Vajda 1

Zita Vajda
Professor Aleksandra Izgarjan
American 19th Century Literature
April 18, 2011

“The Fall of the House of Usher”: Themes

1. Introduction

Edgar Allan Poe contributed greatly to the development of the short story. He defined it
in theory and also helped the creation of it in practice. “The Fall of the House of Usher” is
considered to be his best work of all time. Its first publication was in Burton's Gentleman's
Magazine in September 1939. Later on it was revised and published together with other stories in
Poe's books Tales of the Grotesque and of the Arabesque. The story contains a poem, “The
Haunted Palace” which was published earlier than the story (Poedecoder.com).

In this work he describes the Usher mansion and its residents, the Usher family. He notes
that the house is dark and mysterious. It seems to be crumbling from within. Even though its
structure still seems intact there is some evidence of it being worn down over time. The Usher
family consists of a man called Roderick Usher and his twin sister Madeline. Roderick’s role is
much more important and the story focuses mostly on him, while Madeline is unimportant as a
human being, she is only there to help the symbolism and the development of the story. The two
of them are almost united into one, since they are identical twins. They can be considered two
parts of the same soul that resides in one body, the mansion representing this body.
Consequently, the destruction of the house or of one of the twins leads to the disappearance of all
three (Buranelli 77).

When it comes to the themes of Poe’s short stories, not all of them can be immediately
noticed by the reader. Even though some of them might be obvious, most of them are not
explicitly stated. The most significant themes are horror and terror. Other most frequent themes
he uses in his works include death, fear, the supernatural, disease, madness, the dissolution of
personality, etc. Another very important part of Poe’s works is the presence of mystery which
according to Buranelli is usually related to psychology (74). One of the most frequent themes in
this particular story is the presence of duality.
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2. Doubling

Doubling is based on the doppelganger effect, from the German word for double-goer.
The word doppelganger denotes “a ghostly counterpart of a living person”, “a double”, “an alter
ego” (Merriam-webster.com). The House of Usher is a story full of mirror images and characters
that are duplicated in each other. This gives the story symmetry and certain mysteriousness.
According to Voloshin in this work “things appear doubled and therefore, in a sense, the same,
resisting the multiplicity of the ordinary world” (“Explanation” 426).

The first example would be the reflection of the house of Usher in the tarn. The narrator
is troubled by the sight of the house, so he tries to find a different perspective of it, hoping that
the uneasy feeling will go away if the scene is differently arranged. He is surprised to see that his
feeling of discomfort is the same even when looking at the house from a different perspective.
Timmerman mentions when talking about mirror images that the house is mirrored in the tarn,
but it also collapses into it at the end of the story” (236). The house and its reflection become one
by destroying each other.

At the beginning of the story the narrator notices a fissure separating the walls of the
house in two, thus making one side of the house mirror the other. According to Timmerman’s
observation the zigzag crack on the house, which is threatening its stability can be seen as a
parallel to Roderick’s admitting to the narrator in his letter, that his stability is threatened by a
mental disorder. He also mentions that “the Ushers and the mansion are undergoing a
simultaneous process of splitting” (235). Even at this early stage of the story, we can already
sense the parallel between the house and its master.

The third and possibly most important mirroring is the pairing of Roderick and Madeline.
The two of them are genetically twins, but psychologically they are also doubles. They together
form a whole, but during the story, they are simultaneously growing apart from each other. He
turns to arts, while she falls in a trance (Timmerman 236).

The first and the last paragraph can be seen as mirror images of each other as well. The
narrator looking down at the house both at the beginning and at the end create symmetry in the
story.
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2.1. Doubling present in Roderick’s artwork

The narrator’s lines “If ever mortal painted an idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher”
bring me to the conclusion that his painting of the underground burial vault might be reflecting
his plan to separate from Madeline (Poe 91). This painting is also mirroring the fact that this
vault will soon become Madeline’s tomb. The lights could reflect her escape. It is mentioned by
Timmerman that the painting itself prophesizes Madeline’s escape from the vault (236).

A doubling can be found in the poem “The Haunted Palace”. There is a parallel between
reality and the happenings that the poem describes. It can be seen as the description of a man
going insane and at the same time demonstrating “the progression of Roderick Usher’s madness”
(Beidler 26).

