex story the Manhattan district attorney’s office has told. And those hallmarks are all around the courthouse.

Prosecutors are relying on Mr. Cohen’s testimony, even as Mr. Trump’s lead lawyer, Todd Blanche, took a sledgehammer to the former fixer’s credibility this week, forcing him to acknowledge times in the past when he has lied under oath.

But whether Mr. Trump is convicted, acquitted or the case ends with a hung jury, the trial has underscored the former president’s favored tactics and behavior over the decades — using allies as bullies, obsessing over the press, placing a premium on beauty and encouraging shows of loyalty. That recognizable pattern has helped him win one election and may propel him to a second victory, as he has reshaped the Republican Party into an entity that stands for whatever Mr. Trump wants.

Mr. Trump begins each court day contorting his face into a scowl when cameras come to take his picture, before the jury enters — a visage he has crowed about as looking “tough.”

Most days, Mr. Trump has been joined by Boris Epshteyn, Mr. Trump’s top legal adviser and a controversial figure within the former president’s team. Mr. Epshteyn was previously represented by Mr. Blanche, whom Mr. Epshteyn helped usher into the Trump fold.

Mr. Epshteyn started showing up in court for the first time the day after he was indicted himself, in Arizona. That indictment was in connection with efforts to create a slate of so-called fake electors to help keep Mr. Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election and refused to concede. Mr. Epshteyn was seen in court recently passing to a journalist a printout of a Truth Social post in which Mr. Trump mocked a frequent critic, the lawyer George Conway, who has been in the courtroom covering the case for The Atlantic.

Former female aides have testified to the former president’s deep love of his wife. But even the presence of those aides and current ones who travel with him — well-groomed and well-coiffed — emphasizes the premium Mr. Trump puts on being seen as surrounded by attractive women. Mr. Trump’s interest in being seen as a sought-after playboy was on display for decades before he became president.

That behavior was at the heart of the “Access Hollywood” recording, on which Mr. Trump is heard boasting about grabbing women by their genitals. Prosecutors have argued the recording was part of why Mr. Trump wanted to suppress a story from the porn star Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 election.

And the number of elected officials or former candidates arriving to defend Mr. Trump has been a reflection of his constant demand that people rise up on his behalf and affirm him, voiced privately and on social media.

In the early days of the trial, almost no one showed up with Mr. Trump, despite discussions for weeks within his world about who might fill the two rows behind the defense table that are reserved for the defendant’s lawyers, support staff and family.

But Mr. Trump complained to several people that he wanted to see more allies in the courtroom, and the word spread among elected officials who have long seen how Mr. Trump prizes loyalty. Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, showed up in the courtroom one day, which he said was at the urging of Mr. Trump’s top adviser, Susie Wiles. He became a beacon of sorts for the ranks of politicians who would soon appear. There were House members, state attorneys general and a governor last week, all filling seats reserved for the defense.

There were also two contenders to be Mr. Trump’s running mate, Vivek Ramaswamy and J.D. Vance. Their presence showed they were backing a presumptive nominee who has repeatedly complained that his previous vice president, Mike Pence, was insufficiently tough in the final days of Mr. Trump’s term.

Even the House speaker, a staunch conservative who has in the past voiced an aversion to pornography, arrived outside the courthouse to defend the former president less than a week after the porn star left the stand.

Inside the building, Mr. Trump’s entourage has stretched the bounds of what courthouse rules allow. Some of his allies take advantage of exceptions granted to lawyers and support staff by sitting in the defense rows, using cellphones that are banned elsewhere in the courtroom to send texts or post on social media about the proceedings.

Photography and video-recording are strictly prohibited inside state courtrooms. Still, the fact that news cameras have been in the courthouse hallway — as has been done for other high-profile defendants — has allowed Mr. Trump to speak to the press, and created an opportunity for his allies to create content on his behalf.

“Standing back and standing by, Mr. President,” Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida posted on X on Thursday, above a picture of himself standing behind Mr. Trump while the former president talked in the hallway. Those words echoed Mr. Trump’s own back in 2020, when he gave a message to the far-right extremist group the Proud Boys during a debate with President Biden.

Some allies have made plain their goal was to attack trial witnesses in ways that Mr. Trump has complained he has been prevented from doing himself because of a gag order that he’s already been fined for violating.

“Hopefully we’ll have more and more senators and congressmen go up every day to represent him and be able to go out and overcome this gag order, and that’s one of the reasons we went — is to be able to speak our piece for President Trump,” Senator Tommy Tuberville, the Republican of Alabama who attended the trial on Tuesday, said.

