- Introduction of the Author:--
Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American poet, short-story writer, editor and literary critic, and is considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective-fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction.[1] He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.[2]
He was born as Edgar Poe in Boston, Massachusetts, Poe's parents died when he was young. Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan, of Richmond, Virginia, but they never formally adopted him. After spending a short period at the University of Virginia and briefly attempting a military career, Poe and the Allans parted ways. Poe's publishing career began humbly, with an anonymous collection of poems, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), credited only to "a Bostonian".
Poe switched his focus to prose and spent the next several years working for literary journals and periodicals, becoming known for his own style of literary criticism. His work forced him to move between several cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and New York City. In Baltimore in 1835, he married Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old cousin. In January 1845, Poe published his poem "The Raven" to instant success. His wife died of tuberculosis two years later. He began planning to produce his own journal, The Penn (later renamed The Stylus), though he died before it could be produced. On October 7, 1849, at age 40, Poe died in Baltimore; the cause of his death is unknown and has been attributed to alcohol, brain congestion, cholera, drugs, heart disease, rabies, suicide, tuberculosis, and other agents.[3]
Poe and his works influenced literature in the United States and around the world, as well as in specialized fields, such as cosmology and cryptography. Poe and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music, films, and television. A number of his homes are dedicated museums today. - Publication :--
The Collection of “Six tales of fear” by Edgar Allan Poe was published in 1988 in Washington. “The fall of the house of Usher” is a part of this collection. - Form of “The Fall of the house of Usher” :--
“The fall of the house of Usher” is a horrible and fearful tale from the book
“Six tales of fear”. - Characteristics of form :--
1. Introduction
The short story refers to a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, usually in narrative format. This format or medium tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas (in the 20th and 21st century sense) and novels or books. Short story definitions based upon length differ somewhat even among professional writers, due somewhat in part to the fragmentation of the medium into genres. As a point of reference for the science fiction genre writer, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America defines short story length in its Nebula Awards for science fiction submission guidelines as having a word count of less than 7,500.[1]
Since the short story format includes a wide range of genres and styles, the actual length is mitigated somewehere between the individual author's preference (or the story's actual needs in terms of creative trajectory or story arc) and the submission guidelines relevant to the story's actual market. Guidelines vary greatly among publishers.
Many short story writers define their work through a combination of creative, personal expression and artistic integrity. As a result, many attempt to resist categorization by genre as well as definition by numbers, finding such approaches limiting and counter-intuitive to artistic form and reasoning. As a result, definitions of the short story based upon length splinter even more when the writing process is taken into consideration. Marketability is the main concern among those who would define the short story by word count, while artistic integrity is generally of more import to the independently minded artist and the avant garde.
2.Overview
Short stories have their origins in oral story-telling traditions and the prose anecdote, a swiftly-sketched situation that quickly comes to its point. With the rise of the comparatively realistic novel, the short story evolved as a miniature version, with some of its first perfectly independent examples in the tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann. Other nineteenth-century writers well-known for their short stories are Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Nikolai Gogol, Guy de Maupassant, Bolesław Prus and Anton Chekhov. Short stories were a staple of early-19th-century magazines and often led to fame and novel-length projects for their authors. More recently, short stories have been reprinted in anthologies, categorized by topic or critical reception. Today many authors release collections of their short stories.
Some authors are known almost entirely for their short stories, either by choice (they wrote nothing else) or by critical regard (short-story writing is thought of as a challenging art). An example is Jorge Luis Borges, who won American fame with "The Garden of Forking Paths," published in the August 1948 Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Another example is O. Henry (author of "Gift of the Magi"), for whom the O. Henry Award is named. American examples include Flannery O'Connor, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver.
Authors such as Kurt Vonnegut, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bolesław Prus, F. Scott Fitzgerald, P.G. Wodehouse and Ernest Hemingway were highly accomplished writers of both short stories and novels.
Short stories have often been adapted for half-hour and hour radio dramas, as on NBC Presents: Short Story (1951-52).
The art of story telling is doubtlessly older than record of civilization. Even the so called modern short story, which was the latest of the major literary types to evolve, has an ancient lineage. Perhaps the oldest and most direct ancestor of the short story is the anecdote and illustrative story, straight to the point. The ancient parable and fable, starkly brief narrative used to enforce some moral or spiritual truth, anticipate the severe brevity and unity of some short stories written today.
3.Characteristics
Short stories tend to be less complex than novels. Usually a short story focuses on only one incident, has a single plot, a single setting, a small number of characters, and covers a short period of time.
