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Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 24, 2021

Long considered Edgar Allan Poe ‘s masterpiece, “The Fall of the House of Usher” continues to intrigue new generations of readers. The story has a tantalizingly horrific appeal, and since its publication in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, scholars, critics, and general readers continue to grapple with the myriad possible reasons for the story’s hold on the human psyche. These explanations range from the pre-Freudian to the pre–Waste Land and pre-Kafka-cum-nihilist to the biographical and the cultural. Indeed, despite Poe’s distaste for Allegory, some critics view the house as a Metaphor for the human psyche (Strandberg 705). Whatever conclusion a reader reaches, none finds the story an easy one to forget.

Poe’s narrative technique draws us immediately into the tale. On a stormy autumn (with an implied pun on the word fall ?) evening, a traveler—an outsider, like the reader—rides up to the Usher mansion. This traveler, also the first-person narrator and boyhood friend of Roderick Usher, the owner of the house, has arrived in response to a summons from Usher. We share the narrator’s responses to the gloomy mood and the menacing facade of the House of Usher, noticing, with him, the dank lake that reflects the house (effectively doubling it, like the Usher twins we will soon meet) and apprehensively viewing the fissure, or crack, in the wall. Very soon we understand that, whatever else it may mean, the house is a metaphor for the Usher family itself and that if the house is seriously flawed, so are its occupants.

With this foreboding introduction, we enter the interior through a Gothic portal with the narrator. With him we encounter Roderick Usher, who has changed drastically since last the narrator saw him. His cadaverous appearance, his nervousness, his mood swings, his almost extrahuman sensitivity to touch, sound, taste, smell, and light, along with the narrator’s report that he seems lacking in moral sense, portrays a deeply troubled soul. We learn, too, that his twin sister, Madeline, a neurasthenic woman like her brother, is subject to catatonic trances. These two characters, like the house, are woefully, irretrievably flawed. The suspense continues to climb as we go deeper into the dark house and, with the narrator, attempt to fathom Roderick’s malady.

Roderick, a poet and an artist, and Madeline represent the last of the Usher line. They live alone, never venturing outside. The sympathetic narrator does all he can to ease Roderick’s hours, recounting a ballad by Roderick, which, entitled “The Haunted House,” speaks figuratively of the House of Usher: Evil and discord possess the house, echoing the decay the narrator has noticed on the outside. During his stay Roderick tells the narrator that Madeline has died, and together they place her in a vault; she looks deceptively lifelike. Thereafter Roderick’s altered behavior causes the narrator to wonder whether he hides a dark secret or has fallen into madness. A week or so later, as a storm rages outside, the narrator seeks to calm his host by reading to him a romance entitled “The Mad Trist.” The title could be evidence that both the narrator’s diagnoses are correct: Roderick has a secret (perhaps he has trysted with his own sister?) and is now utterly mad. The tale unfolds parallel to the action in the Usher house: As Ethelred, the hero of the romance, breaks through the door and slays the hermit, Madeline, not dead after all, breaks though her coffin. Just before she appears at the door, Roderick admits that they have buried her alive and that she now stands at the door. Roderick’s admission is too late. Just as Ethelred now slays the dragon, causing the family shield to fall at his feet, Madeline falls on her brother (the hermit who never leaves the house), killing them both and bringing down the last symbol of the House of Usher. As the twins collapse in death together, the entire house disintegrates into the lake, destroying the double image noted at the opening of the story.

The story raises many questions tied to gender issues: Is Madeline Roderick’s female double, or doppelgänger? If, as many critics suggest, Roderick is Poe’s self-portrait, then do Madeline and Roderick represent the feminine and masculine sides of the author? Is incest at the core of Roderick’s relationship with Madeline? Is he (like his creator, some would suggest) a misogynist? Feminists have for some time now pointed to Poe’s theory that the most poetic subject in the world is the “Death of a Beautiful Woman.” Is Madeline’s return from the tomb a feminist revenge story? Does she, as the Ethelred of the romance does, adopt the male role of the hero as she slays the evil hermit and the evil dragon, who together symbolize Roderick’s character? Has the mad Roderick made the narrator complicit in his crime (saying we rather than I buried her alive)? If so, to what extent must we view him as the unreliable narrator? Is the narrator himself merely reporting a dream—or the after-effects of opium, as he vaguely intimates at points in the story? Or, as the critic and scholar Eugene Current-Garcia suggests, can we generally agree that Poe, like Nathaniel Hawthorne, was haunted by the presence of evil? If so, “perhaps most of his tales should be read as allegories of nightmarish, neurotic states of mind” (Current-Garcia 81). We may never completely plumb the psychological complexities of this story, but it implies deeply troubling questions and nearly endless avenues for interpretation.

Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s Stories

BIBLIOGRAPHY Current-Garcia, Eugene. The American Short Story before 1850. Boston: Twayne, 1985. May, Charles E. Edgar Allan Poe: Studies in the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne, 1991. Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” In The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Vol. 1, 3rd ed. Edited by Paul Lauter. Boston: Houghton Miffl in, 1998. Strandberg, Victor. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” In Reference Guide to Short Fiction, edited by Noelle Watson. Detroit: Gale Press, 1994.

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The Fall of the House of Usher

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The Fall of the House of Usher , supernatural horror story by Edgar Allan Poe , published in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine in 1839 and issued in Poe’s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840).

“The Fall of the House of Usher” begins with the unidentified male narrator riding to the house of Roderick Usher, a childhood friend whom the narrator has not seen in many years. The narrator explains that he recently received a letter from Roderick detailing his worsening mental illness and requesting the narrator’s company. Out of sympathy for his old friend, the narrator agreed to come. Aside from his knowledge of Roderick’s ancient and distinguished family, the narrator knows very little about his friend. Upon arriving, the narrator describes the Usher family mansion in great detail, focusing on its most fantastic features and its unearthly atmosphere. Shortly after entering, the narrator is greeted by Roderick, who displays a number of strange symptoms. He claims his senses are especially acute: therefore, he cannot wear clothes of certain textures or eat particularly flavourful foods, and his eyes are bothered by even the faintest lights.

Within a few hours of the narrator’s arrival, Roderick begins to share some of his theories about his family. Much to the narrator’s surprise, Roderick claims that the Usher mansion is sentient and that it exercises some degree of control over its inhabitants. He declares that his illness is the product of “a constitutional and a family evil.” (The narrator later dismisses this as a cognitive symptom of Roderick’s “nervous affection.”) Roderick also reveals that Madeline, his twin sister and sole companion in the house, is gravely ill. According to Roderick, Madeline suffers from a cataleptic disease that has gradually limited her mobility. As Roderick talks about his sister’s illness, the narrator sees her pass through a distant part of the house.

The narrator spends the next few days painting, reading, and listening to Roderick play music. He recalls the eerie lyrics from one of Roderick’s songs, endearingly titled “The Haunted Palace.” The penultimate stanza goes:

But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch’s high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him, desolate!) And, round about his home, the glory That blushed and bloomed Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed.

Several days after the narrator’s arrival, Roderick announces the death of his sister. He asks the narrator to help bury her. As they lay her in a tomb beneath the house, the narrator notes that she is smiling, and her cheeks are rosy. Over the next few days, the narrator observes a change in his friend’s behaviour: Roderick has begun to display symptoms of madness and hysteria . He neglects his work, wandering aimlessly around the house and staring off into the distance. Increasingly spooked by his friend and his environment , the narrator begins to suffer from insomnia.

Late one night, Roderick visits the narrator in his bedchamber. After a few moments of silence, he abruptly asks, “And you have not seen it?” He then throws open the window to reveal that the house—and indeed everything outside—is enveloped in a glowing gas. The baffled narrator blames it on electrical phenomena resulting from an ongoing storm. He attempts to soothe Roderick by reading aloud to him from “Mad Trist,” a medieval romance by Sir Launcelot Canning. (The romance and Canning are Poe’s inventions.) As the narrator reads, sounds from the book seemingly begin to manifest in the house. After a while, the narrator stops reading and approaches Roderick, who is slumped over in a chair, rocking and muttering to himself. For the first time, the narrator listens to what Roderick is saying. He learns that Roderick has been hearing sounds for days. He believes they are coming from Madeline, whom he thinks they have buried alive. As the horror of his words dawns on the narrator, Roderick suddenly springs to his feet, yelling “Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!”