On Tuesday, some of the same allies who interrupted Mr. Cohen’s testimony filmed a video of themselves in the holding room the defense uses, again testing the bounds of what is permitted. Mr. Trump’s son Eric, his daughter-in-law, Lara, his former rival Mr. Ramaswamy and two House members filmed a video titled “Breaking Video From the Courthouse.”

“We need you to stand with him,” Representative Byron Donalds of Florida said in the video, which was sent around in a Trump fund-raising email.

On Thursday, after prosecutors mentioned the interruption during Mr. Cohen’s testimony two days earlier, Justice Juan M. Merchan advised Mr. Blanche not to let it happen again. The defense lawyer protested, saying he had “less than zero control over what is happening.” And when Justice Merchan asked him if he was expecting anybody else that day, Mr. Blanche pleaded ignorance.

“Your Honor, I have no idea,” he said, adding, “No, I’m not expecting anybody else. But I might be wrong.”

He hardly needed anybody else. Mr. Trump’s entourage that day included 11 members of Congress, as well as Mr. Epshteyn and Eric Trump. The group had already taken their seats behind the defense table, waiting to see Mr. Cohen cross-examined.

Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent reporting on the 2024 presidential campaign, down ballot races across the country and the investigations into former President Donald J. Trump. More about Maggie Haberman

Jonah E. Bromwich covers criminal justice in New York, with a focus on the Manhattan district attorney’s office and state criminal courts in Manhattan. More about Jonah E. Bromwich

Our Coverage of the Trump Hush-Money Trial

News and Analysis

As Donald Trump’s criminal trial enters its final stage, several legal experts say the case remains the prosecution’s to lose .

Michael Cohen, Trump’s one-time fixer and the key witness in the trial, faced hours of bruising questions from a defense lawyer who sought to destroy his credibility with jurors.

The trial has underscored Trump’s favored tactics and behavior over the decades — using allies as bullies, obsessing over the press, placing a premium on beauty and encouraging shows of loyalty.

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92 The Fall of the House of Usher Essay Topics & Examples
In your The Fall of the House of Usher essay, you might want to focus on the character analysis, themes, symbolism, or historical context of the short story. Whether you'll have to write an analytical, explanatory, or critical assignment, this article will be helpful. Here we've gathered top title ideas, essay examples, and thesis statements on The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Poe.
A Summary and Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Fall of the House of
'The Fall of the House of Usher' is an 1839 short story by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49), 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 ...
Poe's Stories: The Fall of the House of Usher Summary & Analysis
Analysis. The narrator of "House of Usher" is passing on horseback through a dull part of the country on a grim day, when he comes across the House of Usher. The sight of the house fills him with dread for some reason. He calls this feeling "unsufferable" because it is not accompanied by the romantic feeling that sights of desolation often ...
The Fall of the House of Usher Essays and Criticism
PDF Cite Share. Of the many short stories Edgar Allan Poe wrote, "The Fall of the House of Usher" is likely the most cerebral. There is little action to carry the plot, no trips into a catacomb ...
The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allan Poe
SOURCE: "'The Fall of the House of Usher': An Apocalyptic Vision," in University of Mississippi Studies in English, Vol. 3, 1982, pp. 53-63. [In the following essay, Gargano theorizes that ...
Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher
Long considered Edgar Allan Poe 's masterpiece, "The Fall of the House of Usher" continues to intrigue new generations of readers. The story has a tantalizingly horrific appeal, and since its publication in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, scholars, critics, and general readers continue to grapple with the myriad possible reasons for ...
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It was not until the 1941 biography by A. H. Quinn, Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Autobiography, that a balanced view was provided of Poe, his work, and the relationship between the author's life ...
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The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe Essay. The understanding of the American Literary Canon is a fundamental aspect of literature that everybody should embrace. Reading through "the fall of the house of usher" by Edgar Allan Poe, I realized that the classification of artistic content based on the title might be misleading at ...
The Fall of the House of Usher Study Guide
Summary. This study guide and infographic for Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher offer summary and analysis on themes, symbols, and other literary devices found in the text. Explore Course Hero's library of literature materials, including documents and Q&A pairs.
The Fall of the House of Usher Summary & Complete Analysis
"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.
The Fall Of The House Of Usher Essay Essay
The Fall of the House of Usher is a classic example of Gothic fiction. The story is set in a dark and spooky house, and it is filled with suspenseful scenes and mysterious characters. The plot revolves around the fall of the house of Usher, and the events that lead up to it. The story is narrated by an unnamed person who tells the story of his ...
The Fall of the House of Usher Essay Topics
Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Study Guide of "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to ...
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Study Guide for The Fall of the House of Usher. 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. About The Fall of the House of Usher; The Fall of the House of Usher Summary; Character List ...
"The Fall of the House of Usher" and the Architecture of Unreliability
For example, Joseph Riddel's 1979 essay sees in "Usher" a self-reflexive fable about the absence that lies at the center of any text, an absence of meaning, presence, and life, except as the simulacrum of a simulacrum. 13 Riddel argues this absence is allegorized in the story by the house of Usher itself, which is constructed upon a crypt ...
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The Fall of the House of Usher. The mind-body divide, or mind-body dualism, was a philosophical theory that gained popularity in the seventeenth century and flourished thereafter. In this theory, the mind and body are separate entities, and in literature, this meant that men...
The Fall of the House of Usher
The analogy of house as both home and lineage—a clever double entendre—is made once again explicit in the final sentence. Because the mansion, as well as both Usher siblings, have been destroyed in the collapse, "the fragments of the 'HOUSE OF USHER'" refer to the remains of the building as well as Madeline and Roderick.
The Fall of the House of Usher
Essays and criticism on Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher - Critical Discussion Select an area of the website to search The Fall of the House of Usher All Study Guides Homework Help ...
Comparing "The Fall of The House of Usher" and "House Taken Over"
As the curtains of literary comparison draw open, two haunting tales emerge from the shadows: Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" and Julio Cortázar's "House Taken Over." These stories, though separated by time and cultural contexts, share thematic threads that explore fear, mystery, and human vulnerability.
Comparative Essay Example: The Fall of the House of Usher and House
Both "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "House Taken Over" there is a set of siblings, both sister and brother. The two pairs both live in old spacious houses that their family passed down to them. In "The Fall of the House of Usher" it quotes, "House of Usher--an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the ...
Fall of the House of Usher Essay
The Fall Of The House Of Usher. "The Fall of the House of Usher" has been noted as one of Edgar Allan Poe's most famous short stories. The story begins when the narrator arrives at the house of his friend, Roderick Usher. Roderick is ill and has been living his life deeply reclusive. His sister Madeline suffers from a sensory disorder and ...
PDF The Fall of the House of Usher
During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.
Essay on 'The Fall of the House of Usher': Madeline
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Trump Has Long Prized Certain Tactics. His Trial Has Highlighted Them
Most days, Mr. Trump has been joined by Boris Epshteyn, Mr. Trump's top legal adviser and a controversial figure within the former president's team. Mr. Epshteyn was previously represented by ...