In longer forms of fiction, stories tend to contain certain core elements of dramatic structure: exposition (the introduction of setting, situation and main characters); complication (the event that introduces the conflict); rising action, crisis (the decisive moment for the protagonist and his commitment to a course of action); climax (the point of highest interest in terms of the conflict and the point with the most action); resolution (the point when the conflict is resolved); and moral.
Because of their length, short stories may or may not follow this pattern. Some do not follow patterns at all. For example, modern short stories only occasionally have an exposition. More typical, though, is an abrupt beginning, with the story starting in the middle of the action (in medias res). As with longer stories, plots of short stories also have a climax, crisis, or turning point. However, the endings of many short stories are abrupt and open and may or may not have a moral or practical lesson. As with any art form, the exact characteristics of a short story will vary by author.
4. Length
Determining what exactly separates a short story from longer fictional formats is problematic. A classic definition of a short story is that one should be able to be read it in one sitting, a point most notably made in Edgar Allan Poe's essay "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846). Other definitions place the maximum word length at 7,500 words. In contemporary usage, the term short story most often refers to a work of fiction no longer than 20,000 words and no shorter than 1,000. Stories less than 1,000 words are usually referred to either as "short short fiction" or "short shorts" or even "flash fiction".[2]
5.History
-----Origins
Short stories date back to oral story-telling traditions which originally produced epics such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Oral narratives were often told in the form of rhyming or rhythmic verse, often including recurring sections or, in the case of Homer, Homeric epithets. Such stylistic devices often acted as mnemonics for easier recall, rendition and adaptation of the story. Short sections of verse might focus on individual narratives that could be told at one sitting. The overall arc of the tale would emerge only through the telling of multiple such sections.
Fables, succinct tales with an explicit "moral," were said by the Greek historian Herodotus to have been invented in the 6th century BCE by a Greek slave named Aesop, though other times and nationalities have also been given for him. These ancient fables are today known as Aesop's Fables.
The other ancient form of short story, the anecdote, was popular under the Roman Empire. Anecdotes functioned as a sort of parable, a brief realistic narrative that embodies a point. Many surviving Roman anecdotes were collected in the 13th or 14th century as the Gesta Romanorum. Anecdotes remained popular in Europe well into the 18th century, when the fictional anecdotal letters of Sir Roger de Coverley were published.
In Europe, the oral story-telling tradition began to develop into written stories in the early 14th century, most notably with Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron. Both of these books are composed of individual short stories (which range from farce or humorous anecdotes to well-crafted literary fictions) set within a larger narrative story (a frame story), although the frame tale device was not adopted by all writers. At the end of the 16th century, some of the most popular short stories in Europe were the darkly tragic "novella" of Matteo Bandello (especially in their French translation).
The mid 17th century in France saw the development of a refined short novel, the "nouvelle", by such authors as Madame de Lafayette. In the 1690s, traditional fairy tales began to be published (one of the most famous collections was by Charles Perrault). The appearance of Antoine Galland's first modern translation of the Thousand and One Nights (or Arabian Nights) (from 1704; another translation appeared in 1710–12) would have an enormous influence on the 18th century European short stories of Voltaire, Diderot and others.
----Modern times
Today's short stories emerged as their own genre in the early 19th century. Early examples of short stories include the Brothers Grimm's Fairy Tales (1824–26) and Nikolai Gogol's Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka (1831–32). The first examples in the United States are Charles Brockden Brown's "Somnambulism" (1805), Washington Irving's Rip van Winkle (1819) and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820), Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840) and Nathaniel Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales (1842).
In the latter 19th century, the growth of print magazines and journals created a strong demand for short fiction of between 3,000 and 15,000 words. Famous short stories of this period include Bolesław Prus's "A Legend of Old Egypt" (1888) and Anton Chekhov's "Ward No. 6" (1892).
At the same time, the first literary theories about the short story appeared. A widely known one is Edgar Allan Poe's "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846). In 1901, Brander Matthews, the first American professor of dramatic literature, published "The Philosophy of the Short-Story."
In the first half of the 20th century, a number of high-profile magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, Scribner's and The Saturday Evening Post published short stories in each issue. The demand for quality short stories was so great and the money paid for such so high that F. Scott Fitzgerald repeatedly turned to short-story writing to pay his numerous debts.
The demand for short stories by print magazines hit its peak in the mid-20th century, when in 1952 Life magazine published Ernest Hemingway's long short story (or novella) The Old Man and the Sea. The issue containing this story sold 5,300,000 copies in only two days.