At Roderick’s words, the door bursts open, revealing Madeline all in white with blood on her robes. With a moan, she falls on her brother, and, by the time they hit the floor, both Roderick and Madeline are dead. The narrator thereupon flees in terror. Outside, he looks back just in time to see the house split in two and collapse.

It is not uncommon for Poe to use first-person narration in his stories. In fact, the majority of Poe’s short stories use this type of narration. The narrator of “The Fall of the House of Usher,” however, is unique in that he is unidentified aside from his gender. The story contains no descriptions of his physical features, his age, or where he is traveling from. Apart from his boyhood friendship with Roderick, his history is unknown. This is all intentional: Poe designed the character as a surrogate, or stand-in, for the reader. The absence of a specific description of his character allows the reader to easily identify with the narrator. In effect, the reader assumes the role of the narrator and experiences the fall of the house of Usher as both an observer and a participant—just as Poe intended. Poe sought to inspire powerful emotional responses to his stories. “The Fall of the House of Usher” is carefully crafted to elicit feelings of dread, stress, and, above all, what it calls “the grim phantasm, FEAR.”

In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the setting, diction , and imagery combine to create an overall atmosphere of gloom. Death and decay are evoked at the outset. The story opens on a “dull, dark, and soundless day” in a “singularly dreary tract of country.” As the narrator notes, it is autumn, the time of year when life begins to give way to old age and death. The house is as melancholy as its environment. A mere glimpse of the Usher mansion inspires in the narrator “an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart.” Upon entering the house, the reader as the narrator navigates through a series of dark passages lined with carvings, tapestries, and armorial trophies. Poe draws heavily on Gothic conventions, using omens and portents, heavy storms, hidden passageways, and shadows to set the reader on edge. The overwhelming sensation is one of entrapment.

Whether the reader is trapped by the house or by its inhabitants is unclear. Poe uses the term house to describe both the physical structure and the family. On the one hand, the house itself appears to be actually sentient , just as Roderick claims. Its windows are described as “eye-like,” and its interior is compared to a living body. Roderick suspects that the house controls its inhabitants. On the other hand, there are plenty of strange things about the Usher family. For one, “the entire family lay in the direct line of descent,” meaning that only one son from each generation survived and reproduced. Poe implies incestuous relations sustained the genetic line and that Roderick and Madeline are the products of extensive intermarriage within the Usher family.

In the end, both houses “die” at the same time: Madeline falls on her brother, and the mansion collapses.

When “The Fall of the House of Usher” was first published in 1839, many people assumed that it was about Poe himself. They observed that the narrator’s description of Roderick also applied to the author:

A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten.

Contemporary readers and critics interpreted the story as a somewhat sensationalized account of Poe’s supposed madness. (As a recluse , Poe often invited such accusations.) Later scholarship pursued alternative interpretations. Some scholars speculated that Poe may have attached special importance to the fact that Roderick and Madeline are twins, noting that Poe previously investigated the phenomenon of the double in “Morella” (1835) and “William Wilson” (1839). Other scholars pointed to the work as an embodiment of Poe’s doctrine of l’art pour l’art (“art for art’s sake”), which held that art needs no moral, political, or didactic justification.

Poe was often dismissed by contemporary literary critics because of the unusual content and brevity of his stories. When his work was critically evaluated, it was condemned for its tendencies toward Romanticism . The writers and critics of Poe’s day rejected many of that movement’s core tenets, including its emphasis on the emotions and the experience of the sublime . Poe’s contemporaries favoured a more realistic approach to writing. Accordingly, commentaries on social injustice, morality , and utilitarianism proliferated in the mid-19th century. Poe conceived of his writing as a response to the literary conventions of this period. In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” he deliberately subverts convention by rejecting the typical practices of preaching or moralizing and instead focusing on affect and unity of atmosphere.

When Poe began writing short stories, the short story was not generally regarded as serious literature. Poe’s writing helped elevate the genre from a position of critical neglect to an art form. Today Poe’s short stories are lauded as masterpieces of fiction. “The Fall of the House of Usher” stands as one of Poe’s most popular and critically examined stories.

• The Fall of the House of Usher

by Edgar Allan Poe

The fall of the house of usher study guide.

