“The Fall of the House of Usher” 873absolves Buddy of responsibility (for her breakdown
and Joan’s suicide) near the end, the absolution is
tempered by his response: “ ‘Well,’ Buddy breathed.
‘I’m glad of that.’ And he drained his tea like a tonic
medicine.” Esther’s new self-reliance is significant,
but it is telling that Buddy is freed by false medicine,
as if his culpability is an illness as well.
Eric Leuschner
PoE, EDGar aLLaN “The Fall of the
House of usher” (1839)
The short story “The Fall of House of Usher” was
first published in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine in
- Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49) revised it for his
collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, pub-
lished the following year.
In the story, Roderick Usher, one of the final
remaining descendants of the ancient Usher fam-
ily, is now suffering from physical and emotional
illness, and he sends a letter to his boyhood friend
requesting his company during the days of his ill
health. The boyhood friend, who narrates this dis-
turbing tale of identity and struggling lineage,
responds at once, only to find the Usher home to
be in a state of decay and disrepair. Much like the
home, the narrator finds that Roderick Usher, too, is
not the person he once knew. Time and disease have
taken a toll on him, as it has the entire Usher lineage,
leaving Roderick and his sister as the sole survivors
of the Ushers.
Once inside the home, the narrator observes the
rooms and long passages as he approaches the room
where Roderick is found. Here, the narrator learns
that Roderick suffers from nerves and fear, and the
narrator comes to believe that Usher is afraid of his
own home. The narrator tries to comfort his friend
by listening to him play guitar and create lyrics for
his music. The narrator also reads stories to Roder-
ick, but nothing seems to be able to lift his spirits.
Madeline, Roderick’s twin sister, lives in the
home and is suffering from a debilitating illness
as well. Madeline dies shortly after readers are
introduced to her. Roderick decides that he wants
Madeline buried in the house, so he and the narra-
tor create a tomb for her in the cellar of the Usher
home. After Madeline’s body is entombed, Roderick
grows more and more uneasy. One night, Roderick
and the narrator notice a bright-looking gas around
the home, which the narrator explains is completely
natural.
To alleviate Roderick’s uneasiness, the narrator
reads to him. While reading “Mad Trist” by Sir
Launcelot Canning, he begins to hear noises that
match images contained in the story. At first, the
narrator tries to convince himself that the noises are
merely his imagination, but he soon learns that Rod-
erick has been hearing the noises for days. Roderick
believes that they may have buried Madeline alive
and the noises are her trying to escape. The door
opens, and Madeline stands before them in a blood-
stained white robe. Madeline attacks Roderick, and
he dies from fear. The narrator runs from the house,
and as he escapes, the Usher home collapses behind
him.
Andrew AndermattdeatH in “The Fall of the House of Usher”
Edgar Allan Poe’s stories are often associated with
the theme of death, and “The Fall of the House of
Usher” is no exception. The theme of death, how-
ever, goes further than just the physical state of life’s
inevitable end. The story uses death to examine
the protagonist’s confrontation with mortality and
immortality. The story’s main character, Roderick
Usher, must face not only his own mortality but that
of his family as well. From the initial details of the
decaying Usher mansion in the story’s exposition
to the conflict of Roderick’s sanity to the destruc-
tion of the Usher mansion at the story’s conclusion,
Roderick’s mortality is continually examined and
challenged.
One could argue that Poe’s overall imagery in
the story offers a sense of morbidity and dread. The
setting established early in the story foreshadows
the later confrontation Roderick Usher has with
his own mortality. Upon the reader’s first meet-
ing with the story’s narrator, Usher’s childhood
friend, he suggests that there is an obvious gloom
that pervades the area. The gloom alerts the reader
to the fact that not all is well. In fact, the gloomy
environment, and the condition of the Usher man-
sion as the reader first sees it, symbolizes the end of
the Ushers, as the family lineage and the last two