Since then; the number of commercial magazines that publish short stories has declined, though several magazines such as The New Yorker continue to feature them. Literary magazines also provide a showcase for short stories. In addition, short stories have recently found a new life online, in publications, collections organized by author or theme, and blogs. Some online short-story publications are designed to be inviting to the eye, much like paper magazines.
---Form and characterics of horrible tale:--
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. These facts few psychologists will dispute, and this admitted truth must establish for all time the genuineness and dignity of the weirdly horrible tale as a literary form.” —H.P.Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature”
With these words, H.P.Lovecraft began his classic essay. It remains one of the best surveys and analyses of the form, and it was classic Lovecraft in another way, in that he spent nearly a year researching and writing it, and received not one dime in payment for it.
Lovecraft frequently acknowledged his debt to Poe, and he remains, as latter-day horror “king,” Stephen King, said, the “dark, baroque prince” of horror, “the Twentieth Century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.”
But of course the horror tale was with us long before Lovecraft. It is probably true that not long after humans developed language, they gathered around their fires at night to tell tales of the horrors lurking out there in the dark. The Greeks (Euripides’ The Bacchae) knew about horror, as did the tellers of tales in the Dark Ages (Beowulf). There is horror in Chaucer (“The Pardoner’s Tale”) and in Shakespeare (Hamlet). Horror found its fullest expression in 18th and early 19th Centuries with the rise of German Romanticism. In English, its practitioners were linked with the Gothic, with its emphasis on death and decay and the grave. Poe found his natural home there, and after his death Bram Stoker carried on with his classic Dracula. Even Conan Doyle gave Sherlock Holmes–the master of “rational” detection–a vampire story.
But it was H. P. Lovecraft, in the 1920’s and 1930’s who seized on the horror form and gave it full life. “Respectable” critics pooh-poohed the horror tale (forgetting or ignoring its longevity), but its appeal remains. We are afraid of the unknown that lurks in the dark, whether it is a saber-toothed tiger waiting to devour us, or some hideous revenant rising from a shallow grave in our neighborhood cemetery, wanting to frighten us to death.
Lovecraft’s tales have gained stature in the years since his death in 1937, until today he is regarded as our master and guide not only to horror, but also to science fiction and what his biographer L. Sprague deCamp called the “macabre imaginative tale.” His influence is everywhere, from the enthusiastic followers of the cult of alien gods, to the science fiction-cum-horror of the “Cthulhu mythos.” Like some strange, eccentric bachelor uncle (although he was briefly married), Lovecraft haunts our imagination with his tales of ordinary landscapes, mostly in his native and much-loved Providence, Rhode Island, or in Massachusetts, suddenly invaded by creatures from some ghastly otherworld.
Like Poe, like vanGogh, like many other artists and writers, Lovecraft died largely unappreciated—and certainly not compensated enough to make a living. Introverted, neurotic, possibly agoraphobic, he lived, like Poe, almost as if he intended to sabotage whatever career he might have had. He spent much of his life in his beloved Providence, Rhode Island, where he could dream and imagine his tales in the company of a few elderly relatives who gave him shelter.
As his biographer deCamp put it, Lovecraft’s career was “a horror story of a different kind,” much of it spent doing revision for other would-be writers, writing thousands of letters, many of which did not survive and for none of which was he paid, and presenting himself to editors in an extremely negative way as someone who was accustomed to having his work turned down and expected the current editor to turn it down also.
If recognition came late, it came with a vengeance. In 1938, a year after his death, his ancient aunt carried a batch of his papers to the John Hay Library at Brown University in Providence. Nothing much was done with them until 1971, when a new director began to catalogue them and thus make them available to both scholars and the public. In 1939, August Derleth and Donald Wandrei founded Arkham House to publish Lovecraft's work. The press is still in existence. In 2005, The Library of America–a bastion of the classic American canon–added H. P. Lovecraft to its list. Brown University in Providence has hosted a seminar on Lovecraft. His work is entirely in print. Like Poe himself, Lovecraft lives.
---“The Fall of the house of Usher” as a Horrible tale :--
Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote: "Talent alone cannot make the writer. There must be a man behind the book."
There was a man behind "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Black Cat," and poems like "Annabel Lee" and "The Raven." That man--Edgar Allan Poe--was talented, but he was also eccentric and prone to alcoholism--having experienced more than his share of tragedies. But, what stands out even more prominently than the tragedy of Edgar Allan Poe's life is his philosophy of death.