" The Fall of the House of Usher " was one of Edgar Allan Poe 's first contributions to Burton's Gentleman's Magazine , of which he was an associate editor. The story was printed in 1839, a little over a year after "Ligeia," which Poe always considered his best tale. Both "Usher" and "Ligeia" belong squarely in the Gothic tradition, but both feature language of such lyrical beauty that they have become timeless. It should also be noted that both involve deceased loved ones, much like the work which ultimately made Poe a literary star, "The Raven." Having inspired two inarguably great 1928 film adaptations--one by James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber, the other by French surrealist Jean Epstein--and a host of other movies, comic books, and ripoffs, " The Fall of the House of Usher," with its stark yet mysterious chronicling of mental collapse, its startling imagery, and its horrific finale, is today probably Poe's best known and most cherished story.

The Fall of the House of Usher Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Fall of the House of Usher is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

describe the room in which Roderick Usher is staying (267).

I would think a quote would be the best example for you. From there you can put these ideas into your own words. It's not hard, give it a try!

The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed,...

which details in Usher's appearance of suggest that he has been cut off from the outside world for many years?

"Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher!"

"A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a...

What forms of artistic expression does Usher share with thr narrator ?

Usher is a painter and he shares his art with the narrator. They also read poetry, stories, and share music.

Study Guide for The Fall of the House of Usher

The Fall of the House of Usher study guide contains a biography of Edgar Allan Poe, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About The Fall of the House of Usher
• The Fall of the House of Usher Summary
• Character List

Essays for The Fall of the House of Usher

The Fall of the House of Usher essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe.

• The Influence of Edgar Allan Poe's Predecessors on His Work
• Domains in 'The Fall of the House of Usher'
• Structural Purposes and Aesthetic Sensations of the Narrator's Language of "Fall of the House of Usher" within the Opening Paragraph
• Sonnet “X” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”
• Uncertainty: Poe’s Means, Pynchon’s End

E-Text of The Fall of the House of Usher

The Fall of the House of Usher e-text contains the full text of The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe.

Wikipedia Entries for The Fall of the House of Usher

• Introduction
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The Fall of the House of Usher

Background of the story, the fall of the house of usher summary, roderick usher, madeline usher, unnamed narrator, literary analysis, writing style, symbolism, imagery, allegory, reality and art, the house of usher, the small fissure, narrator point of view, more from edgar allan poe, short stories.

The Fall Of The House Of Usher Essay

The Fall of the House of Usher is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. The story is about the fall of the house of Usher, and the events that lead up to it. The story is narrated by an unnamed person who tells the story of his visit to the house of Usher, and the events that transpired there. The house of Usher is haunted by the ghost of Madeline Usher, who died under mysterious circumstances.

The narrator is interested in finding out what happened to Madeline, and he begins to suspect that her brother, Roderick Usher, may have had something to do with her death. The narrator eventually learns that Roderick has been cursed by Madeline’s ghost, and that the house will soon fall apart.

The house of Usher eventually falls apart, and Roderick dies in the process. The story is a classic example of Gothic fiction, and it has been praised for its chilling atmosphere and suspenseful plot. The Fall of the House of Usher is considered to be one of Poe’s best works, and it has been adapted into a number of films and television shows.

The Fall of the House of Usher is a classic example of Gothic fiction. The story is set in a dark and spooky house, and it is filled with suspenseful scenes and mysterious characters. The plot revolves around the fall of the house of Usher, and the events that lead up to it. The story is narrated by an unnamed person who tells the story of his visit to the house of Usher, and the events that transpired there. The house of Usher is haunted by the ghost of Madeline Usher, who died under mysterious circumstances.

The narrator is interested in finding out what happened to Madeline, and he begins to suspect that her brother, Roderick Usher, may have had something to do with her death. The narrator eventually learns that Roderick has been cursed by Madeline’s ghost, and that the house will soon fall apart. The house of Usher eventually falls apart, and Roderick dies in the process.

The House of Usher is a gloomy castle inside the city limits of Ravenswood, Illinois. The family has become sick with strange maladies that may be linked to their intermarriage.