2.2. Doubling in the story “Mad Trist”

The story “Mad Trist” is about a knight called Ethelred, who is trying to break into an
evil hermit’s house.

The reason for the narrator’s reading of this story is to distract Roderick from the noises
that come from the other parts of the house and the tumult of the scary, stormy night. The
distracting turns out to be the mirroring of the actual event that is happening at the same time,
which is Madeline’s breaking out of the tunnel.

Beidler states that the events of the “inserted tale” are three times interrupted by “three
frame-tale comments” (28).

The first interruption takes place after the narrator reads that Ethelred “cracked, and
ripped, and tore all asunder” into the house (Poe 98). Here the narrator stops his reading for a
moment and informs us that he heard indistinctly “an echo… of the very cracking and ripping
sound which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described”.

The second interruption happens after Ethelred smashes the head of the dragon, and the
dying dragon shrieks loudly and piercingly. Here the narrator hears “a low and apparently
distant, but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating sound” (Poe 99).
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The third time the interruption happens when a shield falls down in the story making a
“great and terrible ringing sound” (Poe 100). Simultaneously he hears a “distinct, hollow,
metallic, and clangorous…reverberation” (Poe 100).

These sounds are interpreted differently by the narrator and by Roderick. The narrator
does not give too much meaning to it, while Roderick perceives it as the sounds of Madeline’s
breaking out of the vault.

2.3. The narrator duplicated in Usher

The narrator in Poe’s story is an observer of all the actions, but at the same time we know
very little about who he is. Because of this, we as readers can identify with him to a certain
extent (poedecoder.com). At first glance he is an outside visitor, an old friend of Roderick, who
decided to visit him, after receiving a letter from his boyhood friend asking him for help.

If we go deeper into the analysis of this character we can see that he is in fact doubled in
Roderick. In the beginning of the story he is objective and he acts sane (A. Izgarjan). He puts all
his energy into the cheering up of his boyhood friend, they read together, paint together, sing,
play instruments and focus on arts and entertainment. As time passes his mental state starts
mirroring Roderick’s. He, too, becomes depressed, melancholy and starts losing himself in
fantasy.

The key point of the narrator losing his objectivity is when he becomes involved while
helping to bury Madeline (A. Izgarjan). We can assume that he is aware, or at least he has a
feeling that Madeline is still alive, from his description of her “corpse”. He mentions that she has
a faint blush on her cheeks and that she appears to be smiling. Despite this, he does not question
her death; he just leaves it at “Lady Madeline was no more” (Poe 94)

By the end of the story, the sanity of the narrator is questionable, he seems to have
slipped away from reality and objectiveness and the same thing happens to us readers, who
identify with him. According to Womack looking into the darkness of imagination in which
fantasy becomes reality is evoking madness. This view is also supported by the fact that the
narrator is referred to as “Madman” twice at the last scene of the story by Roderick
(poedecoder.com).

2.4. The duplication of the house

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The house is considered a character because the narrator refers to it as if it were human,
describing it with human traits. The description is actually mirroring the portrait of Roderick, and
Evans mentions that it could even be a portrait of Poe himself (143).

The narrator describes the house as if it were mirroring a human face, saying that it is
surrounded by a few rank sedges and “white trunks of decayed threes”, which could refer to
teeth, it has “bleak walls”, this could point to cheeks and “eye-like windows” making him feel
like he is being watched by it (Poe 85). After his long observation of the building and his
conclusion that it is scary, dark and cold, he pauses for a moment to return to reality and to
continue viewing the building as an object rather than a living being. Soon this boundary
between animate and inanimate is beginning to blur again proven by the fact that he uses more
and more personifying metaphors. When he enters the house, he is led to Roderick’s studio,
which he describes as if he was viewing the inside of a head. The description of the windows
from the inside, the “gleams of encrimsoned light” and “trellised panes” (Poe 88) remind us of
veins and bloodshot eyes staring into space, since the windows are so high that only the empty
atmosphere can be seen through them. The interior and the passageways of the house can be seen
as the interior mental space of a person.

