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Roderick tells the narrator that he suffers from nerves and fear and that his senses are heightened. Roderick’s sister, Madeline, has taken ill with a mysterious sickness—perhaps catalepsy, the loss of control of one’s limbs—that the doctors cannot reverse. He listens to Roderick play the guitar and make up words for his songs, and he reads him stories, but he cannot lift Roderick’s spirit.
Poe's Short Stories (SparkNotes Literature Guide)
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. Dreams, for instance, are the way our unconscious mind communicates with our conscious mind, but in such a way which shrouds or veils their message in ambiguous symbolism and messages. ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ can also be analysed as a deeply telling autobiographical portrait, in which Roderick Usher represents, or reflects, Poe himself. After all, Roderick Usher is a poet and artist, well-read (witness the assortment of books which he and the narrator read together), sensitive and indeed overly sensitive (to every sound, taste, sight, touch, and so on). Many critics have interpreted the story as, in part, an autobiographical portrait of Poe himself, although we should be wary, perhaps, of speculating too much about any parallels.
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Gothic Rot and Retribution: The Fall of the House of Usher’s Unsettling Approach to Poe's Work.
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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. “The Fall of the House of Usher” stands as one of Poe’s most popular and critically examined stories.
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Poe condenses these into a short story and plays around with them, locating new psychological depths within these features. 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. We learn, too, that his twin sister, Madeline, a neurasthenic woman like her brother, is subject to catatonic trances. The suspense continues to climb as we go deeper into the dark house and, with the narrator, attempt to fathom Roderick’s malady.
But Virginia did not fall ill until after Poe had written ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’. In the Roger Corman film from 1960, released in the United States as House of Usher, Vincent Price starred as Roderick Usher, Myrna Fahey as Madeline and Mark Damon as Philip Winthrop, Madeline's fiancé. The film was Corman's first in a series of eight films inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe. In 2002, Ken Russell produced a horror comedy version titles The Fall of the Louse of Usher. A television adaptation was produced by ATV for the ITV network in 1966 for the horror anthology series Mystery and Imagination. In 1950, a British film version of The Fall of the House of Usher was produced starring Gwen Watford, Kay Tendeter and Irving Steen.
A Summary and Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’
Throughout the tale and her varying states of consciousness, Madeline completely ignores the narrator's presence. After Roderick Usher claims that Madeline has died, the narrator helps Usher entomb Madeline in an underground vault despite noticing Madeline's flushed, lifelike appearance. The bedroom door is then blown open to reveal Madeline, bloodied from her arduous escape from the tomb. In a final fit of rage, she attacks her brother, scaring him to death as she herself expires. The narrator then runs from the house, and, as he does, he notices a flash of moonlight behind him.
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Netflix's The Fall Of The House Of Usher Deserves The Hype.
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Note how Madeline is barely seen for much of the story, and the second time she appears she is literally buried (repressed?) within the vault. An interpretation which has more potential, then, is the idea that the ‘house of Usher’ is a symbol of the mind, and it is this analysis which has probably found the most favour with critics. The narrator and Roderick place her in a tomb despite her flushed, lively appearance. In the tale's conclusion, Madeline escapes from the tomb and returns to Roderick, scaring him to death. Fearing that her body will be exhumed for medical study, Roderick insists that she be entombed for two weeks in the family tomb located in the house before being permanently buried.
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The secret that is buried and then comes to light (represented by Madeline) is never revealed. The symbol which represents the secret – Madeline herself – is hidden away by Roderick, but that symbol returns, coming to light at the end of the story and (in good Gothic fashion) destroying the family for good. From his arrival, the narrator notes the family's isolationist tendencies, as well as the cryptic and special connection between Madeline and Roderick, the final living members of the Usher family.
Several days later, Roderick tells the narrator that Madeline has died, and they lay her to rest in a vault. In the days that follow, the narrator starts to feel more uneasy in the house, and attributes his nervousness to the gloomy furniture in the room where he sleeps. The narrator begins to suspect that Roderick is harbouring some dark secret. The story is narrated by a childhood friend of Roderick Usher, the owner of the Usher mansion.
Despite this admission, Usher remains in the mansion and composes art containing the Usher mansion or similar haunted mansions. Roderick and Madeline are twins and the two share an incommunicable connection that critics conclude may be either incestuous or metaphysical,[7] as two individuals in an extra-sensory relationship embodying a single entity. To that end, Roderick's deteriorating condition speeds his own torment and eventual death.
In a shocking development, Madeline breaks out of her coffin and enters the room, and Roderick confesses that he buried her alive. 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. Roderick grows more erratic in his behaviour, and the narrator reads to his friend to try to soothe him.
The narrator mentions that the Usher family, though an ancient clan, has never flourished. Only one member of the Usher family has survived from generation to generation, thereby forming a direct line of descent without any outside branches. The Usher family has become so identified with its estate that the peasantry confuses the inhabitants with their home.
The plot of the romance (a fictional title invented by Poe himself, called ‘Mad Trist’) concerns a hero named Ethelred who enters the house of a hermit and slays a dragon. Roderick Usher is a gifted poet and artist, whose talents the narrator praises before sharing a poem Usher wrote, titled ‘The Haunted Palace’. The ballad concerns a royal palace which was once filled with joy and song, until ‘evil things’ attacked the king’s palace and made it a desolate shadow of what it once was. This is an abridged summary and analysis of "The Fall of the House of Usher." For the complete study guide (including quotes, literary devices, analysis of the major characters, and more), click here. Poe was often dismissed by contemporary literary critics because of the unusual content and brevity of his stories.
Madeline stifles Roderick by preventing him from seeing himself as essentially different from her. The crossing of borders pertains vitally to the Gothic horror of the tale. We know from Poe’s experience in the magazine industry that he was obsessed with codes and word games, and this story amplifies his obsessive interest in naming. “Usher” refers not only to the mansion and the family, but also to the act of crossing a -threshold that brings the narrator into the perverse world of Roderick and Madeline. Roderick’s letter ushers the narrator into a world he does not know, and the presence of this outsider might be the factor that destroys the house. The narrator is the lone exception to the Ushers’ fear of outsiders, a fear that accentuates the claustrophobic nature of the tale.
The Martian Chronicles, a 1950 collection of stories by Ray Bradbury, contains a novella called "Usher II," a homage to Poe. Its main character, William Stendahl, builds a house based on the specifications from Poe's story to murder his enemies. It is revealed that Roderick's sister, Madeline, is also ill and falls into cataleptic, deathlike trances. Long considered Edgar Allan Poe‘s masterpiece, “The Fall of the House of Usher” continues to intrigue new generations of readers. These explanations range from the pre-Freudian to the pre–Waste Land and pre-Kafka-cum-nihilist to the biographical and the cultural.
He witnesses Madeline's reemergence and the subsequent, simultaneous death of the twins. The narrator is the only character to escape the House of Usher, which he views as it cracks and sinks into the mountain lake. As the narrator reads of the knight's forcible entry into the dwelling, he and Roderick hear cracking and ripping sounds from somewhere in the house. When the dragon's death cries are described, a real shriek is heard, again within the house. As he relates the shield falling from off the wall, a hollow metallic reverberation can be heard throughout the house. At first, the narrator ignores the noises, but Roderick becomes increasingly hysterical.
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