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Anna Allen

Professor Shannon

ENG 312

02 October 2018

American Horror Story: Murder House

In the short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Edgar Allan Poe wrote of the demise of

a family lineage that ended with a twin brother and sister. The isolation surrounding both the house

and the family intrigued and terrified the speaker as he first went into the house. Throughout the rest

of the short story, the narrator became wary of what was going on and more concerned with what

was happening to the main character, Roderick, as his health continued to decline. As the house fell,

the speaker was in shock at what he had seen, and his brain reeled to figure out what had happened.

While the narrator did not know what was going on, the reader of the short story could have

predicted what was going to happen from the beginning. Poe’s use of foreshadowing lays the

ending of the story at the readers feet right in the title, however, it is also used throughout the rest of

the story to convey a sense of dread and inevitability about the tragic ending.

Poe starts his short story with a moment of foreshadowing in describing the narrator’s

thoughts on the aura surrounding the House of Usher. The speaker creates a sense of dread for not

only himself, but the readers as well when he says, “There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of

the heart, an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture

into aught of the sublime” (Poe 662). The narrator declares that nothing good could come from

being around this house or being in it. Something about the house did not feel right to him and the

narrator makes the reader aware of this when he states a few lines down, “−what was it that so

unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher?” (662). By using the descriptive language
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of the atmosphere surrounding the house, as well creating a sense of dread, the speaker foreshadows

that something negative will happen within, or to, the house.

Another hint of foreshadowing is in the resident of the house. Roderick Usher is a man who

is diminishing both physically and mentally. The narrator tells of his worsening condition after he

receives a letter asking him to come visit: “The writer spoke of acute bodily illness, or a mental

disorder, which oppressed him, and of an earnest desire to see me…” (662). Roderick’s illness will

only worsen as time goes on, and he is aware of this fact when he responds, “I must perish in this

deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, I shall be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in

themselves, but in their results” (665). Roderick knows what is to come in the rest of his life, and he

foreshadows the inevitability of what is to happen by alluding to the results of his worsening

condition.

Poe adds in one of his poems to further foreshadow the mental stability of Roderick Usher.

In “The Haunted Palace” Edgar Allan Poe tells of a beautiful palace, “In the greenest of our valleys,

/ By good angels tenanted,” (v.1-2). This palace is meant to allude to a healthy mind, one that

functions without disruption. As the poem continues, however:

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,

Assailed the monarch’s high estate;

(Ah, let us mourn! −for never morrow

Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)

And, round about his home, the glory

That blushed and bloomed

Is but a dim-remembered story

Of the old time entombed (v.33-40)

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The palace, or mind, is now wrecked with only the faint memory of what its beauty was like before.

It is overcome with mental disturbances and disabilities. It cannot function anymore after the “evil

things” had come and destroyed everything, in the same way that Roderick’s mind cannot function

now that his mental state had progressively gotten worse. Poe’s inclusion of the poem is to further

foreshadow the extent to which Roderick’s mind goes and to convey the sense of dread that comes

with the losing of one’s own mind.

Madeline Usher also plays a very important role in the foreshadowing events that lead up to

the fall of the house. Madeline had a serious illness that caused her to not be able to move her limbs

around sometimes, as well as not be able to talk due to the exhaustion the illness brought her, which

lead to the burial of herself by her brother, Roderick, and the speaker. However, when Madeline

was buried, she was not dead, “The disease which had thus entombed the lady in the maturity of

youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint

blush upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so

terrible in death” (670). The blush on her cheeks and the suspicious smile that was on her face when

they buried her, creates a sense of dread for the readers as well as foreshadows the return of Lady

Madeline later in the story because she was alive when she was buried and was simply unable to

advise them otherwise due to the severity of her condition.

Another foreshadowing moment involving Lady Madeline was when Roderick Usher and

the speaker sat down to read a story near the end of the short story itself. Madeline is alive and is

trying to get out of her entombment, so as she is trying to get out, a lot of noises and sounds are

made. As the speaker is reading the book, Mad Trist, he began to hear the sounds and echoes that

went along with the section of the book he was reading to Mr. Usher, “it appeared to me that, from

some very remote portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears, what might have

been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo (but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very
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cracking and ripping sound which Sir Lancelot had so particularly described” (672). These sounds

that the narrator heard are those of Lady Madeline when she was trying to get out. This moment

within the short story is very vital due to the sense of dread it conveys and the inevitability of what

is to come from Lady Madeline as the story nears the end. As the echoes and the noises continued,

the speaker became more and more aware of what was going on. He notices the change in Roderick

as well after he stopped reading the book for the third time and after still hearing the noises that

went along with the book, “Completely unnerved, I leapt to my feet; but the measured rocking

movement of Usher was undisturbed…there came a strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly

smile quivered about his lips” (673-674). The speaker notices that Roderick is aware of the sounds.

He also finds out later that he has been hearing them for a while, “Not hear it? −yes, I hear it, and

have heard it” (674). Roderick continued to say that he has heard Lady Madeline trying to escape

from her living entombment ever since they buried her, and never said anything about it. His mental

state is not stable, proven by when he does not go and get is sister out of the tomb. The sounds and

echoes coming from where they buried Lady Madeline foreshadows her inevitable return, and the

ruin that is Roderick’s mind foreshadows the fall of the house.

Edgar Allan Poe uses the diminishing of the house, both the aura around it and the physical

aspect, the mental stability, or lack thereof, of Roderick, and the live burial of Lady Madeline to

foreshadow the end of the short story, as well as express the inevitability of what was to come. Poe

also uses foreshadowing to create a sense of dread around the story as a whole but is seen mostly in

the narrator’s feelings and in Roderick’s mental instability. Poe’s use of another one of his own

works about the withering of one’s mind within this one, really puts emphasis on the instability of

the main character. By doing this Poe shows that as Roderick’s mind diminishes, the rocks and

stones, and the walls of the house diminish as well. The mental stability of Mr. Usher and the

physical stability of the house reflect each other, so when one falls, so does the other.