Student Question
What causes the sounds in the house according to Roderick?
Quick answer:
In "The Fall of the House of Usher," Roderick says that Madeline's attempts to escape from the Usher family tomb are causing the sounds in the house. While the narrator is reading aloud to Roderick in the hopes that it will calm his friend's nerves, Roderick reveals that he has been hearing the sounds for several days, but he was afraid to acknowledge and speak of it.
In Poe's classic short story "The Fall of the House of Usher," the narrator visits his childhood friend Roderick Usher, who is suffering from "nervous agitation," paranoia, and depression in his family's decrepit mansion. Roderick Usher's estate is an unnerving residence that fills the narrator with a sense of "insufferable gloom" at first sight, and Roderick isolates himself inside the decaying house with his dying twin sister, Madeline . Similar to her brother, Madeline's sickness is somewhat indeterminable, and her body is wasting away. Not long after the narrator's arrival, Roderick informs him that Madeline has died and asks him for help in burying his sister. The narrator then helps Roderick bury his Madeline inside a family vault located in the depths of the estate. Following Madeline's death, Roderick becomes more detached than ever and begins inexplicably gazing into the dark as if he is "listening to...
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some imaginary sound."
On the seventh or eighth night after Madeline's burial, the narrator cannot fall asleep, and Roderick comes to his room to show him the luminous gas encircling the estate during the violent storm. While the narrator attempts to calm his friend's nerves by reading to him aloud, the events within the story he is reading begin to mirror their present situation as Madeline successfully escapes from her tomb. After a brass shield falls to the floor in the story, Roderick tells the narrator,
Not hear it?—yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long—long—long—many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it—yet I dared not—oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!—I dared not—I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them—many, many days ago—yet I dared not—I dared not speak!
Suddenly, Madeline enters the room and collapses on top of Roderick, killing them both. Overall, Roderick says that Madeline's attempt to escape from her coffin in the vaults has been causing the sounds in the house.