The Fall of the House of Usher

This week for the Edgar Allan Poe blog, I will be summarizing one of his famous stories and giving details about his amazing use of symbolism. This story is called "The Fall Of The House of Usher" and here is a link to view it The Fall of the House of Usher.

Basically this story starts off with an old acquaintance of Roderick Usher being asked over to spend time with him to catch up. Usher is suffering from a disease which heightens his senses, meaning he is only able to wear certain clothes, listen to certain instruments (stringed) and he cannot stand strong smells or the faintest of light. Once the friend arrives at the House of Usher, he is immediately put off by something odd, and takes particular notice in a fissure running from the top of the house all the way to its base. Regardless, he continues forward to see his old friend. Usher explains to his friend about a different disease that is affecting his twin sister and mentions that she his last living relative.

The Usher family is a pure family thus meaning they are incest. While the friend is staying with Roderick, Lady Madeline (Roderick's sister) gets even more sick and is no longer allowed to leave her bed. Usher and his guest continue on to play music, to read and to paint together. These are Roderick's only pass times seeing as he hasn't left his house in years.

Eventually Lady Madeline dies and her brother delays the burial one night because of the unknown circumstances of her death. She is buried, in a screwed coffin, in a vault under the guest bedroom which is sealed by an iron door. It used to be a dungeon and a gun powder room due to its limited accessibility. As soon as Lady Madeline is buried, Roderick's condition worsens and he turns into a madman always staring into nothingness.

One night, on the midst of a storm, Roderick's friend starts hearing noises. He blames it on the storm at first but can't get back to sleep because of an uneasy feeling. Roderick then comes into his room and throws open the window yelling at the storm. To calm him down, his friend shuts the window and starts reading a book to him. Whenever a sound is described in the book it is as if that sound is produced mysteriously in real life. Finally, the guest can no longer pretend he isn't hearing things and jumps up in fright. Roderick starts ranting like a crazy person about how he's been hearing her faint struggles for days now, but he didn't dare open his mouth. He proceeds to admit that they buried Lady Madeline alive and that she has finally escaped. As he says this Lady Madeline, bloody and ghastly looking, stumbles through the door and scares Roderick Usher to death. She then dies from her struggles. As his friend flees in fright he sees the fissure in the Usher house start to part and the house collapses and sinks into the tarn lake, and is forgotten about forever.



For me, the biggest example of symbolism in this story would be the
fissure in the wall. "Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered 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." This mention of the crack in the wall of the House of Usher could have been foreshadowing that some sort of event would cause the crack to split in half. In my opinion, the the two sides of the crack represented the two twin siblings, Roderick and his sister. Each was linked to the other on deep levels even including insanity, considering the fact that Roderick "heard" his sister long before she escaped her coffin. They were the last living descendants of the Usher family and they were depended on to keep the family going however, this did not happen. The Usher family fell apart at their generation just as the house split apart when they both died. They were holding each other together and one could not go without the other. That fissure in the wall is symbolism of not only a house falling apart but a whole family line falling apart. Poe demonstrates this use of symbolism in this story as well as many others like The Black Cat, The Tell-Tale Heart and The Raven. 

Ideas used from grade seven English class oral discussion