The Fall of the House of Usher

It is also the case that the twins Madeline and Roderick are also symbolic in their nature. For Poe, the story itself is about the duality of human nature and the struggle between the dualism of...

"The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe is a horror story, in which an atmosphere of gloom, dread, and suspense leads up to a culminating moment of horror. The nameless narrator is a...

The tone of the story is overwrought and unrelievedly dark and fevered, reflecting the oppressive, foreboding setting and unstable, hypersensitive psyche of Roderick Usher. As the narrator rides...

Poe has his narrator employ a simile as he heads toward the House of Usher. The narrator compares the depression he feels to the "after-dream of the reveller upon opium"—in other words, the crash...

Interestingly, prior to the reading by the narrator of the Mad Trist of Sir Launcelot Canning, Roderick Usher expresses to his friend that He was echained by certain superstitious impressions in...

Within the events of the story that the narrator both observes and takes part in, Roderick is the first to confess that he is struggling to remain within the realm of the rational. He tells the...

For much of Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Fall of the House of Usher," the character of Madeline is seen by the narrator only sporadically, and Poe offers no physical description of the...

Roderick's painting and music seem to express the unbalanced state of his mind. They appear to be outward manifestations of his troubled inward psyche and to express his heightened sensitivity or...

Indubitably, the relationship between Roderick and Madeline Usher is bizarre. Key to understanding this relationship is the narrator's description, I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact,...

After Madeline's death from her mysterious illness, Roderick explains to our narrator that he plans to preserve her body in the house for two weeks before allowing her to be buried. While macabre,...

Figurative language appeals to readers' senses (imagery, alliteration, onomatopoeia) and/or uses words to create significant nonliteral meanings (allusions, metaphors, similes, analogies) to add...

There have already been a couple answers commenting on the interplay between imagination and reason in “The Fall of the House of Usher” within the narrator, who is also the point of view character....

During the storm, Roderick Usher insists on opening a casement (window) so that the narrator can experience the "whirlwind" outside as the wind changes directions, along with the dense clouds and...

In the long opening descriptive paragraph of "The Fall of the House of Usher," the narrator crosses an isolated, relentlessly bleak landscape marked by a dark lake or tarn to arrive at a mildewed,...

There are several conflicts within this story. First, the narrator who comes to visit the Usher house has an internal conflict. He is conflicted because he wants to help his friend Roderick...

The title of Roderick's macabre song is "The Haunted Palace." The words reflect the brother and sister's existence in the House of Usher.In Stanza 1, Roderick croons about the keepers of...

Prior to the beginning of the story, the unnamed narrator received a letter from his childhood friend, Roderick Usher, in which Roderick spoke of some illness and expressed his desire to see the...

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...

In the following passage, the narrator is describing the vault to which he and Usher move what they assume is the dead body of Lady Madeline: It had been used, apparently, in remote feudal times,...

There can be many different answers for this question. I would say that one cannot pinpoint one single effect, to be quite honest. I would say that one primary effect would be shock/terror. The...

Poe incorporated "The Haunted Palace" into his story "The Fall of the House of Usher," and it's meant as an expression of the decay of Roderick Usher's family and the family home. One wonders,...

Roderick Usher and his family house in Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" are similar because they are both decrepit and isolated; their fates also merge at the end of the story. Roderick Usher...

In his recollection of the events that lead to the literal and metaphoric fall of the house of Usher, the narrator notes from his very approach to the house that he feels destabilized by his...

The narrator of the story, is going to the house of his childhood friend, Roderick Usher. It has been years since he has seen Usher. Roderick has sent his friend a letter telling him that he has...

One element that characterizes American Gothic literature is the intersection of the rational and the irrational. The story's narrator is the voice of reason; he comes to the House of Usher because...

There are a few critical explanations that shed light on what the storm may symbolize in "The Fall of the House of Usher." The storm begins when Roderick becomes agitated over the noises he hears...

Writers of Gothic literature often sought to inspire horror or fear within their readers. The Gothic was a sort of offshoot or subgenre of Romantic literature, and Romantics believed that intense...

In the story "The Fall of the House of Usher," Poe employs the supernatural as a figment of Roderick's imagination to show his crumbling sanity. The main character's behavior is increasingly...

Besides the interpretations already explained in other posts, it is also possible that the narrator is telling the truth about the events of the story. Many of Poe’s stories contain elements of the...

From the opening of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” to its ending, there is no question that the physical structure, the titular “house,” and its surroundings is a...

The narrator learns that that the Usher family tree is unusual in that only one child every generation survives to have more children. This suggests that the family is not very healthy, as we can...

The fact that Roderick and Madeline are twins is crucial because it emphasizes the close connection between the Usher siblings. If they were just a regular brother and sister, then it would be more...

The look of the estate is dark, dreary, and oppressive as the narrator arrives. A few days later, a violent storm arises the same night he hears strange and deeply unsettling noises from below. The...

Poe piles up relentlessly grim and dreary adjectives to describe the House of Usher and its surroundings. Adjectives include "dreary," "melancholy," "bleak," "rank," and "decayed." Importantly, Poe...

The climax of "The Fall of the House of Usher " could be said to occur when Roderick tells the narrator "We have put her living in the tomb!" just before Madeline reappears. In the days leading up...

When assessing the conflict(s) in a story, it can be helpful to identify its climax, or the moment of the most tension in the text. It can also be a turning point of some kind. In this story, the...

As with all thesis statements you need to make sure you have certain elements in place. For one thing, you need to understand that you're not just describing a certain feature of the story; you're...

I agree that the setting of "The Fall of the House of Usher" is all important. The house functions, like Madeline, as a mirror or twin of the main character, Roderick Usher. Even the name "House of...

In "The Fall of The House of Usher," Poe doesn't specify precisely how Roderick dies. As a master of suspense, he wants to keep us guessing, forcing us to use our imaginations. This is the...

The story opens with a description not of Roderick but of his house and its surroundings, which are gloomy, depressing, and ominous. This sets up a mood of looming horror, enhanced by the initial...

“The Fall of the House of Usher” is a short story by Edgar Allen Poe and is a quintessential example of the gothic genre. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story by American writer Charlotte...

Poe is a master at creating suspense and total effect in all his pieces. "The Fall of the House of Usher" is no exception. From the very beginning when the narrator drops everything to go to his...

The physical description of the House of Usher certainly adds to the ominous tone as the narrator approaches it. The walls are described as "bleak," suggesting that they are hopeless in form and...

This section of the short story comes towards its denouement, as the storm that clearly symbolises the intense agitation inside Roderick himself reaches its height as does Roderick's nervous...

Roderick Usher's observation of "the sentience of all vegetable things" extends to his conviction that even inorganic things, such as the stones of his mansion, take on a certain consciousness of...

As he approaches the mansion of his old school friend, Roderick Usher, the narrator describes the "melancholy House of Usher" as desolate and terrible. The house has bleak walls and "vacant...

To answer your question, we have to pose a few others: Is this a supernatural story or one of psychological horror, or both? Is Roderick Usher the only mentally ill character in the story? And how...

You have asked a great question that really goes to the heart of this tale. We are never clear whether Roderick knowingly buries his sister alive out of pure malicious evil or whether it is just a...

There does seem to be a psychic connection between the physical house that the Ushers live in, and the "house of Usher" as a family line. The house reflects, in its physical form, the fortunes of...

Appropriately enough for an Edgar Allan Poe story, the relationship between the narrator and Roderick Usher is somewhat strange. Although they're supposed to have been friends since childhood, it's...