Since the twins represent the physical and the psychological aspect of man, the mansion
in a way represents the outer shell that contains these two sides. This shell is actually the person,
the individual that is deranged and split into two by a crack. The disease of Roderick and
Madeline is reflected on the house and cause this fissure, which is “an irreconcilable fracture in
the individual’s personality” (poedecoder.com).

The name of the mansion is ambiguous. It can refer both to the house itself in which the
Ushers reside and to the dynasty of Ushers. These two can hardly be separated from each other;
therefore the house is a double for the Usher family as well. The splitting of the house into two
and the fall of the mansion represents the fall of the Usher family as a dynasty.

3. Relationship between mind and body

As I mentioned before Roderick and Madeline Usher are genetically twins. Consequently
their physical appearance is very similar.  Roderick’s relation to Madeline is the most important
one. Poe used an exaggerated natural relationship between twins, to emphasize the extraordinary
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link between the siblings. They together represent harmony and only if they are together they can
exist, just like the mind can only exist if it is paired with the senses.

According to Womack’s interpretation the story represents the two sides of man: reason,
or the mind and emotion, or the body. In this case Roderick is the representation of the intellect
and Madeline stands for the senses. The two of them together symbolize the dual nature of man.
The house they live in stands for the deranged personality of an individual. Roderick’s burying
his sister alive depicts his will to free himself from the senses, which leads to the worsening of
Roderick’s condition, thus proving that the mind cannot exist without the body. The crumbling
of the house at the end of the story leads to their reuniting in death (poedecoder.com).

The fact that Roderick represents the mind can be connected to the characteristics of a
male representative of the society at the time. Men were considered to be “the reasonable ones”.
He is also an active part of the story, while Madeline is rather passive (A. Izgarjan). Trapped in
her own home, she is a representation of the position of women in a patriarchal society.
Throughout the story we see very little of her. Her personality, her existence as an individual is
completely unimportant. May describes Madeline as the typical representative of the time she
lives in and her burial as the burial of the desires of women in her position (395).

The way she is described in the story is also a reflection of her position. Poe describes her
rather vaguely and uses her mainly as a metaphor and for the purpose of explaining Roderick’s
psychology. This is supported by May’s observation that the narrator does not describe
Madeline’s physical appearance directly, only through her brother, because he is her twin there
has to be a similarity in the way the two of them look (393).

Madeline’s “resurrection” and the fact that she in a way “overpowers” Roderick in the
end might mean that no human being can suppress their physical desires and doing this can lead
to the destruction of oneself. After a significant period of time the bodily urges become
unbearable and the mind is eventually defeated by them. This conclusion was drawn based on
Voloshin’s view that Madeline’s position changes throughout the story. She states that
“Roderick appears first as the actor in control of the paternal household, and Madeline as the
sufferer, but when Madeline re-emerges from the tomb, she is the embodiment of will, while
Roderick becomes pure sentience” (“Explanation” 427)
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Even though this view of the twins is the one supported by most, other ideas exist about
their role in the story. Voloshin claims that Roderick can also represent the abstract, atemporal
and ideal, while Madeline represents the material, temporal and real. She also argues that
Roderick is the symbol for culture, while Madeline symbolizes nature (“Poe’s The Fall of the
House of Usher”14).

4. Madness and disease

Insanity is a frequent theme of Poe’s works. According to Womack “Poe explores the
inner workings of the human imagination, but at the same time, cautions the reader about the
destructive dangers within” (poedecoder.com).

Earlier in this paper I have explained the closeness of the relationship between Roderick
and Madeline. This connection between them is also proven by the fact that both of them suffer
from a certain illness, and it seems that the mental illness of one is the result of the physical
deterioration of the other.

Roderick suffers from a mental illness that separates him from the physical world around
him. This can be seen by the fact that all normal sensations are painful to him. He cannot stand
light, he does not enjoy the smell of flowers, he only wears garments of certain texture, and he
cannot stand the music played on certain instruments (poedecoder.com). His condition is the
response to Madeline’s suffering from an unusual and mysterious physical illness. She is
physically ill, suffers from catalepsy, and her departure from this world is a matter of days.

Catalepsy is a condition in which somebody’s body becomes stiff and they temporarily
lose consciousness and the ability to feel. This happens for several minutes, sometimes for
several hours and in some cases catalepsy can last longer than a day (cummingsstudyguides.net).
As Madeline’s physical condition worsens, Roderick’s mental health crumbles more and more.

