DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY IN:
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF
USHER
BY: TREVOR SHIELDS
WHAT IS DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER?
-Ever seen the movie Fight Club? Or The
Secret Window? Yeah that’s it.
-Basically, an aspect of your life sucks so bad
that instead of accepting it, your psyche splits.
SO WHAT DOES D.I.D. HAVE TO DO WITH THE HOUSE
OF USHER?
• I propose that there is evidence of two cases of
D.I.D. within the text.
• Case #1: Roderick and The Narrator are the
same guy.
• Case #2: Roderick, Madeline, The Narrator are
the same person
PROVING IT: CASE #1 (RODERICK AND NARRATOR)
• “What was it--I paused to think--what was it
that so unnerved me in the contemplation of
the House of Usher?”
• “ It was possible, I reflected, that a mere
different arrangement of the particulars of the
scene, of the details of the picture, would be
sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its
capacity for sorrowful impression”
• Narrator upon first encountering the Usher
House
• Rational
• Dissecting
• Provoked
• Need to validate
• Why Possibilities?
PROVING IT: CASE #1 (RODERICK AND NARRATOR)
• “I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a
black and lurid tarn […] and gazed down--but
with a shudder even more thrilling than before-upon the remodeled and inverted images of the
grey sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the
vacant and eye-like windows”
• “Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon
companions in boyhood; but many years had
elapsed since our last meeting.”
• “distant part of the country-”
• “Although, as boys, we had been even intimate
associates, yet I really knew little of my friend.”
• Image of reflection i.e. two images of 1 subject
• Many years and a country separate the two.
• Intimate at boyhood yet little was known?
PROVING IT: CASE #1 (RODERICK AND NARRATOR)
PROVING IT: CASE #1 (RODERICK AND NARRATOR)
•
•
“While the objects around me […] were but
matters to which, or to such as which, I had
been accustomed from my infancy--while I
hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was
all this--I still wondered to find how unfamiliar
were the fancies which ordinary images were
stirring up.
“Surely, man had never before so terribly
altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick
Usher!”
• Interior is strange, but known
• Upon meeting Roderick, the Narrator
contradicts himself.
PROVING IT: CASE #1 (RODERICK AND NARRATOR)
• “from sire to son, of the patrimony with the name”
• “the dwelling which he tenanted, and from which,
for many years, he had never ventured forth”
• Patrimony
• “ancient race”
• Solitude
• “Incestuous and inadmissible passion”
• Pressure to procreate and continue the family
name
• “a tenderly beloved sister; his sole companion for
long years-his last and only relative on earth.”
• “lady Madeline”
• Quixotic reference
WAIT WHAT?
• Yeah that’s right, incest! An “inadmissible
passion” to sleep with your sister seems a legit
reason to want to split identities to me.
• But wait that isn’t even the craziest part….
• ENTER CASE TWO!
PROVING IT: CASE #2 (THE TRIPLE ENTITY THEORY)
• “Her figure, her air, her features-all, in their very
minutest development were those […] of the
Roderick Usher who sat beside me.”
• Exactly Roderick’s duplicate in female form
• “A feeling of stupor oppressed me”
• Narrator feels oppressed? Why?
• “he had buried his face in his hands”
• And Rod, why so many tears?
• “trickled many passionate tears.”
• Wait who is dying?
• “For several day ensuing, her name was
unmentioned”
PROVING IT: CASE #2 (THE TRIPLE ENTITY THEORY)
• “the lady, at least while living, would be seen by
me no more.”
• “a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me
more unreservedly into the recesses of his
spirit”
• “our books”
• “the lady Madeline was no more”
• “The exact similitude between brother and
sister here again startled and confounded me.”
• Intimacy of spirits btwn Usher and Roderick in
absence of Lady M.
• Our?
• Death!
• More similarity
PROVING IT: CASE #2 (THE TRIPLE ENTITY THEORY)
•
“His ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary
occupations were neglected or forgotten.”
•
“The pallor of [Roderick’s] countenance had assumed, […]
a more ghastly hue-but the luminescence of his eye had
utterly gone out.” vs “gradual wasting away [of Madeline]”
•
“I beheld [Roderick] gazing upon vacancy for long hours”
vs “[Madeline’s] transient affections of a partially
cataleptical character.”
•
Roderick dilutes
•
Begins to look/act like Lady M.
“I [the Narrator] felt creeping upon me , by slow yet
certain degrees, the wild influences of his [Roderick’s]
own fantastic yet impressive superstitions.”
•
Narrator begins to adopt Rod’s maladies
•
ALL IDENTITIES TO YOUR POSTS! Its assimilation time!
•
•
“nervousness [Narrator]” vs “nervous agitation [Rod]”
•
“ an instinctive spirit prompted me to certain lowindefinite sounds” vs “acuteness of senses”
PROVING IT: CASE #2 (THE TRIPLE ENTITY THEORY)
• “Mad Trist”
• “I now tell you that I heard her first feeble
movements in the hollow coffin.”
• “Madman!”
• “[Madeline] fell heavily inward on the person of
her brother”
• “I fled aghast.”
• “Trist”= OE “Tryst” which means encounter, ergo
“Mad Encounter”
• Hollow b/c nobodies in it
• Madman! = Denial: Last ditch effort of
conflicting personalities
• Here’s Maddy! Oh and Rod and the Narrator.
• Only the Narrator can leave. Note that “I fled”
signals singularity of person.
PROVING IT: CASE #2 (THE TRIPLE ENTITY THEORY)
PROVING IT: CASE #2 (THE TRIPLE ENTITY THEORY)
• “the once barley-descernable fissure […] rapidly
widened”
• “there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind”
• the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon
my sight--my brain reeled as I saw the mighty
walls rushing asunder--there was a long
tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a
thousand waters--and the deep and dank tarn at
my feet closed sullenly and silently over the
fragments of the "House of Usher".
• Fissure=Seperation of Insanity and Reason: also
female/male identities.
• Whirlwind= tumult of confrontation and recohesion of multiple identities into one
• Satelite= Reason
• No house, only 1 person/ identity left
• The tarn= the calm of reason and sanity
CONCLUSION AND QUESTIONS
• What are the significances of the three
identities?
• If this is in fact a case of D.I.D., who is the real,
single, character left standing?
• In contrast, what if the narrator is insane and
never left gazing at his reflection in the tarn?