The family estate, named Usher, is said to be haunted by the ghost of Madeline’s mother. The house itself seems to be alive and is in a state of decay. The story progresses with Roderick telling his friend, Philip, about the day that Madeline died. She was found in a pool of her own blood and there was a great gash on her forehead (Jacobs and Roberts, pg. 463). The servants refused to go back into the house, so Roderick had to bury her himself.

Roderick fears that he will also die and leave Usher without an heir. He tells Philip that he has been studying the secrets of life and death and that he may have found a way to cheat death. Philip is apprehensive about this, but goes to stay at Usher anyhow. Roderick shows him around the house and leads him down into the crypt. There, they find a hidden door that leads them down into the bowels of the earth (Jacobs and Roberts, pg. 465). They enter a dark and dreary chamber where Madeline’s body is entombed. The air is thick with moisture and it smells of death. The sound of dripping water can be heard from all directions.

Roderick tells Philip that he has been bringing Madeline back to life by giving her doses of a potion that he has made himself. He believes that he can bring her back completely by using an elixir that he has also made. Philip is horrified by all of this and tells Roderick that he needs to get out of the house. The next day, Madeline’s body is found in her bed and it appears that she has died in her sleep (Jacobs and Roberts, pg. 466). The funeral is held and Roderick mourns his sister’s death.

Shortly after the funeral, strange things start happening at Usher. The walls seem to be closing in on Roderick and he complains about the oppressive atmosphere of the house. The windows are boarded up and there is no way for any light or air to enter (Jacobs and Roberts, pg. 467).

Madness, the supernatural, and artistic purpose are all recurring themes in “The Fall of the House of Usher.” The Usher family is known for its history of incest, which has resulted in recent generations including Roderick being afflicted with madness.

The supernatural: The house of Usher is said to be haunted and is full of secret passages and hidden rooms. The narrator is not sure whether the events that take place in the story are caused by the supernatural or by Roderick’s mental illness, but either way, the house exerts a powerful grip on the family. Artistic purpose: The story is written in such a way that it blurs the line between reality and fiction.

The reader is never quite sure what is really happening, which may be intentional on Poe’s part. Some critics have interpreted “The Fall of the House of Usher” as a commentary on the Romantic movement, which was at its peak when Poe wrote the story. Romanticism prized emotion over reason and emphasized individualism and creativity. The story may be seen as an attack on these values, or as a warning against their dangers.

A man discovers a savage family curse while visiting his fiancée’s family home, and he worries that his future brother-in-law has prematurely entombed his bride-to-be. Philip Winthrop contacts his girlfriend Madeline Usher at her home. Roderick, Madeline’s brother, is particularly irritated by Philip’s presence.

The siblings have a strange, but close, bond. Winthrop learns from Madeline that their family is cursed and that Roderick believes she died prematurely. The locals whisper about the house’s malignant influence. Winthrop tries to persuade Madeline to leave the house for her own safety, but she refuses.

Roderick tells Winthrop about an incident in which he and Madeline were swimming in a nearby river. Madeline saw a vision of her death and became so terrified that she drowned while trying to get back to shore. Roderick was able to save her, but since that day he has been convinced that she has an “evil eye.”

Winthrop soon realizes that Roderick has entombed Madeline alive in the family crypt.

Roderick finally agrees to release Madeline from her tomb, but only if Winthrop stays and watches over her. The morbid agreement gives Winthrop just enough time to realize that he is also cursed and that he will soon join Madeline and Roderick in death. The mansion’s oppressive atmosphere overwhelms him, and he dies screaming. The story concludes with a description of the Usher family home crumbling into ruins.

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The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe Essay

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The understanding of the American Literary Canon is a fundamental aspect of literature that everybody should embrace. Reading through “the fall of the house of usher” by Edgar Allan Poe, I realized that the classification of artistic content based on the title might be misleading at some point. This article is a masterpiece guided by several aspects of society portraying multiple traits of a good story. Ideally, using the subjective understanding of Poe’s work, it is possible to evaluate some of the qualities of the story. I enjoyed reading the narrative, which seems to be dwelling on family, madness, supernatural powers, and the role of art in society. I think Poe is one the best authors in mysteries, romanticism, and perhaps social realities engulfed in imagery and symbolism.

