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Roderick and Madeline are twins and the two share an incommunicable connection that critics conclude may be either incestuous or metaphysical,[7] as two individuals in an extra-sensory relationship embodying a single entity. To that end, Roderick's deteriorating condition speeds his own torment and eventual death. Even though Poe maintains that he did not approve of symbols or allegory, this particular story has been, as suggested above, subjected to many and varied types of allegorical or symbolic interpretations. Basically, however, the story still functions as a great story on the very basic level of the gothic horror story, in which the element of fear is evoked in its highest form.
Fear
The narrator helps Roderick put Madeline's body in the tomb, whereupon the narrator realizes that Madeline and Roderick are twins. The narrator also notes that Madeline's body has rosy cheeks, which sometimes happens after death. Over the next week, both Roderick and the narrator find themselves increasingly agitated. The Fall of the House of Usher is acclaimed as one of Edgar Allan Poe’s greatest works. Poe uses Symbolism and analogies in both characters and setting to tell this gothic tale of death and downfall. He combines atmosphere and analogy to form the setting which provokes to the reader a sense of insufferable gloom.
Plot
Opium which Poe mentions several times in both his prose and poems, is mentioned twice in the tale. The gloomy sensation occasioned by the dreary landscape around the Usher mansion is compared by the narrator to the sickness caused by the withdrawal symptoms of an opium-addict. The narrator also describes Roderick Usher’s appearance as that an “irreclaimable cater of opium”. It might be argued that Roderick Usher’s hypersensitivity and hypochondria are both consistent with the withdrawal symptoms of opiate-addiction. Poe’s many mentions of opium and his exact descriptions of his effects and of opium additions withdrawal symptoms have led many to believe that Poe had first-hand experience of opium and that he might have been an opium-addict himself.
In literature
Furthermore, the ultimate Fall of the House is caused by an almost invisible crack in the structure, but a crack which the narrator notices; symbolically, this is a key image. Also central to this story is that fact that Roderick and the Lady Madeline are twins. This suggests that when he buries her, he will widen the crack, or fissure, between them. This crack, or division, between the living and the dead will be so critical that it will culminate ultimately in the Fall of the House of Usher. 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.
The Fall of the House of Usher Characters
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He illustrates himself as a mind to her body and suffers from the mental counterpart of his sister’s physical illness. “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 Characters, Setting, Summary, Plot, Analysis, Theme, Context
However, sorrow attacks the palace, leaving the once luminous eyes red from crying, the ruby red lips now pale. The last three lines of the song (“Through the pale door, | A hideous throng rush out forever, | And laugh — but smile no more”) describe the horrible wailing of the person now that their reason has been overthrown. Although the person described in the song isn’t literally Roderick, the description of physical and emotional deterioration evokes his own, showing self-awareness of his pitiful state.
Whatever conclusion a reader reaches, none finds the story an easy one to forget. She comes from her interred casket to seek vengeance on her brother, who sought to rid himself of her, to entomb her prematurely. Madeline and Roderick are almost two faculties of the same soul, of which the mansion is their body. "The Fall of the House of Usher" centers on Roderick Usher and his twinsister Madeline, the last surviving members of the Usher family.
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. 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.
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.
During one sleepless night, the narrator reads aloud to Usher as eerie sounds are heard throughout the mansion. He witnesses Madeline's reemergence and the subsequent, simultaneous death of the twins. The narrator is the only character to escape the House of Usher, which he views as it cracks and sinks into the mountain lake. Fearing that her body will be exhumed for medical study, Roderick insists that she be entombed for two weeks in the family tomb located in the house before being permanently buried.
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. 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.
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. The tone of the story “The Fall of the House of Usher” is deliberate. The narrator of the story is the center of the strange parts of the story.
"The Fall of the House of Usher" has no definite settingexcept for the "singularly dreary tract of country" through which the narratormust travel to reach the House of Usher. Suits of armor and subterraneandungeons tend to suggest a European rather than an American locale, but thesedetails were established trappings of the gothic genre. Typical gothic elementsin the story include the Usher house, described as "this mansion of gloom" withits dark hallways and draperies, ebony black floors, "feeble gleams ofencrimsoned light," and its eerie burial vault. Complementing these elementsare Madeline Usher's mysterious malady, death and burial, and her return fromthe grave, the latter heightened by the thunder and lightning of a violentstorm, a gothic technique often adopted by modern films and stories dealingwith the supernatural. The claustrophobia of the mansion affects the relations among characters.
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