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The Fall of the House of Usher
I would argue that the most important event in this tale of horror is the final scene, during which Madeline dies (again) and takes Roderick with her. Madeline had ostensibly died the week before...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
The "remarkable fact" is that their family tree is composed almost entirely of "single branches". In other words, couples in the family usually had just one child. When that...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
I have never taken the stance that the narrator's mental state is deteriorating, personally. I found him to be quite sane and detailed...a concerned friend and one who will be there to be by his...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
It's never explicitly stated that Roderick is directly responsible for his sister's death. Given that he's mentally unstable, it's more than a distinct possibility. What clouds the issue is the...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
For Edgar Allan Poe, each piece of written work, no matter how brief, provided the author with the opportunity to display their mastery of form and content seamlessly combined. Themes of decay,...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
Irony occurs when events in a story work out in an opposite way from what we expect. We expect, when Madeline finally dies from an unknown illness—which is described as "apathetic," rendering her...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
Madeline’s presence as a seriously ill person, a dead body in a coffin, and an apparition are key elements in the mood and plot. As the story begins, the reader sees the narrator as a sane...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
When asking about the relationship between art and reality in "The Fall of the House of Usher," one must look to the central artist figure in the story, Roderick Usher. Roderick is fearful and mad,...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
Roderick Usher is a state of deep gloom and nervous agitation over the upcoming death of his twin sister and his superstitious fear that the fate of his house is bound up in his own. He spends most...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
Falling action concludes and ties up a story after the climax has been reached. It is a point at which tension is released. There is not much falling action in this Poe story, as the climax comes...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
Roderick Usher’s poem “The Haunted Palace” echoes several themes in Edgar Allan Poe’s story. The overall idea of a dwelling that is afflicted by spirits could easily apply to the Ushers’ home as...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
It is possible to apply a feminist reading to Edgar Allan Poe’s story, but considering Madeline as representing feminism would be anachronistic. Poe’s stories famously feature dead women, and the...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
Upon arriving at the Ushers' dark, creepy mansion, the narrator, Roderick Usher's childhood friend, is met by a servant in waiting, who proceeds to take his horse. He then leads him into the hall's...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
In the gothic short story "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator arrives on an oppressively cloudy day at the gloomy house of Usher. He has come to visit his boyhood...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
The narrator sees the House of Usher in the first few paragraphs of the story as he riding past on horseback. He describes how he felt "an insufferable gloom" that he couldn't even relieve with a...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
At the beginning of "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe, the reader observes the house and its setting through the eyes of a first-person narrator, a school friend of Roderick...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
The Fall of the House of Usher is a story thick with allusion and subtext. It is considered a very good example of “totality,” a literary device wherein every detail carries meaning and relevance....
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The Fall of the House of Usher
These are difficult questions to answer, as part of the appeal and success of The Fall of the House of Usher is the vagueness which leaves it open to interpretation and therefore lets readers...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
To be precise, the narrator is not visiting the house of Usher to relieve his own malady of spirits. He is going there because he received a letter from his friend, Roderick, saying that he,...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
In Edgar Allan Poe’s story, the question of what is “real” is an important consideration for every aspect. The author uses a first-person narrator and, according to him, not only are both the other...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
Published in 1839, “The Fall of the House of Usher” is one of Edgar Allan Poe’s finest short stories. The tightly constructed tale engages the reader from the opening paragraph to its dramatic...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
Poe crafts a story with many details, some that you have mentioned here, to create a morbid tone that foreshadows the end of Usher—both the house and the man. When he first arrives, the narrator is...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
In his short story “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Edgar Allan Poe employs his skills in description to give readers a definition impression of the Usher home and how it matches the psyches of...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
Gothic literature came about during the period of Romanticism in England and is a sort of sub-genre of Romantic literature. The Romantics emphasized the importance of intense emotion over reason or...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
In the Gothic short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Edgar Allen Poe recounts the demise of the Usher family when the last two remaining members, siblings Roderick and Madeline, descend...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
The narrator seems so terrified by the sight of Madeline Usher that it seems highly unlikely that he was aware that they had buried her alive. When he first hears the sounds of Madeline...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
Poe wrote that his main impetus in work of fiction or poetry was to create a mood or feeling. As he put it in his "The Philosophy of Composition," I prefer commencing with the consideration of an...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
Foreshadowing is a literary device used by authors to offer clues about coming events in a story. By hinting to readers about things that might happen in the future, writers create expectations...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
Poe's narrator comments, at the beginning of the story, that the term "House of Usher" has come to mean both the house and the family. Both are impossibly antique and given to extreme melancholy....
