The Fall of the House of Usher Gloom and decay in Poes gothic parable
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When one of the elements suffers from a breakdown, the interdependence causes a chain reaction. The physical death of Madeline parallels the collapse of Roderick’s sanity and the house of Usher. He also observes that Roderick has fallen over his chair and is muttering to himself. Roderick discloses that he has been hearing such noises for days and thinks that they have buried Madeline alive. The door opens with the wind blowing, and Madeline was standing behind it in a white bloodied robe. As soon as he escapes, the house of Usher cracks and crumbles to the ground.
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Its windows are described as “eye-like,” and its interior is compared to a living body. On the other hand, there are plenty of strange things about the Usher family. For one, “the entire family lay in the direct line of descent,” meaning that only one son from each generation survived and reproduced. Poe implies incestuous relations sustained the genetic line and that Roderick and Madeline are the products of extensive intermarriage within the Usher family.
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DURING THE WHOLE of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue--but the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was labouring with some oppressive secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage.
Characters
One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be shadowed forth, although feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of an immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and without interruption or device. Certain accessory points of the design served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate splendor.
Charity”offered “of late” by the Ushers (presumably by Roderick himself because thestory takes place in the nineteenth century, when men, according to tradition,were in charge of financial affairs). Significant, too, is the pejorativeappellation of “evil” that Roderick gives to his family, in itself anindication of his own moral sense. Indeed, it is precisely Roderick’s moralitythat causes the internal conflict he suffers, between his inherited traits andhis moral revulsion over them, and it is his morality that prompts him to leaveMadeline in the vault even after he discovers that she is still alive.
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At times, again, I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness, for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue—but the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out.
Often he stops and stares vacantly into space as though he is listening to some faint sound; his terrified condition brings terror to the narrator. Then we read that on the night of the "seventh or eighth day" after the death of the Lady Madeline, the narrator begins to hear "certain low and indefinite sounds" which come from an undetermined source. As we will learn later, these sounds are coming from the buried Lady Madeline, and these are the sounds that Roderick Usher has been hearing for days.
You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at Your subscription will continue automatically once the free trial period is over. In 1979, Italian state channel RAI loosely adapted the short story, together with other Poe's works, in the series I racconti fantastici di Edgar Allan Poe.[33] It was directed by Daniele D'Anza, with Roderick Usher played by Philippe Leroy; music was composed by pop band Pooh. A storm begins, and Roderick comes to the narrator's bedroom (which is situated directly above the house's vault) in an almost hysterical state. Throwing the windows open to the storm, Roderick points out that the lake surrounding the house seems to glow in the dark, just as Roderick depicted in his paintings, but there is no lightning or other explainable source of the glow. It is revealed that Roderick's sister, Madeline, is also ill and falls into cataleptic, deathlike trances.
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It is unclear whether he isactually sick or if he is a hypochondriac who is going insane from fear andisolation. No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch, or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate splendour. The overpass of the border is vitally related to the Gothic horror of the story. Poe’s experience in the magazine industry makes him excessively obsessed with word games and codes. It is actually the act of crossing a border that carries the narrator into the tenacious world of Madeline and Roderick. The idea of fear is worse for Roderick Usher than the object he fears.
Even though the gothic elements in the story are easily identifiable, some of the terror in the story is because of its vagueness. The readers cannot identify the location of the house or when the story takes place. Instead of using standard narrative markers, Poe employed gothic elements such as a barren landscape and inclement weather. Another reading of the story involves the possibility that Roderick Usher's weakness, his inability to function in light, and his necessity to live constantly in the world of semi-darkness and muted sounds and colors is that the Lady Madeline is a vampire who has been sucking blood from him for years. This would account for his paleness and would fit this story in a category with the stories of Count Dracula that were so popular in Europe at the time. In this interpretation, Roderick Usher buries his sister so as to protect himself.
The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene.
However, Madeline appears to be central to the claustrophobic and symmetrical logic of the story. Madeline suppresses Roderick by not permitting him to see her separate or essentially different from him. This attack is completed when she finally attacks and kills him at the end of the story. Hezekiah Usher House could provide a source of inspiration for Poe’s story. The sources indicate that the owner of the house caught a sailor and his young wife in the house and entombed them in their place of trysting.
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