Boulard

Adèle
1g2

« The fall of the house of Usher » is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1839. In this
gothic story, it is quite tough to distinguish reality from imagination. We can wonder why « The fall
of the house of Usher » is a work of the imagination. We will start by summarizing this short story,
then we’ll explain what the American gothic genre is, what an unreliable narrator is, and finally, we
will demonstrate that there are chinese box effects directly connected to the story they’re in.
In « The fall of the house of Usher », the narrator is invited by a childhood friend of his called
Roderick Usher to come over to his house because he is severely sick. Indeed, he is over sensitive to
light, smells, flavours and sounds. As a consequence, he has to live in the dark, he hates the smell of
flowers, he can only listen to string instruments and he is able to eat the most insipid food only.
When the narrator arrives at Roderick’s place, he discovers a very old mansion with creepy vibes.
Indeed, the walls are crackled and look cold, and the windows look like a tired person’s eyes. Then,
he comes into the house, meets Roderick and his sister Madeline, who is also really sick. After that,
he spends a few days with them but later on, Madeline dies so they have to burry her by themselves
in the tomb under the house. They read books in order to distract themselves and at the end of the
story, the narrator is reading a book called « Mad Trist » when they suddenly see the ghost of
Madeline. The narrator gets scared, he escapes from the manor and sees it crumble down.

Now, we are going to explain what the gothic genre is and why « The fall of the house of Usher »
is a gothic fiction. The gothic genre is composed of several elements. The specificity of a gothic
work of art is to have a very dark and scary atmosphere thanks to many characteristics such as
ghosts, puritanism, irrational events, monsters, a guilty or crazy character or an unreliable narrator.
« The fall of the house of Usher » is a gothic fiction because we can recognize many of these
elements. Indeed, there is the ghost of Madeline, the downfall of the house which is an irrational
event, Roderick who feels guilty because he thinks he burried his sister alive and the unreliable
narrator.
There are five kinds of unreliable narrators : the Picaro (someone who exaggerates and brags a
lot), the Madman (a crazy person), the Clown (who does not take narration seriously), the Naïf
(someone who is immature) and the Liar (who misrepresents themselves). We can suppose the
narrator is crazy, which makes him unreliable. Indeed, he may have gone mad and his mind
probably invented the ghost and the downfall of the house because he was oppressed by the illness
of his friend and by the gloomy atmosphere of the house. He also might have confused reality with
the book he was reading.

A work of art in another one is called a chinese box effect. There are two in this short story : a
poem called « The haunted palace » and a book entitled « Mad Trist ». Not only there are chinese
boxes, but there are links between them and the main story . Indeed, « the fall of the house of
Usher » takes place in a gothic mansion, as « mad trist » takes place in a castle and as « the haunted
palace » takes place in a manor. The three stories happen in the countryside. There are wanderers in
the « the haunted palace » as the narrator of the short story is a traveler. There are ghosts in both
stories and both the owners of the houses are upper-class. Concerning « mad trist », both the
narrator and the knight are horse riders and there’s a storm in the two stories.
The titles of these two stories are chinese box effects themselves. Indeed, as the title of the poem is
« the haunted palace » so the house of Usher is haunted by madeline’s ghost. The name of the poem
is « mad trist » as usher and the narrator go crazy.
As a conclusion, we can say that the narrator is unreliable because of his madness. He probably
mistook the reality with « mad trist » by confusing the sounds described in the book with those of
the thunder, the storm and the wind. The gloomy atmosphere of the house and the eerie behavior of
Usher may have led to the outburst of his madness. Besides, « mad trist » does not even exist,
except in the short story: it’s also a work of the imagination. We can suppose Usher created this
story in his mind. So « the fall of the house of Usher » is a work of the imagination because the
crazy narrator makes up the ghost of madeline and the downfall of the mansion by confusing reality
and fiction.
Finally, there are three explanations to the title of the short story : the first is that the title expresses
the litteral collapse of the manor. The second explanation is that this title shows the end of the
Usher dynasty .The third is that the word « fall » in the title is a play on words because it also
means « autumn » and the story happens during autumn.