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The Fall of the House of Usher
When Poe speaks of the "house of Usher" in "The Fall of the House of Usher," he refers to both the physical home Roderick and Madeline live in and the Usher's genealogical lineage: the house of...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. It tells of a man who travels to visit his friend Roderick Usher, who requested the visit because of his illness. The illness...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
The unnamed narrator describes the interior of the house of Usher, where he has gone to visit his old friend, Roderick Usher. First, he enters through a Gothic archway. The ceilings are carved,...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
Some figures of speech include: Allegories- The moss growing outside of a decaying estate which was formerly grandiose and sumptuous; the dead sister; the inevitability of Usher's appareance, and...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
Edgar Allan Poe uses personification in "The Fall of the House of Usher," giving human qualities to the house itself, in order to connect it to Madeline and Roderick Usher, almost as though it is...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
As long as we consider it true that Usher did in fact bury his twin sister alive, then it is safe to say that there is more at work here than a simple self-fulfilling prophesy. Yes, while the...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
While this story does have some comedic elements, including dialogue, characterization, and other devices, overall it is to be perceived as an ironic tragedy. The Fall of the House of Usher, within...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
Poe certainly had a sad life. He was a typical struggling writer who even burned his furniture at one point to stay warm. He found success with the Raven but then lost his wife a year or so later....
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The Fall of the House of Usher
At the end of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher," both Roderick and his sister Madeline, the last of the Usher family, are dead. More specifically, Madeline escapes from her tomb...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
There are several conflicts in "The Fall of the House of Usher." First, there is the internal conflict that Roderick Usher is experiencing. He is losing his mind and his health, and he knows that...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
Here is a brief but concise chronology of the story mentioned above: 1. Narrator gets invited to house of Roderick Usher.2. Narrator arrives, learns about the sickly state of the house and its...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
The narrator in Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Fall of the House of Usher serves, as narrators always do, the important role of observer. In Poe's story, however, the narrator's role is...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
This is an excellent question, as both of these short stories are wonderful examples of how setting is used to build up the Gothic atmosphere and content that dominates these tales. In particular,...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
If duality is not a theme, it certainly is a motif in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher." For, beginning with the double entendre of "House of Usher" as both the mansion and the...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
While at first glance it would seem that a gruesome story like "Fall of the House of Usher" has no Romantic qualities, if you look at a couple of the elements of Romanticism, it is easier to see...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
The uncanny or unheimlich is the uncomfortable or the strange. The German word unheimlich, meaning unhomelike, best captures the eerie feeling of the uncanny, the sense of the ordinary being "off"...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
Much of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" explores the ways in which imagination and apparent supernatural acts overcome reason and order, replacing them with blind fear. One of...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
The narrator in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" is presented initially to the reader as a very rational man. As with most of Poe's narrators, he speaks with an elevated diction...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
Some characteristic features of the Gothic novel include mysterious and gloomy settings, characters who are insane, supernatural beings like ghosts or monsters (think Dracula or Frankenstein's...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
One of the important aspects of the house in this story is the way that it functions as such a vital symbol of Roderick and Madeline Usher themselves and how it is suggested that the house and the...
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The Fall of the House of Usher
Roderick is constantly afraid of sounds, lights and of smells. He is also a hypochondriac. He thinks that his estate itself (the house) is evil. He has been keeping his family's incest a secret...
