874 Poe, Edgar Allan
Usher family members are meeting their respective
demises. The narrator carefully observes the “vacant
eye-like windows,” along with the few white trunks
of decayed trees that surround Roderick’s home, and
concludes that the home to which his ill friend had
summoned him is a “mansion of gloom.” Perhaps
the most obvious piece of foreshadowing, the “per-
ceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of
the building in front, made its way down the wall in
a zigzag direction,” indicates not only the physical
decay of the home but the illness and weakening of
the Usher family.
Since much of the story’s description of the
Usher family’s backstory is centered on the signifi-
cance of the Usher mansion, it is easy to make con-
nections between Roderick’s slip from sanity and the
collapse of the Usher estate. The narrator observes
“an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of
heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed
trees, and the grey wall, and the silent tarn—a
pestilent and mystic vapour dull, sluggish, faintly
discernable, and leaden-hued,” and he further con-
cludes that “the entire family lay in the direct line of
descent, and had always, with very trifling and very
temporary variation, so lain.” For some readers, the
images here conjure up images of the Usher family
in their graves.
The decay of the exterior of the Usher home,
which reflects Roderick’s obvious physical illness,
is cleverly juxtaposed against the condition of the
house’s interior, which resembles Roderick’s inner
struggle with his own sanity as he confronts his
mortality. The narrator clearly makes reference to
the long-term decay that has been going on inside
the home and inside of Usher as well, and, of course,
we cannot neglect Poe’s sleight of hand, presenting
the image of the “neglected vault,” possibly the rest-
ing place of past family or even that of Roderick
himself. The image of the books and musical instru-
ments, which lay scattered and “failed to give any
vitality to the scene,” might represent the loss of
Roderick’s sanity.
The more physical sense of inner decay is seen
from the doctor who is attending Madeline. As he
passes the narrator on the stairs, his facial expres-
sion is one of “low cunning and perplexity.” Mad-
eline’s character, serving as Roderick’s more stable
double, is slowly wasting away, and once Madeline
dies, what remains of Roderick’s sanity quickly
dwindles.
Madeline’s entombment represents both the
death of the Usher family and the “death” of Roder-
ick’s sanity. The reappearance of Madeline represents
the immortality of memories—painful memories of
what must cease to exist. Roderick’s proclamations,
“I shall perish” and “I must perish” are never more
adamant than with Roderick’s acceptance of both
his and his family’s demise. At the story’s conclu-
sion, the house crumbles to the ground, seemingly
coming apart at the fissure that has compromised
the structure’s security.
Andrew AndermattIdentIty in “The Fall of the House of Usher”
The construction of identity in Edgar Allan Poe’s
“The Fall of the House of Usher” evolves primar-
ily by using the concept of the gothic double—a
characteristic of the gothic story where the story’s
characters and the fears of the character or a given
society act as doubles or mirror images. Like the
theme of identity in many works of literature, the
identity of the main character, Roderick Usher, is
devised through carefully chosen symbols that serve
as mirror images of the main character with like-
nesses of the entire Usher family and estate. Poe
uses several objects, including the house, Roderick’s
sister, and illness, to serve as symbols of Usher’s close
identification with his estate.
First, the narrator establishes Roderick Usher’s
identity by the significant time spent observing
careful details of his appearance. The narrator,
Usher’s childhood friend, states that he knows little
of Usher, as his “reserve had been always excessive
and habitual.” The lineage of family seems to be one
of the most blatant forms of identity in the story.
The narrator remarks several times about the Usher
lineage, especially as it comes to peculiar “sensibility
of temperament.” The narrator also notes that the
“entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and
had always, with very trifling and very temporary
variation, so lain.” The Ushers are inextricably asso-
ciated with the estate.
The identity of the Usher family is captured
through the decay of the Usher estate (the physical