The Symbolic and Metaphorical House of Usher Throughout all of Edgar Allen Poe stories, it is apparent that Poe uses symbolism and hidden meanings often in his work. "The Fall of the House of Usher" is filled with these hidden and interesting secrets. Poe uses these literary devices to his advantage, as they help add to the content of the story. Nearly every action or object has a symbolic to add to the plot or set the atmosphere of the story. Here I will list and explain some of those examples. One of the largest symbols throughout "The Fall of the House of Usher" is the estate itself. There are many hidden symbols on the exterior of the house. Upon arriving at the house, the narrator remarks "a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit" (Poe 1). The house is also described as having "bleak walls...vacant eye-like windows...a few white …show more content…
Roderick Usher is suffering from acuteness of the senses, making him sensitive to most lights, smells, food, and clothing, and hears strange sounds echoing throughout the house. He firmly believes the source of this disease is the house. However, Roderick still never leaves his home. Because of his illness, Roderick's windows are boarded up, and "feeble gleams of crimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes," (Poe 3). The red light may be referencing the color of blood. Many expensive things are decaying and draperies hang everywhere, reinforcing the sense of death and mystery. Throughout the rest of his room, "dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered." (Poe 4). It seems like Roderick does not care about the way his room looks. It is stated later in the text that Usher believes everything has emotions and refuses to change anything because of it. However, due to this, everything changes anyway, as it starts to fade away due to the lack of
In “The Fall of the House of Usher” Rodrick, although rational at the start, by slow degrees becomes insane about his house, and about his dead wife/ sister. By the end of the tale he is very deranged, and mentally disconnected. The tale thus represents the fall of reason, the inability of the rational mind to make sense of a chaotic universe. At the beginning one can tell that Roderick has unusual mental properties.
One of the largest symbols in the book is the house that the Usher’s live in. Poe writes, “...and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the ‘house of Usher’” (Poe 494). Like the family itself, the house died with rest of the Usher family. Without the rest of Ushers to live there, it died in the fear of not having life live inside of it.
The narrator describes the house of having “vacant eye-like windows-upon a few rank sedges-and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees-...” (Poe, line 9) and “There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart-...” (Poe, line 12) the “sickening of the heart” and “vacant eye-like windows” are examples of figurative language that foreshadows the misinterpreted death of Usher’s twin sister Madaline as they placed her in the the cellar of the house for later examination by physicians to find what disease she had come down
The narrator fled swiftly away from the mansion and witness the mansion vanishing into the swamp into bits and pieces. As the results, the mind of the narrator of “Usher” isn’t bizarre as the speaker of “The Raven”. The narrator doesn’t have experience living in a huge domain, so he doesn’t know how it feel like to be in a domain all by himself. Yet, he doesn’t have an internal conflict with his life, the speaker of “The Raven” has a miserable depression of his lost love, Lenore.
The fall of the house of usher uses a gothic tone throughout the story, in this case we can see different tones. Mood is the emotion or feeling produced by the piece. Throughout the story we see a dark, mysterious and somber mood. For example when the narrator said “I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound… I felt if creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions”. He created a creepy mood and a tone where you start to see that Roderick is going crazy, because he has started to hear and see things that are not
Upon his arrival to the House, the narrator remarks on Roderick’s radical physical degeneration. “I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher!” (Poe 16). Roderick resembles nothing of the joyous boy the narrator knew in his youth.
In “The Fall of the House of Usher” the tone gives off an eerie and bizarre feeling. This is similar to many of Poe’s other short stories but this piece the most. The tone is gloomy compared to “The Black Cat” that Poe has also written. The author starts off the story with immense details of the setting. The readers get a dark vibe from these details.
The crack in the house and the dead trees imply that the house and its surroundings are not sturdy or promising. These elements indicate that a positive outcome is not expected. The thunder,strange light, and mist create a spooky feeling for the reader. In "The Fall of the house of Usher," Edgar Allan Poe creates suspense and fear in the reader. He also tries to convince the reader not to let fear overcome him.
“ The Fall of the House of Usher “ by Edgar Allan Poe is a short story about a man named Roderick Usher who initiates some events such as evoking his friend The Narrator as a protagonist to the dreadful mansion. The images such as the house and gothic ambience are used to reinforce the idea of giving the mystery to the reader. Edgar Allan Poe uses gothic elements to show how they affect the atmosphere and the characters. In the beginning , the gothic atmosphere of the house is indicated with terrifying images such as “ dull, dark and soundless ” that the feeling of horror vaccinated into reader by the thoughts of the narrator.
The narrator feels “utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium” (“Fall of the House of Usher”474). The narrator openly confesses that he uses drugs and that he is depressed which can cloud a person 's judgement. By the end of the story the narrator becomes frighten by the house but says, “irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, hearkened --I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me --to certain low and indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not whence” (“The Fall of The House of Usher” 488). At this moment the narrator has become more frightened than ever and it is unlikely that see things for what
“A Haunted Place” shows Roderick Usher falling from sanity as he plays the lute beautifully, a reflection of well being, and harshly, a reflection of madness. The stories that Poe includes in the short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, are not
that the stem of the Usher race . . . had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. (Poe 2) Despite the incestual means of their conception occurring in the past, resulting genetic defects oppress the Usher siblings Madeline and Roderick—both physically and mentally—well into the future. Although the narrator provides no physical description of Madeline Usher prior to her entombment, of her brother Roderick he reports deformed features in line with those of products of
The symbols from “The Fall of the House of Usher," written by Edgar Allan Poe, and “Young Goodman Brown,” written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, sought to use Dark Romanticism to illuminate the mixture of good and evil in human nature. Dark Romanticism is a form of writing that consists of human nature, sins, death, and an abundance of evil to create fearful images that toy with the emotions of its readers. Edgar Allan Poe, a professional at creating such stories, used symbols within his stories to further his Gothic Romantic theme. In the short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe wrote, “I know not how it was – but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was
In The Fall of the House of Usher the symbolism is displayed when the narrator sees the house and describes it as very creepy but clearly stated that he notices the crack of the House from the bottom to the very top of it. Here it is symbolizing the crack that both Roderick Usher and Madeline Usher for they both described as having a problem for they both had flaws and were about to die. Madeline had an illness no doctor could describe and was on the verge of dying and this caused her brother Roderick to go mad physically and emotionally. The crack was not just the house but both Roderick and Madeline all
In the “Fall of the House of Usher,” Roderick Usher prematurely buries his sister, Madeline Usher, because he thinks she has died from an unknown illness. Poe describes the burial as, “We replaced and screwed down the lid, and having secured the door of iron, made out the way with the toll…” (Poe 425). When Roderick bolted the iron lid upon his sister’s coffin, all trust that had previously been built between the two had been broken. In Poe’s life, after the burial of his wife and mother, he felt like he could never trust anyone as well.