The Fall of the House of Usher

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   mwestwood Teacher
   Community / Jr. College

   The twin relationship enhances the Gothic effect of the grotesque: Here are a brother and sister who have a bizarre relationship--there blood line is too thin; their being twins thins the line even more. Roderick suffers from a morbid nervous condition while his sister has a strange apathetic illness with catalepsy that keeps Roderick nearby in the mansion that decays as the family does. And, since Madeline is his own flesh and blood, Roderick has the twin intuition that senses what the other feels and thinks. Thus, when Roderick tells the narrator that Madeline still moves in the house and is not dead, there is more credibility given to his declarations. In the final horror, Madeline "bore him to the floor a corpse"; they are united in death and they were in birth--an eerie ending made more plausible because they are twins.

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   Posted by mwestwood on Sunday October 26, 2008 at 11:45 PM
   
   

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