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The Fall of the House of Usher Essays

The Influence of Edgar Allan Poe's Predecessors on His Work Anonymous

Domains in 'The Fall of the House of Usher' L. DeSousa

Structural Purposes and Aesthetic Sensations of the Narrator's Language of "Fall of the House of Usher" within the Opening Paragraph Anonymous

Sonnet “X” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” Andrea Brady

Uncertainty: Poe’s Means, Pynchon’s End Joshua Nobleman

The House of Usher: A Window to the Soul Susan Matassa

Gothic Poe Peggie R. Hale College

Peripheral Narration and Dark Mystery; Using the Narrator to Deepen the Tale in The Fall of the House of Usher Maddie Labon College

Roderick and Madeline: The Fall of a House Divided Timothy Sexton College

Brief sentences in Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” Dominika Gregušová 12th Grade

Young Adult Inerpretations of the Gothic Classics Anonymous College

The Fall of the House of Usher Madelyn Swenson College

The relation between Roderick Usher and the family mansion Bianka Bozsik College

The Fall of Southern Aristocracy, and the Fall of the South: An Examination of Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and Glasgow’s “Jordan’s End” Dessi M. Gravely College

Poe and Faulkner: How the Gothic and Southern Gothic Influenced Literature Anonymous College

Illuminating Poe's Interior Spaces Maximilian Gonzalez College

Mind-Body Dualism in Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” Jessica Harrell College

The Feminist Undertones Gothic Literature Julia Spada 11th Grade

A Psychoanalysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Ligeia” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” Marcel Cantu College

'The Fall of the House of Usher': An Exploration of Exteriority, Interiority and Uncanny Possibilities Anonymous 11th Grade

Gothic Influences of The Monk on “The Fall of the House of Usher” Kellie Veltri College

The Ghosts, The Mad, and The Undead: A Search for Elements of Gothic Literature in Jane Eyre and “The Fall of the House of Usher” Joe DiConsiglio College

Comparing "The Fall of The House of Usher" and "House Taken Over"

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