The Fall of the House of Usher

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The Fall of the House of Usher

• Edgar Allan Poe

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Setting

• The story begins on one "...dull, dark, and
  soundless day in the autumn of the year....
• From the very beginning, the reader, as a result
  of Poe's imagery, is aware of a sense of death
  and decay.

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Style and Interpretation

• "The Fall of the House of Usher" illustrates
  Poe's critical doctrine that unity of effect
  depends on unity of tone.
• Every detail of this story, from the opening
  description of the dank tarn and the dark rooms
  of the house to the unearthly storm which
  accompanies Madeline's return from the tomb,
  helps to convey the terror that overwhelms and
  finally destroys the fragile mind of Roderick
  Usher.

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Characters

• 3 significant characters
• -Narrator
• -Roderick
• -Madeline Usher
• -Roderick and Madeline are the sole remaining
  members of the Usher race.
• - They are not just brother and sister but twins
  who share "sympathies of a scarcely intelligible
  nature" which connect his mental disintegration
  to her physical decline.

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Interpretation

• "The Fall of the House of Usher" can be
  interpreted as "a detailed account of the
  derangement and dissipation of an individual's
  personality (Davidson).
• The house (both the physical building and the two
  characters who live there) itself becomes
  symbolic of a deranged person.
• The fissure or the crack in the decaying mansion,
  that is noted by the narrator near the beginning
  of the story, represents "an irreconcilable
  fracture in the individual's personality."

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Interpretation cont.

• Roderick represents the mind or the intellect,
  while the portion of personality that we refer to
  as the senses (hearing, seeing, touching, tasting
  and smelling) is represented by Madeline.
• Throughout the story, the intellect (Roderick)
  tries to detach itself from its more physically
  oriented twin (Madeline).
• - Rodericks aversion to his own senses.
• - His premature embodiment of Madeline

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Interpretation cont.

• Living without Madeline (that is without the
  senses), Roderick's condition deteriorates.
• At the end of the story, Madeline returns from
  her premature tomb to claim the maddened
  Roderick.
• As the two are reunited in death (the mind can
  neither live nor die without its physical
  counterpart, the senses), the house ( a symbol of
  a now deranged individual) crumbles into the
  "deep and dank tarn," as the narrator flees in
  terror for his own sanity.

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