1. An epigraph opens the tale, with words quoted from the French poet Jean Pierre de Beranger: "Son coeur est un luth suspendu;/Sitot qu'on le touche il resonne." Once translated, this means "His heart is a tightened lute; as soon as one touches it, it echoes." The narrator describes how he embarked on a long journey to visit a boyhood friend named Roderick Usher, whom he has not seen in many years. However, a strange letter that the narrator has received from Roderick declares that he is in terrible need of companionship and assistance, because both his body and his mind have become very sick. Wishing to come to the rescue, the man thus sets off at once to reach Roderick's isolated family estate located deep in the forest of some unknown country. As he arrives, a certain fear infects his entire body, and he recalls that this place is called the "House of Usher" because it has always been inhabited by the Usher family, and also the phrase refers to the family itself as one single house. The reason for this is that only one direct line of descent has survived from its earliest founder, with no siblings having survived to start new families of their own.
2. Additionally, the narrator suddenly recalls how little he really knows of Roderick; even though they were the best of friends as schoolchildren and played together, he knew little of this man's past and his family history. The appearance of the house itself mirrors this same air of mystery that shrouds the man who inhabits its walls, "The discoloration of the ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled webwork from the eaves...No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones" Poe, pg. 24. The man goes on to describe how the building appeared to have a thin crack running from the roof down the building's length and into the ground, and overall "In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old woodwork which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability" Poe, pg. 24. The narrator feels as if he is peering into a vault, because everything is so tranquil, but it is still slowly rotting nevertheless.
Upon arriving, a servant takes his horse, and the man enters the "Gothic archway of the hall," where he is then led through a labyrinth of corridors to Roderick Usher's room, where he is seen lying upon a couch. Usher rises quickly at the narrator's entrance, pleased to see his old friend again, and the two men sit down together. After an awkward silence during which the narrator marvels at how much Usher's appearance has transformed as "The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre [sic] of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not...connect its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity" Poe, pg. 25-6. Roderick is very disheveled, his skin is pale, and the very expression upon his face is inhuman. His voice is like that of a "lost drunkard" or an opium addict, as he hurriedly tries to explain that he has inherited some sort of Usher family curse, and this is the cause of his sickness. The narrator is doubtful, secretly considering him to be a hypochondriac when Roderick states dramatically "I must perish," and how he will die after losing his "struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR [sic]."
3. Usher adds that the grim, decaying surroundings of the family mansion are partly to blame for his depression, as well as the gradual decline of his sister Madeline, who will soon be dead because of her illness, which no doctor has been able to identify or treat effectively. When Madeline's name is mentioned, she wanders through the room as if on cue, and then slowly disappears once again, causing Roderick to start crying violently, burying his face into his hands. The fact that Roderick will be the last remaining member of the Usher family after his sister is dead compounds the problem even more, and it is this loneliness that has caused him to seek comfort in this old friend. Understanding the situation well, the narrator encourages Roderick to engage in various activities to cheer him up, which include reading, painting, and playing music. The pictures that Roderick creates are abstract and colorful, mirroring the complexity of his mind, as on one occasion when the man he paints an image of a long white hallway with light pouring down it, emanating from an unknown source.
4. The man's music is just as exotic. One mournful song he plays upon his guitar and sings aloud, called "The Haunted Palace," tells the tale of a beautiful palace that was once respected for its wealth, beauty, and respect for those who lived therein, as "In state his glory well befitting,/The ruler of the realm was seen." The song ends on a sad note, however, as the glory eventually becomes a mere memory "Of the old time entombed." The palace becomes a feared and decaying place, much like the House of Usher, "And travelers now within that valley,/Through the red-litten [sic] windows see/Vast forms that move fantastically/To a discordant melody;/While, like a rapid ghastly river,/Through the pale door;/A hideous throng rush out forever,/And laugh -- but smile no more" Poe, pg. 31. The once grand palace becomes haunted by ghosts and lives in the shadow of its former triumphs, until the last people depart the palace forever and there is no one left. Similarly, Roderick lives alone in the House of Usher with his sister Madeline, soon to be dead, surrounded by the remnants of his family's long and proud legacy. Usher also knows that this family legacy shall die with him because he is the last Usher.