We can see the symbolism in their illnesses, since as mentioned earlier the two of them
represent the physical and spiritual side of a human being. When Madeline falls into a cataleptic
state, Roderick buries her, even though he is aware of the fact that she is not dead, and that he is
in fact burying her alive. This symbolizes that the mind is trying to get rid of the body.

Roderick’s body tries to free itself from the senses and everything physical until the only
thing he has left is his intellect. This attempt proves to be a failure, since he is unable to live or to
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die without her. They are bound to one another. He cannot go on with his life without her just
like the mind is incapable of living without the senses. After her “death” he becomes lost,
restless, his consciousness more detached from everyday activities of the physical world, and
finally, with her return from the dead he is destroyed. In the final scene, she thrusts herself at him
and the two of them die together, proving that no soul can be divided into two parts, and that any
attempt at this is due to be fatal (A. Izgarjan; poedecoder.com).

4.1. Mentally unstable narrator

Some views suggest that the narrator might also be mentally unstable. Womack states
that he “has made a journey into the underworld of the mind and is nearly destroyed by it”
(poedecoder.com). The depression that can be sensed in some of his description is one proof that
supports this view. If he is in fact insane, his observations can be considered unreliable and he
can be seen as an unreliable narrator. Even though this is only based on speculation some critics
even go to the extent to claim that “the events he describes” are only “manifestations of his sick
mind” (cummingsstudyguides.net).

4.2. “Haunted Palace”

Roderick very often uses an art form to represent his inner thoughts and feelings. This
improvised poem is very important because of its allusion to madness. It helps us in the
interpretation of the whole story. Through it, we are introduced into the emotional state of
Roderick since as Voloshin states, this poem is “the allegorical representation of Usher’s
madness” (“Example” 427).

According to Beidler the poem describes the head of a sane man as a “fair and stately
palace” placed in a green valley (Poe 92). This palace is dominated by a king called Thought.
The “banners yellow, glorious, golden, on its roof” represent the hair on the head, while the “two
luminous windows” are the eyes (Poe 92, 93). The “spirits” that dance are the ordered thoughts
of “the ruler” which are seen by the visitors through the eyes (Poe 93). “The fair palace door" is
the mouth, through which flows the “wit and wisdom” of the king (Poe 93). The first four
stanzas describe the sane human intellect as a palace, which is dominated by reasonable
thoughts. The last two stanzas describe madness using the same imagery. The palace is now
taken by “evil things” and sane thoughts “entombed” forever. The eyes are now “red-litten”, the
thoughts move “to a discordant melody”, the mouth laughs insanely and utters hideous noises
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(Poe 93). The king and his castle are full of horrors, just like Roderick’s head is taken over by
madness (26).

5. Evil and mystery

Right at the beginning of the story the narrator’s description of the outside, the inside,
and the surroundings of the house leads us to think that there is something supernatural, dark and
in fact evil about that place. The settings of the house which resemble the head of a mad man
point to the presence of an evil force. Later on Roderick himself “suggests an evil influence
from the house” (Bailey 446). What this force is, is unclear and it remains a mystery throughout
the story. The narrator refuses to believe in a supernatural presence in the house and decides that
Roderick is simply superstitious. We are once again reassured of dark forces in the house during
Roderick’s performance of “The Haunted Palace”. He suggests that the house and through it his
mind has been taken over by “evil things” (Poe 93). Later on even the narrator mentions that the
house is influencing him.

Bailey suggests that a curse has been placed upon the Usher family a long time ago,
which they have been trying to reverse since it happened (451). On the other hand this “curse”
might not be the work of others but it might have been triggered by some misbehavior within the
family that has been going on for centuries. This conclusion can be drawn when Roderick
mentions that “the nature of his malady” is in fact caused by “a constitutional and a family evil”
(Poe 89). This “family evil” is never fully explained throughout the story, rather it remains a
mystery. One of the most likely explanations of the family’s sin is that they have been involved
in incest for centuries now. This belief is supported by the narrator mentioning that the entire
Usher family “lay in the direct line of decent” (Poe 86), that Madeline was Roderick’s “sole
companion for long years” (Poe 90) and that “sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had
always existed between them” (Poe 95).

