The fall of the House of Usher

Context: Gothic Literature: While many of Poe's works fall into other genres, such as science fiction or detective fiction, "The Fall of
the House of Usher" is situated firmly in the Gothic genre, which features mystery, dread, death, romance, and elements of the
supernatural. This is indicated through the narrator's enumeration of the details of the house's architecture and setting. Many
crumbling family castles fill Gothic literature; this story is no exception. The setting is a family manor far from daily life and
civilization. The narrator even explicitly points to the Gothic, as he enters the house through a "Gothic archway." Like Harold
Walpole's 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, generally seen as the first work of Gothic literature, this story is full of family secrets,
mysterious noises, lingering illnesses, odd sounds, irrational events, doors opening of their own accord, hidden compartments,
intimate and disturbing family relationships, and, of course, an emphasis on the medieval past. Finally, Gothic literature is known for
its celebration of intense passions, madness, and desire. "The Fall of the House of Usher" is rich with such dark passions, which can
be seen in Roderick's moods, the unnatural weather, and the narrator's inability to understand what he sees. The Sublime: In the
opening paragraphs of this story, the narrator consciously grapples with his impression of the countryside through which he's riding.
He tries to make sense of the oppressive, gloomy mood the setting evokes in him, and to instead focus on the sublime or the
elevated or extraordinary quality of the experience. He fails at both. This failure says a great deal about the power of the locale in
the story. Edmund Burke's Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757) defines the
sublime in several overlapping ways. The sublime evokes thoughts of danger and pain. It can be found in art or experience. It
generates the most intense emotions a mind can experience. These emotions transcend the rational. It is associated with
astonishment, and with a sense of infinity or grand dimensions. Beautiful objects are beautiful in part because they are regular, but
sublime experiences are uneven and overwhelming. Much of Poe's fiction strives for a moment of the sublime, when intense
emotions overwhelm readers. In this story, the narrator's attempt to try to conceive of the landscape in terms of the sublime tells
readers a lot about him. He is an intellectual, familiar with 17th- and 18th-century philosophy. Thinking so consciously about what
he's experiencing, how it fits together, and how it affects him also shows him to be exceptionally reflective. Period Fears: The fear of
being buried alive started to become common in the 18th century and became even more widespread in the 19th century. This fear
became so widespread that an organization was founded to address it: The Society for the Prevention of People Being Buried Alive.
An Italian thinker, Enrico Morselli, gave this anxiety a formal name: taphephobia. It isn't exactly clear why people became more
concerned about being buried alive during this time. It appears to be a mix of genuine events (a few people were buried alive), which
spread as news via the emerging mass media and took on the qualities of urban legends, combined with a more general emphasis on
death and the afterlife during the period. While no one wants to be buried alive, this fear would perhaps make Madeline's fate seem
more horrific to readers in Poe's time than today. A second, lesser 19th-century fear was a concern over "febrile miasma," the
medical concept that as living material decayed in a swamp, it tainted the air. This would have contributed to the ill health of the
Usher twins and might explain Madeline's return from the grave as a hallucination. The narrator suggests something along these
lines when Roderick wakes him and reveals the storm, saying the "rank miasma of the tarn" might be responsible for people seeing
strange things.
Characters:

Themes: Sanity versus Insanity: Poe guides readers to speculate about how the characters' minds work (or don't work). This
narrative pressure starts with the narrator's becoming aware of how the landscape and the House of Usher shape his mood: "with
the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit." It has more power over him than it should. This
concern over sanity starts before he enters this landscape, though, as he reports that Roderick's letter asking him to visit
communicated "nervous agitation." This concern for Roderick's sanity deepens once he sees his old friend again, as Roderick changes
from one mood to another very quickly and reports some disturbing ideas, such as his belief about how his family house is shaping
his mind.
The narrator questions the sanity of Roderick and Madeline as they slip further from reality, and he begins to worry about his own
mental health. He has reason to worry. From the moment he enters the area around the house, the narrator feels it affect his spirit
inexplicably. The longer the narrator stays in the house, the more his own mental state is affected. While the narrator tries to
distract Roderick after Madeline's apparent death, Roderick even calls him a madman for not recognizing what is going on. Since
Roderick may be correct in this moment, the question of who is crazy and who isn't shifts: maybe Roderick's senses truly are
heightened and the things he hears are real. Deterioration: Both the literal, physical house of Usher and the dynastic House of
Usher are falling apart. The house's physical condition seems tied to the surrounding landscape, as if it is covered with fungus and
cobwebs, in part because that's what the setting demands. The house's physical decay is mirrored in the state of Roderick and
Madeline. Both twins are suffering from strange illnesses that parallel the house's condition. As the house is crumbling away, so
Madeline seems to be wasting away. As the house is discontinuous and contradictory (according to the narrator's reports in the
story's first chapters), so is Roderick warm and friendly, yet pale as a corpse.

