The Fall Of The House Of Usher Analysis Essay

The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allan Poe utilizes his famously grim writing to tell the story of
an unnamed narrator witnessing the literal fall of the Usher family -- Roderick and Madeline of
Usher. While the plotline itself is dark and mysterious, Poe employs various literary devices to fully
express the creepiness of the story. One useful literary device used in this story is setting. The setting
amplifies the emotions and state of the characters and helps to clearly define themes throughout
the tale. Poe uses an ominous and eerie setting to convey the central themes relating to madness,
family, and fear while unifying the story under the single effect of terror.

One central theme seen throughout this story is that madness can derive from one’s environment,
including not only physical surroundings but the surrounding people as …show more content…

In the story, Roderick fears fear itself and what could possibly happen in the future, which leads to
the narrator feeling the same way. Just as the characters in the story feel frightened, the readers
begin to have a sense of fear of what will happen as well. Poe’s usage of dark setting, dismal
imagery, and suspenseful plot all work together to instill the single effect of fear within readers,
which can be seen as Poe’s ultimate goal (1773).

Poe uses the literary device of setting to convey the themes of the story, some of which include
themes revolving around madness, family, and fear. He utilizes a dark and dull environment to set
the tone of the plot and introduce a sense of fear within not only the unnamed narrator but the
readers as well. Many of the themes in The Fall of the House of Usher are dependant on the
extensively detailed setting Poe provides the readers. Poe effectively uses setting not only to
accompany and highlight the theme

Mental Illness In The Fall Of The House Of Usher

1037 Words 5 Pages

Freestar

Show MoreThe narrator is the lens through which the reader views the story. Anything that affects
the narrator 's storytelling ability has a direct impact on the reader. Horror stories utilize this
relationship to frighten readers by making them feel as if the events of the story could happen to
them. In horror stories about mental illness, this is most often accomplished through a decline in the
mental health of the narrator. In Edgar Allan Poe 's "The Fall of the House of Usher" he uses this
technique to add suspense to the story. He starts with a narrator who appears to be rational and in a
state of complete mental health. Upon visiting his mentally ill friend, Roderick Usher, the narrator 's
own mental faculties begin to fail him. The narrator of …show more content…

Throughout the story, it is clear that there is a strong connection between the house and Usher’s
insanity which culminates in the house’s collapse after his and Madeline Usher’s deaths. Usher
himself realizes that the house is somehow tied to his declining mental state, going so far as to claim
that it is alive. The narrator’s relationship with the house follows this pattern in that he feels fearful
and sees evidence of the supernatural in the house’s appearance. At the start of the story, the
narrator states, “I know not how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of
insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.” (Poe 234). Even when he has just caught sight of the house,
it begins to harm his emotional wellbeing. Additionally he says, “I had so worked upon my
imagination as really to believe that about the whole mansion there hung an atmosphere peculiar…
which had no affinity with the air of heaven” (Poe 236). Not only does the sight of the house make
him feel unnerved, it also initiates his break with reality by causing him to suggest that there was
something supernaturally evil about it. These responses to the house’s initial appearance
demonstrate the first way in which the narrator begins to decline in the same fashion as …show
more content…

This comes as a direct result of the previous developments of wariness of the house and
exaggeration of the senses. Roderick Usher follows the same progression, giving into his uneasiness
of the house and acute senses until he becomes consumed with fear and ultimately dies of fright. In
the narrator’s case, soon after he begins hearing strange noises he becomes “overpowered by an
intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable” (Poe 243). This shows how his fears,
which could have previously been kept under control, now overwhelm him. This point marks a dark
transition in the narrator’s mind; he goes from observing Usher as he experiences inner feelings of
terror to becoming an active participant in frightening events. These events (such as the storm,
strange noises, and Madeline Usher’s resurrection) provide a contrast to the rest of the story where
he experiences only a frightening atmosphere brought on by the house and Usher’s mental state.
Poe uses these terrifying events to show how the narrator is becoming more like Usher and
beginning to experience a break with reality. This transition and the narrator’s fright are the final
aspects of the narrator’s mental.

House Of Usher Relationships

1168 Words 5 Pages

Show MoreIn the chilling narrative, The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allan Poe describes the
gradual emergence of insanity within both the narrator and his companion, Roderick. However,
beneath the surface of the relationship that is exhibited between the duo lies a more complex
parallel: Roderick and Madeline. Roderick and Madeline are not only described as twins, but also are
strongly alluded to be symbolically connected together to the house. Poe symbolically portrays the
deterioration of the mind by describing the relationship between the conscious versus unconscious,
Roderick versus Madeline within the House of Usher.

