Thursday, May 2, 2024

The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe

the fall of the house of usher setting analysis

He illustrates himself as a mind to her body and suffers from the mental counterpart of his sister’s physical illness. “The Fall of the House of Usher” is a short story published in 1839 in American writer Edgar Allan Poe. It was first published in Gentleman’s Magazine by Burton and later included in the collection Tales of Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840. The story is a work of Gothic Fiction and deals with the themes of isolation, madness, family, and metaphysical identities.

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

These poems are composed by Poe; however, in the story, he attributed these poems to the other sources. Both of these poems counteract and therefore predict the plotline of the story. The poem “Mad Trist” is about breaking into the dwelling of a hermit by Ethelred and mirrors Madeline’s escape from the tomb. Even though he metaphorically employs the word “house,” he also uses it to describe the real house. The narrator is not only trapped inside the house, but the house also describes the biological fate of the family as well, as the Usher family has no branches, all the genetic transformation takes place through incestuous relationships within the domain of the house. The people and peasantry also confuse the house with the family as the physical structure effectively portrays the genetic pattern of the family.

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Its main character, William Stendahl, builds a house based on the specifications from Poe's story to murder his enemies. He sees her wandering about the house, her physical being, as well as her psychological being decaying daily, but he does nothing about it. It is Madeline, the anima figure, who has been Roderick’s companion for many years, and He has kept alive this psychologically incestuous relationship. Reduces "The Fall of the House of Usher" to a "relatively meaningless"horror story which serves principally as a case study in morbid psychology andlacks any quality of pathos or tragedy. Baym offers a brief analysis of the three characters and their mentaldisorders.

A Summary and Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’

The Usher family and the Usher mansion are analogous-stained with time, used up, crumbling within, ready to collapse. The narrator describes the house as ready to crumble to the ground, therefore there must be something supernatural holding it up. He buries his sister alive in hope that she suffocates, then he will move her to the family grave yard. Elizabeth MacAndrew quotes, “It is an obvious rule of art that effects should be made to spring as directly as possible from their causes.” This is true, although Madeline is dead, she is not entirely gone. The mostobvious symbol is the Usher house, which stands now in stark contrast to itsonce vibrant history, a history alluded to in "The Haunted Palace." The house'swindows, fungi, and fissure suggest Roderick's rapidly decaying physical andmental states.

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Madeline attacks her brother and kills both him and herself in the struggle, and the narrator flees the house. It is a stormy night, and as he leaves he sees the house fall down, collapsing into the lake which reflects the house’s image. Starting July 1, most salaried workers who earn less than $844 per week will become eligible for overtime pay under the final rule. And on Jan. 1, 2025, most salaried workers who make less than $1,128 per week will become eligible for overtime pay. As these changes occur, job duties will continue to determine overtime exemption status for most salaried employees. The department’s final rule, which will go into effect on July 1, 2024, will increase the standard salary level that helps define and delimit which salaried workers are entitled to overtime pay protections under the FLSA.

the fall of the house of usher setting analysis

The narrator helps Roderick put Madeline's body in the tomb, whereupon the narrator realizes that Madeline and Roderick are twins. The narrator also notes that Madeline's body has rosy cheeks, which sometimes happens after death. Over the next week, both Roderick and the narrator find themselves increasingly agitated. The Fall of the House of Usher is acclaimed as one of Edgar Allan Poe’s greatest works. Poe uses Symbolism and analogies in both characters and setting to tell this gothic tale of death and downfall. He combines atmosphere and analogy to form the setting which provokes to the reader a sense of insufferable gloom.

Literary Style

Twoother foreshadowing devices are Roderick's painting of a vault which eventuallybecomes Madeline's tomb and the narrator's reading of Sir Lancelot Canning's"Mad Twist," the plot of which coincides with Madeline's return from thetomb. Numerous chambers contained within the walls of the building, inwhich Roderick’s ancestors are entombed. The hypersensitive Roderick hears the miscellaneousknocks, creaks, and rumbles even more keenly, and the transformations imposedupon them by his vivid imagination are fed back into the fabric of thehouse. After arriving at the House of Usher, the narrator makes a direct comparisonbetween the house and the family itself. The mansion acts as a symbol of theonce great Usher family that has fallen to ruin. The house is isolated and cutoff from the outside world just like the Usher siblings.

Poe's Stories

the fall of the house of usher setting analysis

Poe choosesdetails that highlight the terror of near madness, premature burial, and deathand destruction. Roderick's and Madeline's deaths are furtherheightened as the narrator notes that the "blood-red moon . . . now shonevividly through the once barely discernible fissure." But despite being dismissed by literary critics, Poe's tales wereinstrumental in establishing the short story as a viable literary form. Beforehis time, such short works were not regarded as serious literature. Poe'sexamples of what the short story could accomplish, and his own nonfictionwritings about the form, were instrumental in establishing the short story as alegitimate form of serious literature. His tales of terror are considered among the finest everproduced in the horror genre.

Opium which Poe mentions several times in both his prose and poems, is mentioned twice in the tale. The gloomy sensation occasioned by the dreary landscape around the Usher mansion is compared by the narrator to the sickness caused by the withdrawal symptoms of an opium-addict. The narrator also describes Roderick Usher’s appearance as that an “irreclaimable cater of opium”. It might be argued that Roderick Usher’s hypersensitivity and hypochondria are both consistent with the withdrawal symptoms of opiate-addiction. Poe’s many mentions of opium and his exact descriptions of his effects and of opium additions withdrawal symptoms have led many to believe that Poe had first-hand experience of opium and that he might have been an opium-addict himself.

However, sorrow attacks the palace, leaving the once luminous eyes red from crying, the ruby red lips now pale. The last three lines of the song (“Through the pale door, | A hideous throng rush out forever, | And laugh — but smile no more”) describe the horrible wailing of the person now that their reason has been overthrown. Although the person described in the song isn’t literally Roderick, the description of physical and emotional deterioration evokes his own, showing self-awareness of his pitiful state.

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