Another occurrence of evil can be seen in the actions of Roderick and the narrator when
they burry Madeline alive. The biggest responsibility for their actions here goes to Roderick,
who is fully aware of the fact that his sister is not yet dead; therefore his act is undeniably evil.
He is also the one initializing the burial, while the narrator is only helping. None the less the
narrator can be held partially responsible for this evil act, since he had assumed that Madeline is
still alive but chose to ignore it.
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The story builds itself on mystery. Other than the already mentioned mysteries
surrounding the inhabitants of the house and the entire family of Usher, and evil being
unexplained, the narrator’s identity is also unclear. We know very little about who he is and
where he came from. Another mystery crucial to the story is the illness of Madeline and
Roderick. It is never really clear what the disease is that is torturing them. Roderick’s
psychology and his madness is the greatest source of mystery in the work. The story remains
mysterious till the end. Nothing is explained, leaving us wondering, which is typical of Gothic
stories.

6. Death and imprisonment

Death is very often dealt with by Poe. In his stories he always uses “a horrible obsessive
murder for its theme” (Buranelli 75). Throughout the entire story we can sense the presence of
death. The two main characters are both described as if they were living corpses. Roderick’s
obsession of death shows itself in his artwork, in which he predicts his sister’s faith. The vault or
tunnel presented in Roderick’s painting is not the only allusion to a tomb in the story. The actual
vault that Madeline is put into in her cataleptic state can also be looked at as a tomb. The house
crushing into itself at the end of the poem also represents a kind of grave. According to Bailey
this death of the house, together with the death of Madeline caused by Roderick’s passing means
that the curse is finally fulfilled (465).

Another metaphorical tomb in the story is the house that the Ushers live in. Its
description, with dark rooms and fungi all over it, and the fact that it reminds the narrator “of old
woodwork which had rotted for long years in some neglected vault” (Poe 87) suggests the
appearance of a tomb. This also represents the imprisonment of its inhabitants. The house itself,
being so isolated and cut off from the outside world, resembles a prison, which keeps the Ushers
away from the outside world. We cannot be sure though if their detachment is caused by the
house, or if they have chosen their solitude willingly.

Death, obsession with death and predictions of death occur all throughout the story. First
we have the false burying of Madeline. This is a really important point in the story, since
according to Timmerman Poe believed that the saddest thing is at the same time the most
beautiful to the reader, and there is nothing sadder than the death of a beautiful woman (232).
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Although Roderick dies at the end, even when he is alive he seems dead. Both his
physical appearance and his psychical state suggest that he is in fact the representative of Death-
in-Life, while Madeline breaking out of the tomb represents Life-in-Death (A. Izgarjan).

7. Fear and the supernatural

The first time we meet Roderick in the story, it is immediately evident that he is afraid. In
addition to this he himself also mentions that fear is eating him up alive. He says that he feels
that the time will come when he will have to “abandon life and reason together, in some struggle
with the grim phantasm, FEAR” (Poe 90). By saying this, he is foreshadowing his madness and
his death and letting us know that his entire being is overpowered by fear. Fear is caused by the
existence of danger, therefore the deeper we go into the story the more is Roderick afraid and the
greater Roderick’s madness is. This is why his insanity intensifies after the placing of Madeleine
in the tunnel (Mondowendell.com).

Roderick’s seems to be terrified of death, both his and his sisters, because her passing
away would make him the last member of the Usher family. This fear is also reflected in the
narrator, who in the beginning is objective, but becomes more and more unreliable as the terror
in him grows. Obuchowski states that “Usher is a man of fear and terror who is farther along the
self-same path of madness that the narrator has embarked on” (409).

The story tells us the importance of overcoming our fears and that not facing them can
lead to insanity (Mondowendell.com).

The main cause of this fear and the feeling of danger is the house. It is often hinted in the
story, that there is something supernatural and unexplainably scary about it. It is described with
life-like characteristics, and the narrator explicitly states a few times that he is feeling uneasy
about it both when he is observing it from the outside and when he describes it from the inside.
The fact that it is old and decayed, but its structure is still intact also points to the fact that it
might be held together by a supernatural power.