5. Impressed by this song, the narrator converses with Roderick about its meaning, and he rambles for awhile about how he believes the moss and fungi growing on the rocks of his mansion, as well as other inanimate objects, are really sentient, thinking beings, much like humans are, and that the very House of Usher itself is causing his sickness. The narrator humors him and listens patiently, finding little cause to believe this as fact. Wishing to distract him from this mania, the narrator reads many books with Roderick, which works for awhile in focusing the poor man until Madeline abruptly dies. Usher is not overly distraught, for he already knew this to be inevitable, yet he insists on delaying her burial for two weeks. Instead, her body will be placed in a coffin in a room of the house, and the narrator helps to move her body into a dark vault once used perhaps "in remote feudal times" to store gunpowder, laying Madeline's coffin within. Then they unscrew the lid and admire the woman's face, which still shows a reddish hue, suggesting that she has died before her time, lacking the pale emptiness that many dead faces typically tend to carry. The narrator notes now much she resembles Usher, and the man declares that she was his twin sister, and they had always had a special connection between them. The lid is replaced, and the men leave the vault.
6. As the days go by, Roderick's behavior changes radically. His paranoia increases, and all of the progress the narrator has made during the past weeks in assisting his old friend is lost, and Roderick's fear starts to rub off on him! About a week afterwards, the narrator is trying to sleep in his room and cannot. Deciding to walk around his room for a bit until he is sleepy, the narrator is interrupted by Roderick Usher knocking on his door. When the man enters, he acts very strange, asking "And you have not seen it?" as the wind outside gets louder and fiercer. The narrator notices that the clouds outside are moving very quickly and shine with an unearthly light as well, which begins to surround the House of Usher. Suppressing his fear, he consoles Roderick by assuring him that the odd lighting is just "electrical phenomena," insisting instead that he will read a book to him that lies nearby, called Mad Trist by Sir Launcelot Canning to distract Roderick from his paranoia. However, upon reaching a point in the story where a character named Ethelred hears the cracking of wood as he breaks down a hermit's door, a similar sound of cracking wood seems to echo within the House of Usher.
7. Ignoring this, the narrator reads on to Roderick, reaching a point in the story where Ethelred kills a dragon, which releases a shriek in death. At this moment, a horrible shriek fills the House of Usher. Petrified but resistant, the narrator continues to read, even as Roderick has moved his chair to face the door of that room, as if waiting for someone to enter. His face is buried in his hands, but he is neither sleeping nor crying, and his body rocks from side to side rhythmically. The narrator reads a section about how Ethelred approaches a shield hanging on the wall and falls crashing to the floor as he approaches. A loud metal clanging echoes throughout the mansion, and the narrator at last gives up his reading, standing quickly. Roderick explains mournfully that the sounds are all from his sister -- the opening of her coffin and the release of the door in her vault, and that she is in fact still alive! Consumed with fear, Roderick screams out that he can hear the beating heart of his twin sister as she approaches, declaring that she will punish him for entombing her so soon.
8. He shouts out abruptly, "Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door," and at this the door opens and a dark figure stands there, although the narrator insists that the wind has caused the door to open. Entering the room, the narrator saw that "There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold -- then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated" Poe, pg. 40. Witnessing his childhood friend murdered before his very eyes, the narrator quickly flees from the scene in horror and shock, making it just outside of the mansion before turning around to observe the House of Usher. The storm grows fiercer, and the "blood-red moon" shines brilliantly over the house, as a large crack on the side of the house increasingly widens, causing the building to split apart and fall to the ground in pieces. The wind bears down upon the building as well, until suddenly after the "shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters," there is an abrupt silence. The House of Usher is no more, swallowed up by the earth upon which it had once stood.
--- Summary of “The Fall of the house of Usher” :--
EDGAR ALLAN POE-SIX TALES OF FEAR
This book includes six tales.The tales are mostly horors or detective stories.Some of them are very ghostly but interesting and thrilling.The writer is usualy also a storyteller and he writes about his experiences.The experiences are often only in his fantasy and they could never happen.I want to tell you about the story called…
…THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
It’s about the old ugly house which belongs to Usher’s family.They inherit the house from the father to the son and spend there the whole life.People from the nearest neightbourhood say about them that they are a little bit odd.Some of them are even afraid of the house.One day came to the house a young man (it was the writer telling the story, but we can give him a name John) to visit his friend from childhood-Roderic Usher.Roderic sent him a letter because he wanted to see him-his best friend-because he was in ill health and had a mental disorder.John was very frightened and wanted to know what was happening with his friend.His fear was even bigger when he could see the desolate house and his old frind.He looked very sad and nervous.He told John about his sister (she was his twin) who was very sick and could die.John though that Roderic was so sad from his sister’s illness and he tried to make him cheerfull-he told him some stories, read his favourite books and listened his playing to the guitar.In few days Roderic’s sister died.Roderic didn’t want to burry her dead body on cemetery because he though that she could be still alive.So they put her into the old tomb which was in the house’s cellar.One night they couldn’t sleep because they still could hear some ghostly sounds.They were very frightened.They thought that the sounds could be caused by Roderic’s sister,who wanted to get out from the tomb.Suddenly the door had been opened and to the room came Roderic’s sister in bloody dress.She had been down on her brother and he died in enormous panic.Outside were the big thunderstorm.In the moment of Roderic’s death the house had been hit by the lightning and after it it fell into the big morass which was behind the house.And it was the end of the house of Usher and it’s last inhabitants.