Not only is it symbolically evident that Roderick and Madeline represent the conscious and the
unconscious, but physically …show more content…

Roderick and Madeline are both twins, but are of opposing genders. They exist as two beings who
have the same parents, live in the same house, and have the same blood running through their
veins, but have differing structures. Despite their conflicting physical and psychological attributes,
the duo lives in eerie harmony within the House of Usher, the mind of the conscious and
unconscious. The house itself not only has a symbolic connection to the twins, but has a life-like
qualities, the narrator noticing that the “windows [seemed] to peer at him”. This perception of a
living house reflects the fact within the short story that any actions that the characters commence
affect the house, any steps that the unconscious and conscious make will affect the mind. When
Madeline supposedly dies, Roderick begins to morph into a complete maniac. With the thought of
his other half, the balance to his unconsciousness being present, he loses his mind. The house itself
is not immediately affected by Madeline’s false passing because she is not truly dead, the balance is
not actually tipped. However, when Roderick believes that Madeline had passed, he begins to blame
the house for strange noises that he hears around the house. Roderick blames the mind for the
noises, the whispers of doubt and dread that now flood throughout his …show more content…

In a physical aspect, Clemm resembles Madeline because of their shared illnesses, Clemm’s illnesses
beginning in 1842, after the publication of the narrative (Sova). Roderick also resembles Poe in terms
of his love for the arts, his morbid nature, and the fact that everyone in relation to them has died.
Just like Poe, all of the family members related to Roderick have died, leaving him only with his sickly
woman of his life. These unmistakeable similarities between these relationships not only put a new,
personal perspective on the characters within The Fall of the House of Usher, but also open the
possibility of a

Theme Of Isolation In The Fall Of The House Of Usher

1000 Words 4 Pages

Freestar

Show More“Hell in Isolation” In his short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Edgar Allen Poe
investigates the negative effects of self-isolationism. Roderick Usher, a mentally ill, incestuous, and
secluded man, requests the narrator’s help. Upon his arrival, the narrator notices eerie attributes of
the “melancholy” (3) house of Usher, while walking through clouds of miasma. The narrator then
witnesses Roderick’s extreme paranoia, which stems from his solitude. The narrator also catches
glimpses of Roderick’s sister, Madeline, who suffers a physical, cataleptic impairment. Through the
narrator’s experiences in the hell-like mansion of the house of Usher, Poe demonstrates the misery
and near-insanity that develops from self-isolation. In …show more content…

The narrator finds him “a bounded slave” (9) to “an anomalous species of terror” (9). Furthermore,
the narrator characterizes Roderick’s voice as that of a “lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of
opium” (9), as if Roderick lives in a mad delirium. Fear controls his life to such an extent that he
cannot think rationally, as he tells the narrator, “I must abandon life and reason together” (10).
Roderick’s sister, Madeline, whom the narrator details as Roderick’s “tenderly beloved” (10) and “his
sole companion for long years” (10), also lives in madness. Since she suffers from catalepsy, she
experiences death-like states while seizing. She remains in physical darkness and Roderick in mental
darkness. Roderick tells the narrator he senses and fears Madeline’s near death as well as his own.
His mind clouded by terror, not even literature, music, or arts, which Roderick used to enjoy, can
relieve him. His mind cannot escape; his imagination cannot fly. The Ushers remain confined in their
isolation, stuck inside their own hell, just as the rooms of the House of Usher seem “inaccessible
from within” …show more content…

Roderick yells at the narrator, “We have put her living in the tomb!” (24), while searching frantically
for an escape, shouting, “Oh! wither shall I fly?” (24). However, since he lives in the isolated,
miasmic, dark house of Usher, he cannot leave. Although paranoid, he accurately predicts his death
just as Madeline appears at the door, where she “[falls] heavily inward upon the person of her
brother, and in her violent and final death-agonies, [bears] him to the floor a corpse” (25), rendering
him a victim to his worst fears, a true personal hell. Upon his death, the narrator escapes the hell
house while he still can, witnessing the house’s “fissure rapidly widen” (25) and its succeeding fall.
Just as its inhabitants fall, so does the house, victims of their isolation and resulting personal