Thursday, May 2, 2024

The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe

the fall of the house of usher setting analysis

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. During the time Poe was writing, a distinct and mature body of Americanliterature was beginning to develop with the contributions of such authors asPoe Nathaniel Hawthorne John Greenleaf Whittier Harriet Beecher Stowe HenryWadsworth Longfellow, and James Fenimore Cooper.

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Notes

the fall of the house of usher setting analysis

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 Haunted Palace”

Everything in the house is breaking down, even the mentality of its owners. Doppelganger is the character double and portrays the doubling of the literary forms or inanimate structures. For example, the narrator observes that the mansion is a reflection in the shallow pool or tarn that joins the front of the house. The house is doubled through its image in the tarn; however, the image is upside down, which characterizes the relationship between Madeline and Roderick. The readers are left alone with the narrator as it is such a haunted place.

Poe's Short Stories (SparkNotes Literature Guide)

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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.

In literature

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.

Characters

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.

By extension, Madeline's barren womb also symbolizes the Usherlineage, house, and Roderick. When she dies, he is the last of the Ushers; whenhe dies, it will indeed be the fall of the House of Usher. No one else had drawn such parallels so minutely, nor mapped the courseof a symbolic tempest so accurately. The storm which precipitates the final destruction of the edifice ismanifestly unnatural, originating within rather than without.

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

The vaporousclouds which gather about the turrets of the house are lit from below byluminous exhalations of the tarn. These clouds part just once, as the narratorflees from the house, to display a blood-red moon. It is by the ominous lightof that celestial lantern that he sees the narrow crack widen, tearing thehouse apart from top to bottom so that its debris might collapse entirely intothe tarn. The narrator also acts as a symbol of both rationality and a bridge to theoutside world for the Usher siblings. The narrator thinks critically about fearand its causes from the first time he sees the house.

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.

Madeline takes the initiative to bring an end to the negative and destructive union of souls. (Knapp, 139) Clearly, the supernatural happenings in this story are unreal and so must be seen as symbolic. The gloomy appearance of the house gives it a supernatural atmosphere that gives the house life-like characteristics. Madeline Usher, Roderick’s twin sister is given to trances and sleepwalking and is completely unaware of the world surrounding her, even the visitor’s presence in the family home. Madeline Usher is the anima figure in the story Poe’s use of symbolism in his gothic stories is a guiding thread to his literary art. That he is not persistently a symbolist is one of his strengths, for it means that he only turns to symbolism when it has a distinct role to play.

He attempts to determinewhat specifically about the house makes him uneasy and recognizes that he whathe fears could be the result of his imagination. However, the longer thenarrator stays in the house, the more fear overcomes him, showing that fear andimagination often overcome rationality. Although doctors come and go to monitorRoderick’s and Madeline’s health, the narrator is their main connection to theoutside world. Roderick’s letter asking the narrator to come cheer him updemonstrates that the doctors’ presence does not ease his isolation.

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