This story was very ghostly and thrilling.I read it in the very short time because I wanted to know what will happen in the next time.After reading it I was quite frightened.
---Theme of “The Fall of the house of Usher” :--
. When the narrator arrives by horseback one autumn evening at the House of Usher, the sight of its bleak walls and desolate grounds fills him with gloom. He draws up his horse at the edge of a tarn, a small lake encircling the mansion and reflecting its forbidding image. .In a letter, the owner of the property, Roderick Usher, had begged the narrator to visit him for several weeks. Such a visit, he wrote, would be a form of therapy for Usher against a mental disorder afflicting him..Usher and the narrator had been close friends since childhood, although Usher was never one to confide his inmost thoughts to anyone. The narrator, therefore, does not know Usher as well as their close friendship would suggest. The Usher family has long been distinguished for its devotion to the arts and its dedication to charitable causes. .Looking up from the lake, the narrator–upon beholding the mansion and the grounds once again–perceives that an eerie atmosphere–“a pestilent, mystic vapor”–overhangs the scene. The ancient building is discolored. A tangled fungus covers the walls. The structure appears stable, however, even though individual stones of the masonry are crumbling. After riding across a bridge to the front of the house, the narrator hands the reins of his horse to a waiting servant, enters the mansion, and walks through a Gothic archway. A valet conducts him through a labyrinth of hallways with tapestries and coats of arms, then up staircases. On one staircase, he meets the family physician. Finally, he enters the chamber of Roderick Usher. It is a large room with a vaulted ceiling and dark draperies, as well as various books and musical instruments scattered about. Usher, lying on a sofa, rises and greets the narrator warmly. Then they sit down. Usher, a delicately handsome man, is much altered in appearance since the last time the narrator saw him–so much so that the narrator hardly recognizes him. He is sickly pale; his silken hair has grown wildly about his face. He is nervous, agitated one moment and sullen the next, speaking rapidly, then slowly like a drunkard or opium user. His illness, he tells the narrator, runs in the family. “He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses,” the narrator says. “The most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.”
Usher says, “I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect — in terror. In this unnerved — in this pitiable condition — I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR." The gloomy mansion is in part responsible for his depressed state of mind. But what deeply disturbs him is the condition of his beloved sister, Madeline: Long in declining health, she now appears to be dying. She is his only relative and, for many years, has been his only companion. Her death would leave him as the only survivor of the ancient Usher family. While Usher and the narrator converse, Madeline passes quickly through the distant end of the room and disappears. The sight of her fills the narrator with a sense of dread that he cannot explain. Physicians have been unable to identify the exact cause of her illness, but its symptoms were as follows: “A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical character.” Although she had long managed to remain on her feet, that very evening–not long after the narrator arrives–she is confined to bed. .Over the next few days, the narrator does his best to cheer up his friend. They paint and read books. The narrator listens to Usher play his guitar. It becomes clear, however, that Usher remains locked in his prison of gloom. One of Usher’s paintings depicts a long subterranean tunnel with a low ceiling and white walls. Although no torches line the walls, a ghastly light radiates from the scene. While playing the guitar, he sometimes vocalizes improvised verses remarkable for their organization and clarity. One of them, “The Haunted Palace,” is a ballad that tells of a stately, radiant palace through whose windows passersby could see spirits moving to the rhythms of a lute around a throne upon which a monarch sat. Echoes of the sweet music passed through the pearl- and ruby-studded door of the palace, singing of the “wit and wisdom” of the king. But evil invaded the palace, attacking the monarch and desolating the palace. Never again would morning dawn for him. Only discordant melodies would henceforth emanate from the door. When the narrator discusses the meaning of the ballad with him, Usher speaks of the ability of the trees on the grounds and the fungus on the stones of the house to create, over time, a sinister atmosphere that shaped the destinies of the long line of Ushers. The books he read focus on fanciful, mystical, or religious subjects–a subterranean voyage, palmistry, satyrs, a Dominican directory on the Inquisition, and “the manual of a forgotten church.” One evening, after Usher informs the narrator that Madeline has died, he announces that he will preserve her corpse for two weeks in a vault in one of the walls of the building before its final burial. This unusual step will keep the corpse out of reach of her attending physicians, who are curious about the malady that killed her. It will also provide a temporary resting place for the body while burial plans are decided. The narrator assists Usher in lifting the body into the coffin and placing the coffin in the vault, situated beneath the part of