Model answer
Discuss the presentation of conflicting ideals and the ways the authors explore death in “The fall of
the House of Usher” and “The open boat”.
Death, that ever-present, universal reality – and paradoxical element of life – pervades both Edgar
Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”, and Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat”. Humanity’s
fear of and fascination with death allow the authors to explore their ideals of survival and attitudes
towards death, and make those concepts central themes in their respective stories.
Poe, writing a Gothic short story, makes characteristic use of the supernatural and macabre. Death
is portrayed as pervasive, inevitable and emanating from within the Ushers. By emphasising the
connection between the dwelling, “House of Usher” and the ancient and defective family “that lay in
the direct line of descent” from its progenitor, Poe uses the eponymous title to foreshadow the
death of Roderick and Madeline Usher. The decaying and cracked facade of the house symbolises
the fatal flaws and imminent demise of the Ushers, twins and doppelgangers with “sympathies of a
scarcely intelligible nature”, who are gradually “wasting away” physically and mentally.
The narrator encounters the perplexed doctor leaving the lady Madeline’s chamber before he is
even reunited with his boyhood friend, Roderick. The presence of the doctor and his inability to
understand or cure Madeline’s illness introduces Poe’s portrayal of death as supernatural and
horrific; it cannot be understood and nothing will be able to stop it. Furthermore, Roderick Usher’s
musings about the inevitability of the decline of his family, leaving him “the last of the ancient race
of the Ushers” foreshadows the outcome of the story.
Yet, when Madeline dies, it is not because of “the severe and long-continued illness”, but because
of her brother’s decision to entomb her in a secured coffin in a locked vault despite a “faint blush
upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile” and him mentioning the
“certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men”, no doubt spawned by
“frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical” symptom of her illness. The horror
of death in “The Fall of the House of Usher” is thus presented in the self-fulfilling prophecy Usher
creates; his deteriorating mental state leads him to create the very horror he so fears: the
erroneous entombment of his sister, her death and the destruction of his ancient family. The
conflict between the horror of death and Roderick Usher’s ideal of preserving his ancient family line
are juxtaposed in Usher’s unequivocal tone when he asserts that he will have to “abandon life and
reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, fear”.
The hints of supernatural influences - no explanation is offered for Madeline’s ability to escape a
coffin with a lid that was “screwed down” – and Usher’s unnatural ability to perceive sounds
because of his “morbid acuteness of the senses" hint at the outcome of the story. Poe, making
repeated references to sounds emanating from the vault, does this not so much to surprise his
readers with Madeline’s mistaken entombment, but to thrill and horrify them with the slow
revelation that they, like Usher, are able to perceive and suspect the horror of Roderick Usher’s
actions before they are confirmed. It is thus not only death, but the paradoxical fear that the person
is not dead that enthrals the reader.
Death in “The Fall of the House of Usher” is a unifying force. Brother and sister are temporarily
separated by Madeline’s presumed death, but as she dies when Roderick frees her from the vault,
he too falls down dead. And not only do they die, but their home, which symbolises the family, falls
down around them. Death is thus presented as a dreadful, destructive force that the narrator very
narrowly escapes.
In “The Open Boat”, however, Crane adopts a naturalist approach and this to a large extent
influences his portrayal of death. Nature is enormously powerful but is neither set on destroying
man, nor on working towards his survival: it is indifferent because nature does not regard man “as
important”, and “she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him”.
Estelle Snyders
ES Education Services
Survival is also an ideal in “The Open Boat”. The focus is on survival as the story opens with the
men concentrating solely on the huge waves that they are battling. This physical battle for survival
sets the scene and tone of the story. The men are a speck in the ocean; they are totally
surrounded and have to battle not to be overwhelmed by the sea. Their insignificance is conveyed
through the hyperbolic description of their boat not even being the size of “a bath-tub” while their
adversary, the waves, are “most wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tall”. The men see death
emanating from the sea and the fickleness of the “seven mad gods, who rule the sea”, that allowed
them “to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees” only to be drowned as rescue is
imminent.
Their survival is initially portrayed in terms of the group and the “brotherhood” of the men in the
boat; as “friends in a more curiously iron-bound degree than may be common”, they battle the sea
together to stay alive. But once they are in the sea and swimming to shore, each man is described
individually. Each man’s fate is decided separately and Crane focuses on the cook, the oiler, the
captain and the correspondent in turn.
There is nothing supernatural in their fight with the sea; they are merely one part of nature trying to
survive in nature. Their relationship with the sea is even misinterpreted during their first attempt to
reach land; they are mistaken for fishermen, doing what all creatures do: finding sustenance from
nature, and the danger of their situation causes the observer no distress.
Crane employs irony when the men are closer to death than ever as they make a play for rescue
and survival. Death then changes its guise. It is always present, but in a universal, impersonal,
symbolic sense as represented by the circling shark and the scavenging “canton flannel” sea gull
resting on the injured captain’s head. Superstitious sailors kill albatrosses for being harbingers of
bad luck and in the 10-foot open boat occupied by the four men, the aptly scaled-down seabird still
creates a sense of unease and a hint that death might be close at hand.
As the men enter the water in the final section of the story, death becomes each man’s personal
foe, and their adversary – the sea – which they have come to know so well becomes unfamiliar.
Still there is no sense of horror, just incredulity, indignation and desperation. The narrator focuses
on the correspondent for much of the final section and where much of the story is told from a
dispassionate third person observer point of view, the narrator becomes omniscient and allows us
to learn the correspondent’s thoughts in this final scene. We learn that he is caught in a current
and watches the other men as they pass him. He cannot believe that fate would be so cruel as to
let him die after coming so far; his repetition of “Can it be possible?” reveals his indignation and
incredulity. Thus, with it being suggested that death is fickle, or at best, disinterested, it comes as
no surprise that a crewman has died. The irony of Billie the oiler’s death lies in his vitality and his
description of being “ahead in the race”, “swimming strongly and rapidly”, and in having made it to
shore, but not in the fact that one of the four men does not survive. Death is thus presented as
random and even unfair, but ultimately death is “the final phenomenon of nature”.
Crane also represents death as something that is feared because it can cause “agony”, but there
comes a time when it becomes “a comfortable arrangement, a cessation of hostilities accompanied
by a large degree of relief”. The positive connotations of the latter description present death not as
something horrific and destructive but as something that can bring peace and rest.
The presentation of conflicting ideals and death thus differ significantly in “The Fall of the House of
Usher” and “The Open Boat”. In the first, it is presented as supernatural and horrific, specifically
targeting the Ushers for destruction and working inexorably towards their annihilation while Usher
is destroying his own sanity in his quest to avoid its horrors. In “The Open Boat” death is also everpresent, but the crewmen are battling a natural enemy. Death is inevitable, but it offers a sense of
respite: the men are determined to survive but are not frantic or horrified at the prospect of death.
[1429 words]
Estelle Snyders
ES Education Services