The strange behavior of Roderick also suggests that there are certain forces, which are
influencing him. Bailey states that Roderick is influenced by supernatural powers, which urge
him to kill Madeline, himself and in the end the house as well (445).
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When it comes to Madeline, her escape from the vault is rather interesting. Since the door
is made out of iron and sealed completely, we might assume either that the house is helping her
get out, or that she is possessed by it or by the supernatural powers in it. It is interesting to
mention the observation of Bailey that there are no ghost in the story and only the suggestion of
supernatural exists (445).

The narrator is a rational character, he does not believe in superstition, but his views
seem to change. The more time he spends with the Ushers, the more the house affects him.

Some might argue that Poe’s stories “eclipse reason by the supernatural”, but that would
be wrong to believe. Closer to the truth is the claim that he looks for the balance between the two
(Timmerman 239).

8. Conclusion

According to Poe’s theory of the short story, the most important factor when writing such
a work is unity of effect, which he achieves perfectly in the Fall of the House of Usher.
Buranelli mentions that this work can be described as “a mosaic of incidents, psychological
attitudes, symbols, all cemented into place in a unified structure according to the prescription of
an exacting and skilful art” (77).

Poe was determined to achieve symmetry and unity in art and also to add originality to
his works. Because of this determination, he made his stories versatile. This showed his
incredible imagination, great knowledge of what he was doing, his versatile mind and
accomplished writing abilities. These factors are one of the reasons why Poe’s works appeal to
readers even today. Mysteriousness, death and darkness have always triggered human curiosity.
By using these themes and by balancing out his works to perfection he managed to make them
exciting, terrifying and difficult to put down once we have started reading them.

His originality and the complexity of his themes are remarkable. The themes overlap and
at the same time complete each other perfectly. The characters, their actions and their
metaphorical representation keep us guessing from beginning till end, and even then some things
remain unexplained and open to interpretations. The supernatural elements of his works are only
suggested to be supernatural, and certain aspects of the story are never explained. By this he
leads the readers to go deeper into the story and to search for answers beyond the surface. Fear
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and evil can only be explained if their source is found; therefore the story in a way has a didactic
purpose as well. While reading the story we learn that all problems have a deeper root than what
it might seem at first glance. All problems have to be traced back to their core and only then can
we be satisfied with our lives and continue living happily. It also points out the destructiveness
of the mind. He explores the human imagination, but also cautions the readers of the dangers
within.

Poe has always been successful at describing Gothic atmospheres and characters; this
story is definitely no exception. He succeeded in securing himself a place among the top writers
of Gothic literature and he also achieved immortality through his works, which capture the
attention of readers even today.
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35.4 (1964): 445-466. EBSCO. PDF file. 5 April 2011.

Baym, Nina. “Premonitions of Death in ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’”

mondowendell.com. n.p., n.d. Web. 12 April 2011.
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Beidler, Peter G. “Literary Insertions in Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and Poe’s
‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’” ANQ 22.4 (2009): 23-33. EBSCO. PDF file. 5 April 2011.

Buranelli, Vincent. Edgar Allan Poe. New Haven: Twayne Publishers, 1961. Print.

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Evans, Walter “’The Fall of the House of usher’ and Poe’s Theory of the Tale.” Studies
in Short Fiction 14.2 (1977): 137-144. EBSCO. PDF file. 5 April 2011.

Izgarjan, Aleksandra. Consultation. 11 April. 2011.

May, Leila S. “’Sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature’: The brother-sister bond in

Poe’s ‘Fall of the House of Usher.’” Studies in Short Fiction 30.3 (1993): 387-396. EBSCO. PDF
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Obuchowski, Peter. “Unity of Effect in Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’” Studies
in Short Fiction 12.4 (1975): 407-502. EBSCO. PDF file. 5 April 2011.

Poe, Edgar Allan. Tales of Mystery & Imagination. London: Daily Express Publications,
1933. Print.
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Timmerman, John H. “House of Mirrors: Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of
Usher.’” Papers on Language & Literature 39.3 (2003): 227-244. EBSCO. PDF file. 5 April
2011.

Voloshin, Beverly R. “Explanation in ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’” Studies in Short
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Voloshin, Beverly R. “Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher.” Explicator 46.3 (1988):
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