Both Roderick and the house itself fall apart after Madeline's death. Roderick increasingly loses control of his emotional and mental
faculties, growing more sensitive and nervous. He later dies when Madeline reappears and collapses on him. The house, in turn, then
collapses, falling into the lake. Fantasy versus Reality: Like the narrator's concern over how the landscape affects his mood, the
question of what is real and what is fantasy emerges early in the story and continues throughout. The narrator compares his early
impressions to the dreams of an opium smoker. There are multiple moments in the story when the blurry and confusing question of
reality versus fantasy is especially driven home. For example, early in the story the narrator looks at the literal house of Usher in its
reflection in the lake, rather than looking at it directly, which results in odd impressions of the house. The narrator's description of
the Usher family home seems impossible. How can a house be everywhere decayed, but still intact? Reality seems to blur and shift in
several directions, and there are multiple forces at play in shaping the characters' reality or encouraging escape into fantasy. Any
death in a family can produce extreme emotion. The death of a sibling and one's last living relative is likely to be even more
disturbing. Furthermore, people can entertain fantasies anywhere, but put them in an isolated and ancient location like the House of
Usher, and they are perhaps more likely to indulge in fantasy. Speculation and fantasy are even more likely if one is unfamiliar with a
place, or if it is strange, as the Usher home is for the narrator. One's mind is shaped in part by one's surroundings, and the narrator
himself speculates that the Usher library influences the odd turns Roderick's mind takes. The real and imaginary become
indistinguishable as Roderick's ballad comes true and the story of Ethelred mingles with the sounds of Madeline's escape from the
tomb. Though the narrator says he chose the book he's reading essentially at random—it was the only one at hand—the sounds
described in its pages synchronize with the events completely. The sound effects for the knight's battle work as the noises Madeline
makes when she's fighting her way out of her vault. However, given that Madeline has been extremely ill and the vault is sealed
deep underground, the idea that Madeline could have escaped unaided is probably a fantasy of its own. If the reader understands
the story in Jungian, psychological terms, then there is no "reality" to Madeline's "escape." In this reading, the story is a Jungian
parable, a psychological analysis of Roderick's mind or perhaps the mind of the narrator, depending upon the identity of the true
"madman" of the story.

Symbols: Eyes: In Western culture, the eyes are the most symbolic sense organ, and sight the most symbolic sense. An old saying
claims the eyes are the window to the soul, and in many ways, contemporary psychology confirms this. The eyes communicate a
person's emotional state, and changes in perceived illumination relate to changes in mood, as in the idea of being bright-eyed. When
the light goes out of someone's eyes, they become sad, depressed, or, in the end, they die. In this story, the first times the narrator
mentions eyes, it is the House of Usher's "eye-like windows." These two mentions in the first page personify the house: before
Roderick suggests the house has intelligence, the narrator has already done so using images. The narrator notes these eyes are
"vacant," which suggests this intelligence is disturbed in some way. The narrator comments explicitly and repeatedly on Roderick's
eyes. When he first arrives at the house, the narrator finds Roderick's eyes particularly luminous, indicating a strong or special spirit.
However, once Madeline dies, the light goes out of Roderick's eyes. At the very least this symbolizes a blow to his spirit, and may be
a kind of spiritual death foreshadowing his actual bodily death. House of Usher: The narrator explicitly tells readers that the
peasants who live around the House of Usher have fused the physical house, the single line of inheritance, and the family into a
unified whole. The living Ushers are the house of Usher, and the House of Usher is the house of Usher. They are one and the same.
Descriptions of the physical house, which start in the first paragraph, are also descriptions of the House of Usher: like their house,
the family is isolated and melancholy and may exist beyond the reach of reason. Writing on archetypal symbolism in this story, or
the inclusion of universal characters, symbols, themes, or settings such as the hero or good versus evil, for example, psychology
professor Colin Martindale also suggests a second symbolic meaning for the house (and notes that Poe makes this one explicit in the
story as well, through his use of "The Haunted Palace"): the house stands for Roderick's mind or personality. In this reading, the
narrator is trying to help Roderick come to peace with the content of his mind, which includes his twin sister, who is an example of
the anima, or the unconscious. The decay and eventual collapse of the house then become the decay and eventual collapse of
Roderick's mind. Weather: From the start of this story to the end, weather plays a major role. The narrator mentions the weather in
the opening line, commenting on how low and oppressive the clouds are. They limit vision, and so limit his understanding of the
house and situation. When the narrator wakes up in the night after Madeline's death, Roderick opens the window to reveal a
strange storm that is almost physically impossible. At the same time, there is a whirlwind blowing intensely and clouds so low they
touch the house's towers. Poe here taps into the longstanding symbolic association between the sky and the spiritual realm: the
term "heaven" or "heavens" is used for both. The weather seems to reflect the spiritual turmoil of the characters. Throughout the
story, but especially once Madeline dies and Roderick enters an agitated state, the weather outside the house mirrors rising chaos
inside the house. The distinction between the two fades, and the external weather becomes interwoven with the emotional reality
within the house. When the narrator wakes in the night, he listens for sounds during pauses in the storm. When Madeline finally
returns from the vault, the house breaks apart and the weather enters (and destroys) the house. These powerful emotions are no
longer at bay: they completely overwhelm Roderick, until he collapses and only the storm is left.

Primordial Symbols: Psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) theorized that all humans share certain inborn impulses and concepts
residing in the mind at the unconscious level. For example, all humans react to sunlight in the same way, perceiving it as a symbol
of joy, happiness, glory, optimism, truth, a new beginning, or God. Likewise, humans associate dark forests (like the one in "Young
Goodman Brown") with danger, obscurity, confusion, and the unknown or with evil, sin, and death. Jung termed external stimuli
(such as dark forests) primordial symbols—primordial meaning existing from the beginning of time.  
.......Examples of other primordial symbols you may encounter in your study of literature include the following: a river (the passage
of time), overcast sky (gloom, depression, despair), lamb (innocence, vulnerability), violent storm (wrath, inconsolable grief), flowers
(delicacy, perishability, beauty), mountain (obstacle, challenge), eagle (majesty, freedom) the color white (purity, innocence), the
color red (anger, passion, war, blood), the color green (new life, hope), water (birth or rebirth), autumn (old age), winter (death).