The Fall of the House
of Usher
By Edgar Allan Poe
Summary:
• The unnamed narrator travels to the House of Usher
at the summons of his old friend Roderick Usher.
• Upon first seeing the home, the narrator is
consumed with a nameless dread, “a sense of
insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit…I looked
upon the scene before me – upon the mere house,
and the simple landscape features of the domain –
upon the bleak walls – upon the vacant, eye-like
windows – upon the rank sedges – and upon a few
white trunks of decayed trees – with an utter
depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly
sensation …”
Summary:
•
•
•
The narrator soon discovers that all is not well in the
House of Usher.
Roderick suffers from physical and emotional ailments.
He is subject to hypersensitivity to sound, touch, sight,
etc. “He suffered from the most morbid acuteness of the
senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he
could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors
of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured be
even a faint light…”
Roderick lived in fear of FEAR.
• Roderick
was superstitious and dreadful of the house,
“an effect which the physique of the gray walls and
turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all looked
down, had, at length, brought abut upon the morale of
his existence.”
• Madeline
Usher was Roderick’s twin sister.
• Madeline
suffered an undiagnosed disease, “A settled
apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and
frequent although transient affections of a partially
cataleptical character were the unusual diagnosis.”
• After
Madeline’s death, Roderick wanted to entomb
her in the family vault instead of burying her in the
family grave yard so as to preserve her from “certain
obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her
medical men.”
• After
Madeline’s entombment, Roderick became more
agitated and unwell, “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.”
• During
a sleepless night, while the narrator was reading to
Usher, he became aware of a strange sense of the
description in the story matching the sounds of the House.
• Those
sounds are ultimately discovered to be Madeline
clawing her way out of her tomb, “say, rather, the rending of
her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison,
and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault.”
• Madeline
enters the room and falls upon her brother, who
dies instantly, “There was blood upon her white robes, and
the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of
her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained
trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold –
then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the
person of her brother, and in her violent and now final
death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim
to the terrors he had anticipated.”
• The
narrator leaves in haste, “and from that mansion, I
fled aghast.”
• As
he is leaving the grounds, the house splits in two and
sinks down into the tarn (lake).
Setting
• Poe
uses extensive imagery to establish a
sense of death and decay which contributes to
the unity of effect.
• “The
House of Usher” refers not only to the
crumbling mansion but also to the remaining
Usher family members – Roderick and
Madeline.
•
Poe’s “house of Usher” looks more like a medieval
castle or English cathedral in Gothic style
Theme
• Roderick
and Madeline are not just twins but
represent the mental and physical components of
a single being or soul. Roderick represents the
mind (mental decay) and Madeline represents
the body (physical decay).
The twins:
•
•
•
•
Poe addresses the dual and conflicted nature of the Self
Mind and body are at war with each other in each of us
We try to repress one side and live without it
But we cannot achieve a harmonious existence in this way
Roderick is all mind in a weak body
Roderick lives upstairs (mind)
He represents in one way the life of the isolated artist
Paintings
Reading
Guitar playing
Madeline
Illness has debilitated her
All descriptions focus on the body
Madeline is entombed below ground (body)
“gradual wasting away of the person”
“the huge antique panels…threw back”
She “fell heavily inward upon…her brother and…bore
him to the floor a corpse”
Mind-body
problem
The mind-body problem is
the problem of explaining
how mental states, events,
and processes—like beliefs,
actions and thinking– are
related to the physical
states, events, and
processes, given that the
human body is a physical
entity and the mind is nonphysical.
Unity of Effect
•
Poe’s primary concern was “unity of effect,” which means that every
element of a story should help create a single emotional impact. He
coined this term while writing as a literary critic.
•
His theory of literary unity was articulated in a review of Hawthorne’s collection of
stories, Twice-Told Tales in 1842
•
An author should “conceive, with deliberate care, a certain unique or
single effect to be wrought out, [and] then invent such … events as may
best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect.
•
In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the
tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design.
Paraphrase
• “There
was an iciness, a sinking, a
sickening of the heart– an unredeemed
dreariness of thought which no goading
of the imagination could torture into
aught of the sublime.” (16-18)
Paraphrase
• “I
have said that the sole effect of my somewhat
childish experiment—that of looking down within
the tarn– had been to deepen the first singular
impression. There can be no doubt that the
consciousness of the rapid increase of my
superstition—for why should I not so term it?–
served mainly to accelerate the increase itself.
Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of
all sentiments having terror as a basis.” (69-74)
Unity of Effect
Now that you know UoE, apply the concepts to the
rest of the story. Answer the following questions in
your application:
• How
is Roderick described? What does this imply about his
nature?
 Is Poe’s description too ornate?
• What
type of music is Roderick restricted to? Why does the
narrator conclude that Roderick is losing “lofty reason”
(275)?
 How can you connect these two concepts? (art and sanity)?
• What
is the narrator feeling towards the end of the story
(417)? How does this add to the Unity of Effect??
Write now
•
Complete #5 on page 424, and then:
•
Consider the role of the narrator. At first he seems the
typical faceless, nameless chronicler of events—a window
into the narrative through which the reader can examine the
real man of the story, Usher himself. But he becomes a
character in his own right, and the horror of the tale
depends largely on our ability to see events through his
experience.
•
How does Poe lend the Narrator the qualities of a
character? To what extent is he reliable??
Evaluate UoE
In your opinion, does
Poe’s technique of the
unified effect accomplish
its intended purpose?
What, if any, are the
disadvantages of his
approach? Explain.