Poe first introduces the symbol of death as he describes the physical aspect of The House of Usher. The first glimpse of the mansion “unnerves” the visitor in a manner beyond their belief. The windows are described as having “eye-like” appearance and being covered by “minute fungi” which overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a “fine tangled web-work from the eaves.” The death like appearance seems to hang over the house, once inside your trapped into this death like state, and the outside the appearance of gloom becomes a death like state when entering the house. The “zigzag fissure that is barley perceptible, extended from the house to the waters of the tarn.” The narrator tries to expla

in the melancholy, a symbol of death all around him, as the result of “very simple natural objects” but he is unable to do so.

The narrator is involved in all of Roderick’s emotions and problems that occur during the story. Throughout the story, the narrator, like the house is falling. He sees Roderick’s compassion for his twin sister, Madeline, during her illness. After Madeline dies, he assists Roderick in the placement of her body in a steel coffin in a vault under the house. The reason for such protection was the fear of the doctors getting her body. They were so fascinated by the strangeness of her disease that Roderick feared threat they would steal her body for pathologic reasons. Poe uses this to show that Roderick really cared for his sister. It was as though they were one, relying on each other for life. Perhaps a deeper meaning- a brother, his twin sister, and their incredibly ancient house all sharing a single soul and meeting one common closure at the same moment.

At the same time, the narrator is overtaken by “the gradual yet certain atmosphere of their own about the waters and the walls.” This meaning that Usher and his family has long lived in the lifestyle which causes the setting of death to slip in. They are victims of their own environment only in the sense that

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