the house containing the narrator’s bedroom. In feudal days, the vault served as the keep of a dungeon and in later years as a storage place for gunpowder. The archway in front of the vault was covered with copper, as was the huge iron door opening into the vault. After setting the coffin in place, they moved aside the lid to look one more time upon Madeline Usher. Noticing the very strong resemblance between her and Roderick Usher, the narrator wonders whether Madeline and her brother were twins; Roderick confirms that they were and says that they shared certain feelings that others would find hard to comprehend. Before screwing down the lid of the coffin, the narrator notices that her illness left a “faint blush” on her breast and her face. Her lips were locked in lingering smile." In the following days, Roderick Usher paces aimlessly and his complexion takes on an even paler hue. He speaks in a tremulous voice, as if he were experiencing terror. The narrator observes: “There were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was laboring with some oppressive secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage . . . [and] I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions.” About a week after Madeline was laid in the vault, the narrator is unable to sleep because of a nervousness that overcomes him–perhaps resulting from the gloomy surroundings. His body begins to shake. He hears “indefinite sounds,” perhaps from a storm raging at that moment, and puts on his clothes and begins to walk around his chamber. After a few moments, he answers a knock at his door. It is Usher carrying a lamp. He has the same cadaverous look except that “there was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes.” Usher looks about for a moment and says, “And you have not seen it?” Then he throws open a window to the storm. A blast of wind rushes in, nearly knocking the men down. Outside, the narrator sees low clouds gusting into one another in the glow of an unearthly light from “faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the mansion.”
The narrator, protective of Usher, pulls him away from the window, telling him that the strange sights result from ordinary “electrical phenomena” or arise from the small lake on the property. To calm Usher, he seats him in a chair and reads from a romance: "The Mad Trist," by Sir Launcelot Canning. As the tale progresses, Usher listens carefully to every word of the story as the narrator comes to the part when Ethelred, the hero, breaks into the dwelling of a hermit by driving his spiked war club through the door. The sound of the cracking, splintering wood reverberates through the forest. At that moment, the narrator hears a similar sound that appears to be coming from some distant corner of the mansion. Perhaps the storm rattled windows. The narrator reads on. Upon entering the hermit’s dwelling, Ethelred encounters a dragon keeping guard over what turns out to be a palace of gold. On a wall is a shield inscribed with these words:
Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin ; .Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win.
..Ethelred slays the dragon. ..The narrator hears a wild scream in the mansion, not unlike that which he imagines the dragon gave out in his dying moment. But the narrator maintains calm so as not to excite Usher. However, Usher turns his chair to the door. His lips tremble as if he is trying to say something. His head hangs on his chest. His body begins rocking. The narrator reads on. .After slaying the dragon, Ethelred walks up to the shield. But before he can reach for it, it falls crashing to his feet. At that moment, the narrator hears a similar sound in the mansion. The narrator jumps up and goes over to Usher out of concern for his reaction to the sound. But Usher continues to rock, his eyes fixed in an empty gaze. When he begins murmuring, the narrator places an ear in close to hear what he is saying. Usher speaks of hearing something for many minutes, hours, days. Then he says: “I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them — many, many days ago — yet I dared not — I dared not speak !” Usher jumps to his feet and says, “"Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!" The wind throws open the door and there stands Madeline Usher with blood on her burial garments. Then, giving out a low cry, she enters the room and, in the throes of her final death spasms, falls upon Roderick Usher. During the fall, he dies. The narrator flees the mansion. During his escape, he sees a blood red moon shining over the building. The mansion then collapses, and the dark waters of the tarn swallow every last fragment of the House of Usher. . Setting /. The story begins at dusk on an autumn day in an earlier time, probably the 19th Century. The place is a forbidding mansion in a forlorn countryside. The mansion, covered by a fungus, is encircled by a small lake, called a tarn, that resembles a moat. A bridge across the tarn provides access to the mansion.
Characters
Narrator, a friend of the master of the House of Usher. When he visits his friend, he witnesses terrifying events. Roderick Usher, the master of the house. He suffers from a depressing malaise characterized by strange behavior. Madeline Usher, twin sister of Roderick. She also suffers from a strange illness. After apparently dying, she rises from her coffin. Servant, domestic in the Usher household. He attends to the narrator's horse. Valet, domestic in the Usher household who conducts the narrator to Roderick Usher's room. Physician, one of several doctors who treat Madeline Usher.
