108 Inventing Americas: 1800–1865all commonsensical standards be dead. And he then locates the terror within, as
something that springs from and bears down upon the inner life. In Poe’s stories, the
source of mystery and anxiety is something that remains inexplicable. It is the urge
to self-betrayal that haunts the narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” or the cruel and
indomitable will of the narrator of “Ligeia,” which finally transforms reality into
fantasy, his living wife into a dead one. It is the impulse toward self-destruction, and
the capacity for sinking into nightmare worlds of his own creation, that the protago-
nist and narrator of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838) reveals at so many
moments of his life. For that matter, it is the strange ending of Pym’s story. As he
hurtles toward a chasm in the seas from which arises “a shrouded human figure, very
far larger in its proportions than any dweller among men ... the hue of the skin ... of
the perfect whiteness of the snow,” he appears to be hurtling toward death.
Imaginatively, emotionally, it seems he is dying; and yet, according to other textual
detail – and the simple, logical fact that he is narrating the story – he would appear
to be alive. Poe tears the Gothic tale out of the rationalist framework it previously
inhabited, with accompanying gestures toward common sense, science, or explana-
tion. And he makes it a medium for exploring the irrational, even flirting with the
antirational. As such, he makes it as central and vital to the Romantic tradition as,
say, the lyric poem or the dream play.
“The Fall of the House of Usher” shows how Poe makes a fictional art out of
inwardness and instability. The narrator, an initially commonsensical man, is confused
by his feelings when he first arrives at the home of his childhood friend, Roderick
Usher. “What was it,” he asks himself, “that so unnerved me in the contemplation of
the House of Usher?” But he is inclined to dismiss such feelings as “superstition”; and,
even when he is reunited with Usher, his response is “half of awe,” suggesting a
suspicion that his host might know things hidden to him, and “half of pity,” suggesting
the superiority of the rational man. Gradually, the narrator comes to speak only of
“awe.” He even admits that he feels “the wild influences” of Usher’s “fantastic yet
impressive superstitions” “creeping upon” him. The scene is set for the final moment,
when Roderick’s sister Madeline arises from her grave to be reunited with him in
death, and the House of Usher sinks into a “deep and dank tarn.” At this precise
moment, Usher turns to the narrator and speaks to him, for the last time, addressing
him as “Madman.” The reversal is now complete, either because the narrator has
succumbed to the “superstition” of his host, or because his continued rationality
argues for his essential insanity, his failure to comprehend a truth that lies beyond
reason. Nothing is certain as the tale closes, except that what we have witnessed is an
urgent, insistent movement inward: from daylight reality toward darker, ever more
subterranean levels, in the house and in the mind of the hero. And as the narrator
moves ever further inward, into “Usher” the house, we the readers move ever further
inward into “Usher” the fiction. The structures of the two journeys correspond. So, for
that matter, do the arts of the hero and author: Roderick Usher uses his to transform
his guests’ minds and expectations, so also does Poe with his imaginative guests. And
at the moment of revelation at the end – when the full measure of the solipsistic vision
is revealed – both “Usher” the house and “Usher” the tale disintegrate, disappear,GGray_c02.indd 108ray_c 02 .indd 108 8 8/1/2011 7:54:38 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 38 AM