The Fall of The House of Usher

Edgar Alan Poe: Biography

• January 9, 1807 – October 7, 1849
• He made a permanent place for himself in the world’s literature.
• His parents were actors which fueled his love for melodrama.
• His father abandoned him and his mother died a year later.
• He was adopted as a foster child but not legally adopted.
• He wasn’t happy with his life at home so he moved to Boston where he published his 1st
volumes.
• He joined the army before leaving to go back to writing.
• He went from writing poetry to writing stories because his adoptive father didn’t leave
him any inheritance after his death.
• His literature friends provided him with connections that granted him some memorable
positions.
• He married his 14-year-old cousin because he loved the concept of family.
• His life wasn’t stable and he became an alcoholic, but he didn’t give up on his writing.
• It’s debated whether he died of alcoholism or an infectious disease.
• He was very talented and gifted.
• “Men have called me mad, but the question is not settled, whether madness is the loftiest
intelligence.”
• “I don’t suffer from insanity, but I enjoy every minute of it”
• It wasn’t easy to write and make characters with the cases and illnesses that his characters
had.
• He recognized his own talent and style.
• His writing featured darkly metaphysical fiction.
• He writes characters with disturbed psyches that are featured in settings and themes of
reasoning in his works, in addition to a hint of science fiction.
• He had a fascination with the mind and the unsetting scientific knowledge.
• He accurately described the underside of the American dream of self-made man.
Gothic Elements/ Atmosphere:
1- Haunted house in the middle of nowhere (in isolation)
2- Vacant landscape
3- Terms and vocabs/ choice of words (sadness, gloom, frightful, etc.)
4- Supernatural characteristics
5- The atmosphere itself (setting and ideas)
6- Symbolism (the house, the family)
The story reveals the theme of isolation and lack of trust of everyone around. It shows the
writer’s troubled past with family issues.
The message behind the story: we are the victims of our own fear
Throughout American literature, the premature burial of someone has been displayed. In the
American gothic short story “The Fall of The House of Usher” by Edgar Alan Poe, this is
portrayed as well. Roderick Usher buries his twin sister, Madeline Usher, alive because he
believes that she’s dead. It reveals Poe’s troubled past with the death of loved ones due to
disease. Thus, it contributes to the theme one can never trust anyone, even one’s own family.
The theme in this narrative is supported by various gothic elements, such as the vague and scary/
gloomy setting and the supernatural aspects of this piece of literature.
1- The gloomy or decaying setting:
• The dark setting foreshadows the dark theme of the story. The story begins at
dusk on an autumn day in the earlier time, probably th 19th century.
• The place is a gloomy house in a lonely/ abandoned countryside. The house
covered by fungus, is encircled by a small lake, a bridge across the lake which
provides access to the mansion.
• The weather is very cold and miserable.
• The setting is very scary.
• The gothic mood is reflected from the scary setting.

2- Supernatural characteristics:
• Towards the end of the short story, Poe describes Madeline going to attack
Roderick, “Do I not Distinguish that heave and horrible beating of her heart?
Madam! I tell you that she now stands without the door”
• Throughout the story, Roderick constantly hears the heartbeat of his sister, as well
as her cries for help (mental illness).
• Roderick Usher, because he thinks she has died from an unknown disease (even
without making sure of her death or asking a Dr.). Poe describes the burial as, “we
replaced and screwed down the lid, and having secured the door of iron, made out
the way the way with the toll…”
• When Roderick fastened the iron lid upon his sister’s coffin, all the trust that has
previously been built between the two had been broken. He broke the trust
 between him and his sister because he accidentally buried her alive. No matter the
prior relationship with someone could ever be, no trust could ever be found after
such a situation.
• Later in the story, Madeline was able to escape from her coffin and seek her
revenge upon her brother. Before she can get it through, Roderick dies of fear.
• The end of Roderick’s life is described as “…in her violent and how final death
agonies bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terror he had
anticipated”. Throughout the story, Roderick anticipated that his sister’s spirit
would try to attack him because he had always heard her voice. Poe assured that
we are victims of our own fears and that we should not burden ourselves with our
fear.

3- The choice of words:

• He chooses every word in every sentence carefully to create a gloomy and
atmosphere. For example, usher’s house, its windows, bricks, and dungeon are all
used to make a dismal atmosphere. The words used to describe the place
contribute to the collective atmosphere of despair and anguish.

4- Characteristics:
• The gothic characters in the story are unique and excellent. Many of them
emerged with a fear of death: someone is already mad or wants to be away from
the incipient madness just as Roderick Usher. What’s worse, some others are
striving to come back from the tomb like Madeline, who is buried alive.
• Roderick Usher’s special fear affects everything no matter in mind and without,
from the guest and the house itself and the tarn beyond. It explains the result of
the tale naturally that the collapse of Usher’s reason makes the fall of his house. It
is the special collapse of character’s mind that made the realistic things have the
same result.

5- Symbolism:
• A symbol in literature is something which has a meaning beyond itself or a
visible object or action that suggests some further meaning, in addition to itself.
• The Usher family is the symbol of the final production of the highly sensitive
civilization. It is destined to be buried under the ground by horror. (the house of
Usher becomes the ultimate symbol of their family and their fate).
• The tarn (lake) and paintings symbolize evil, the malaria symbolizes super nature
and illusion, horror lies in evil and madness, death finally defeats goodness, sense
and life, and everything vanished in deathly stillness.
• The house of Usher can be regarded as the body of Roderick Usher, the
gloominess inside the house symbolizes the illusion in his mind.
• Most of the symbolism is internal. The fungi and physical deterioration of the
house symbolizes the physical deterioration of Roderick and Madeline. The
 bridge over the tarn symbolizes the narrator who serves as their only connection
to the outside world.
Conclusion:
• Edgar Alan Poe is a genius of imagination and verbal creation. He is a master skilled in
manipulating language in his fictions as is the case of “The Fall of The House of Usher”
to create the unique aesthetic effect he aims to achieve. His purpose for composition is to
produce a feeling of beauty.
• Poe offers different kinds of beauties: the beauty of death and despair. Among all the
beauties presented in Poe’s works, the beauty with Gothicism is the most striking one.
• In the short story, everything from atmosphere creation, the supernatural characteristics,
and character portrayal shares one single purpose of creating gothic horror to bring out
the sense of sublimity for spiritual purification among readers.
Themes:
1- The central theme is terror which arises from the complexity and multiplicity of forces
that shape human destiny. Dreadful, horrifying events result not from a single,
uncomplicated circumstance but from a collision and intermingling of many complex
circumstances.
2- Isolation: Roderick and Madeline Usher seal themselves inside their mansion, cutting
themselves off from friends, ideas, and progress. They have become musty and
mildewed, sick unto their souls for lack of contact with the outside world.
3- Madness: Roderick and Madeline suffer from mental illnesses characterized by anxiety
and depression as well as other symptoms.
4- Mystery: from the very beginning, the narrator realizes that he is entering a world of
mystery when he crosses the tarn (lake) bridge.