The Internal Conflict of Roderick Usher
The Internal Conflict of Roderick Usher In Poe's short story "The Fall of the House of Usher," Roderick Usher faces a very obvious internal conflict that is the result of the intimate relationship he and his sister shared. They are twins, and the last people in their family, which has been incestuous in the past. Roderick Usher and his sister rely on each other to keep the Usher family in continuation, and when Usher buries his sister before her obvious time, he feels guilt for the crime he committed, which aid to his personal conflict. "I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain" (Poe 719) Roderick Usher and his sister were incestuous, and thus were the last two members of the family. Usher's internal con
He goes into an obvious depression, which eventually turns into an outrage on the narrator. He knows he's buried his sister alive, and when they hear a "scratching" at the door, they turn around to see Madeline, who obviously went through a struggle to escape. This fuels his internal conflict because now he's not only struggling with their incestuous history, but her untimely death as well. (Poe 721) When Usher learns of his sister's illness, he speaks of the desire to "preserve her" for another night, and decides to place her in one of the numerous tombs throughout the household. At this point, Madeline jumps to embrace her brother, and they both fall to the floor, dead. Madeline is his last relative on Earth, and Usher is upset knowing that his lifelong companion will soon be no more. Throughout the short story, Roderick Usher is battling an intense internal conflict, which was fueled by his sister, their relationship with each other, and the dependency on each other to survive. Usher's internal conflict was fueled by his sister's presence within their household. However, both are dead together, which is the perfect ending to the story; one can't survive without the other. He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin-to the severe and long-continued illness-indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution-of a tenderly beloved sister; his sole companion for long years-his last and only relative on earth. When the narrator and Roderick place the corpse in the vault, they see that she has color in her cheeks, which symbolizes life within her body. When they both pass together, they're putting the other at ease, knowing that one half won't ever have to survive without the other again.
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