Fall of the House of Usher
In Edgar Allen Poe's classic short story "The Fall of the House of Usher", the characters of Roderick Usher and his twin sister Madeline are on the brink of dissolution, where Madeline is presumed dead hand has been buried while Usher himself wastes away from a disease which heightens his senses to a painful state. The composition between Madeline - entombed in the earth - and Usher - elevating himself to an almost celestial nature - creates a situation in which the divine and the earthly meet and bring about the "fall" of the family of Usher. The dual nature of these two twins serves to present the conflict of the work, where one source writes that: "Roderick himself is associated with the abstract, a temporal, and ideal. Roderick's world is one of abstract pattern in black, white, and gray...He himself is a man of ideality, as the
. Roderick is in contrast to his sister and is white, showing that he is an ethereal being. Poe presents this house as one that is already dying, and therefore manifests the life- forces of both Roderick Usher and Madeline. In this sense, Poe demonstrates Gothic tendencies in that the story surrounds the horrors showcased within a single "cathedral- like" setting, where the house reflected the horrors of its occupants. The gray and crumbling house is of stone and is almost a character in its own right, where its physical presentation serves to show that the house is strongly connected to the earth and to Madeline rather than Roderick. In conclusion, "The Fall of the House of Usher" contains many traits that denote it as being representative of its time period. narrator remarks, and as shown in phrenological terms by the expanse of his temples; that is, in the nineteenth-century contrast of ideal and real, Roderick is a person who seeks or perceives the truth beyond merely mundane phenomena [and that] As Roderick is aligned with the ideal, his twin Madeline is associated with the material and temporal-in other words, the real. (Kinkead-Weekes: 27) As a Romantic work, "The Fall of the House of Usher" tends to denote both natural and Gothic tendencies, where the reader finds that Poe presents the home of the Usher family not as a surreal mansion but rather one that is extremely solid. Conflict is therefore "resolved" when the house collapses, for while Madeline and Roderick might wander as sad ghosts the house and their family line is concluded quite permanently. However, the house serves as a metaphor for the Usher family where it is in a rapid decline, where the earth is reclaiming the very stones.
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Acceptance Essays
