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The Fall of the House of Usher: A mind into madness

 

Repeating descriptions referring to the windows as "vacant eye-like windows" portraying the house as an actual face, but looking deeper it is interpreted that the house is actually symbolic to a mind as "through two luminous windows saw spirits moving musically to a lute's well-tuned law" the reader sees the internal aspect of the house, primarily as a soul, the key to the mind ( Poe 1,2,6). Through Poe's construction of this theme, the house being the foundation of the mind, other aspects can be incorporated such as the houses physical description, symbolically modeling a depressed and fragile state of mind. Poe uses the phrase "House of Usher" to relate both the decaying physicality and the last of the "all time-honored Usher race- of which Roderick develops a theory that the stones that make up the house actually have consciousness, and that they foretell the fate of the Usher family (2). "He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence for many years, he had never ventured forth-(4).
             The foundation of the story's meaning is found within the connection between Roderick and Madeline. The two are not just twins but represent the mental and physical components of a single being, or soul. The crack in the Usher mansion, recognized by the narrator is at first just another aspect of the house. However, the crack in the house symbolically suggests a flaw or fundamental split in the twin personality of Roderick and Madeline, and foreshadows the future final ruin of both the Usher family and mansion. The crack becomes a representation of an un-repairable fracture in an individuals personality, Roderick of course representing the mind or the intellect, whereas the portion of personality, hearing, seeing, touching, tasting, and smelling etc is represented by Madeline, easily differentiated as Roderick and Madeline are not just brother and sister but twins who share "sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature" which connect Roderick's mental disintegration to Madeline's physical decline (5).


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"The Fall of the House of Usher," " a short story published in 1939, is one of the most popular fictional narratives of Edgar Allan Poe. ... The literary crafts used in "The Fall of the House of Usher"" and their effects, materializing the terror and the mystery, are what this paper is going to examine subsequently. ... In classic gothic fiction, another essential characteristic is doppelganger, a ghostly counterpart of a character, and Poe incorporated it massively in "The Fall of the House of Usher." ... The verses, entitled "The Haunted House," " which Roderick Usher sang, is as well an as...

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  • Word Count: 1793
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