Text Preview
Student’s Last Name 1Student Name Instructor Name Course NameDateAnalysis of “The Fall of the House of Usher”The novel “The Fall of the House of Usher” of Edgar Allan Poe was published 1839 and is one of the most known novels of the writer. The narrator has received a letter from his old friend Roderick Usher, a descendant of a noble family, who was spending time in his hereditary ancient mansion. Many years have passed since their last meeting.Approaching the house, the teller have impressed with an incredibly gloomy landscape, with the House of Usher, the tarn, the skeletons of trees. He also have noticed “a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn” (Poe 10).Speaking to Usher, the narrator have discovered that the master of the House suffered from strange hereditary disease – a morbid acuteness of the senses. He suffered from bright lights, loud noises and bright colors. Another dominating feeling was a terror. In fact, all his life was the constant struggle with a dread. Roderick Usher was sure that his family mansion has some psychic influence on him. Even so, another reason affected Usher more than the House, it was the illness of his beloved sister Madeline, who melted day by day from cataleptical apathy. One day Asher informed the teller, that his sister died, and asked to help him put her body in the family vault. After that, Usher has become even more anxious and terrified. At seventh or eighth night, the narrator have been waked up with indefinite sound from not whence. In his room have entered Usher, being in hysteria. Then he have confessed that they have put his sister living in the tomb, and with his painfully acute senses he heard the she was trying to escape from a tomb, but Usher was unable to go and help her, because of his fear of terror, not being able to face the awful truth. Lady Madeline have appeared in bloody robes, have felt upon the brother and both of them died. The House of Usher has fallen into the dark waters. What is the House of Usher in the novel? Is it just a building, a mansion or it is the family, the clan? We can say, that speaking about the House literally, Poe E.A. depictures symbolically the family of Usher. The House of Usher, taken in its symbolic sense is the cradle of the whole family that degrades profoundly. Any contact with reality affects them and all descendants of the family from generation to generation live in constant terror of the collision with the reality of life. The House as a symbol of the family, which is directly related to the degradation of it, stays in decay and destruction. That is how Usher said about the connection between his illness and the House, that the damned building …