While reading the story, I connected with much of Poe’s explanation of the setting, splendid environment. Poe sets the mood of the story right from the introduction, and I thought it was real life. In essence, the way he introduces the environment, the weather, and the event succinctly illustrate his prowess in mood-setting, which makes it relevant for all generations. One can vividly visualize the contextual implications of all the events unfolding within the introductory scene as a result of Poe’s diction.

At the same time, the setting of the story creates a lot of suspense for the reader as Poe describes his ordeal. I realized that the article provides a captivating scenario where one would want to know what happens next, from the physical location of the house, the owner- Roderick’s role, and how the two grew up together. This approach conveys a conventional picture of what would transpire in the life of modern youth, enjoying peer moments and enduring various climatic conditions. The mood is an essential aspect of story-telling because it attracts and retains the audience’s attention to detail.

In my view, the thematic choices also play a crucial role in determining whether the story should be in the canon or not. Poe focuses on the context of Usher’s family, where the members, including Roderick, are insane. Poe executes fear in almost every scene as the families go through traumatizing and pain-inflicting challenges within their community. Their belief in some supernatural power and the influence of nature indicates cultural aspects of their community. In my view, such elements of humanity exist in almost every society around the world. Therefore, the story seems to correlate with the real issues which occur in everyone’s life. The narrative triggered my memory of some horror movies I could watch as a young star because of the sufferings and bloodsheds.

The artistic values of the story are overstretching to include both political and moral values in touch with reality. For instance, the narrator talks about oppression and terror dominance as some of the main concerns in his community. He highlights the struggles they had to go through on a daily basis to survive the harsh conditions as a way of exposing how the systems of governance functioned during their era. In my view, such illustrations are pivotal in documenting the history of a country alongside the social ills endured by generations under different regimes. Notably, the allusions to Sir Launcelot’s narrations seem to point at the role of leadership in Poe’s community.

Unfortunately, the article fails to point out the historical moments within which the story would fall. Nonetheless, it is important to understand that much of what Poe writes relates to what America was facing during colonialism and provides a clear mimic of the scenarios which many citizens endured during the era.

The other aspect of the story standing out is its design of conclusion, which seems to showcase a symbolic ending. In my view, short stories should be readable within a single moment and indicate the climax of what authors would wish to achieve among the audiences. Notably, there appears critical use of symbolism in showing how Poe chooses to highlight the theme of family ties and social units. I would opine that the story ends in a satisfying state whereby the mansion is destroyed, and the characters die together as a household.

I like the way Poe makes the narration lively, bringing in the characters’ role in an enjoyable pattern. While reading the story, one can vividly imagine how Roderick faced the challenges, losing touch with reality at some point while another segment of the community continued with their life as usual. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t say I disliked the way the author portrays his role in the story as the villain, whose presence is articulated in the manners his people faced challenges throughout the story. There are multiple instances prompt to help the reader comprehend some of the major societal themes which affected ancient communities.

Succinctly, I feel this tale represents my notion of America, where life has a mixed taste. Although everyone would wish to live the American dream, a considerable number of people endured sufferings and difficulties, which would then be alluded to nature and supernatural beings. The use of blood and terror instance, in my view, would implicate the reigning challenges faced by minority groups because of the dominance of native colonial masters and Native Americans. Such forces still exist in modern society, which is marred by conspiracies and racial challenges.

Poe, Edgar Allan. The fall of the house of usher . Web.

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IvyPanda. (2022, October 19). The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-fall-of-the-house-of-usher-by-edgar-allan-poe/

"The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe." IvyPanda , 19 Oct. 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/the-fall-of-the-house-of-usher-by-edgar-allan-poe/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe'. 19 October.

IvyPanda . 2022. "The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe." October 19, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-fall-of-the-house-of-usher-by-edgar-allan-poe/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe." October 19, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-fall-of-the-house-of-usher-by-edgar-allan-poe/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe." October 19, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-fall-of-the-house-of-usher-by-edgar-allan-poe/.

The Fall of the House of Usher

46 pages • 1 hour read

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Discussion Questions

In your opinion, why did Poe choose not to give the narrator a name? Would naming the narrator change the story in any way?

Poe does not specify the House of Usher’s location. Is it important that the reader know this detail? Why or why not?

Poe’s long, intricate sentences mirror his characters’ emotional states. Find and analyze three sentences that show the relationship between syntax , rhythm , word choice, and emotion.

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