Type of Work
"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story of Gothic horror written in first-person point of view. It was first published in September 1839 in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine. In 1840 and 1845, Poe published it with other stories in Tales of the Grotesque and of the Arabesque.
Style and Imagery
Word Choice
Poe carefully makes every word, every phrase, every sentence in the story contribute to the overall effect, horror, accompanied by oppressing morbidity and anxious anticipation of terrifying events. Notice, for example, the tenor of the words in the opening sentence of the story. I have underlined those that help establish the mood and atmosphere.
During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.
Rhythm
But besides painting a gloomy picture, the words in the paragraph also beat out a funereal rhythm–at first through the alliteration of during, dull, dark, and day, and then through the rhyming suffixes of oppressively, singularly, and melancholy.
Alliteration
Alliteration occurs frequently in the rest of the story, in such phrases as the following:
iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart cadaverousness of complexion feeble and futile struggles certain superstitious impressions [the s in impressions does not alliterate because it has a z sound] sensation of stupor partially cataleptical character wild air of the last waltz fervid facility of his impromptus impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the "House of Usher."
Anaphora
As in his other short stories, Poe frequently uses anaphora in "The Fall of the House of Usher." Anaphora is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is repeated at the beginning of a clause or another group of words. Anaphora imparts emphasis and balance. Here are boldfaced examples from "The Fall of the House of Usher":
I looked upon the scene before me–upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain–upon the bleak walls–upon the vacant eye-like windows–upon a few rank sedges–and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees
While the objects around me–while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy–while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this — I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up.
Many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it
Main Theme
The central theme of "The Fall of the House of Usher" is terror that arises from the complexity and multiplicity of forces that shape human destiny. Dreadful, horrifying events result not from a single, uncomplicated circumstance but from a collision and intermingling of manifold, complex circumstances. In Poe’s story, the House of Usher falls to ruin for the reasons listed under "Other Themes" (below).
Other Themes
Evil
Evil has been at work in the House of Usher for generations, befouling the residents of the mansion. Roderick Usher's illness is "a constitutional and family evil . . . one for which he despaired to find a remedy," the narrator reports. Usher himself later refers to this evil in Stanza V of "The Haunted Palace," a ballad he sings to the accompaniment of his guitar music. The palace in the ballad represents the House of Usher. The first two lines of Stanza V are as follows:
But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate.
Neither of these references identifies the exact nature of the evil. However, clues in the story suggest that the evil infecting the House of Usher is incest. Early in the story, the narrator implies there has been marriage between relatives:
I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain.
Later, the narrator describes Madeline Usher as her brother’s “tenderly beloved sister–his sole companion for long years.” He also notes that Roderick Usher's illness "displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations."
Isolation
Roderick and Madeline Usher seal themselves inside their mansion, cutting themselves off from friends, ideas, progress. They have become musty and mildewed, sick unto their souls for lack of contact with the outside world.
Failure to Adapt
The Usher family has become obsolete because it failed to throw off the vestiges of outmoded tradition, a failing reflected by the mansion itself, a symbol of the family. The interior continues to display coats-of-arms and other paraphernalia from the age of kings and castles. As to the outside, “Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves."
Madness
Roger and Madeline suffer from mental illness characterized by anxiety, depression, and other symptoms. Catalepsy, a symptom of Madeline’s illness, is a condition that causes muscle rigidity and temporary loss of consciousness and feeling for several minutes, several hours, and, in some cases, more than a day. Generally, it is not an illness in itself but a symptom of an illness, such as schizophrenia, epilepsy, hysteria, alcoholism or a brain tumor. Certain drugs, too, can trigger a cataleptic episode. The victim does not respond to external stimuli, even painful stimuli such as a pinch on the skin. In the past, a victim of catalepsy was sometimes pronounced dead by a doctor unfamiliar with the condition. Apparently, Madeline is not dead when her brother and the narrator entomb her; instead, she is in a state of catalepsy. When she awakens from her trance, she breaks free of her confines, enters her brother's chamber, and falls on him. She and her brother then die together. Besides Roger and Madeline, the narrator himself may suffer from mental instability, given his reaction to the depressing scene he describes in the opening paragraphs. If he is insane, all of the events he describes could be viewed as manifestations of his sick mind–illusions, dreams, hallucinations.
Mystery
From the very beginning, the narrator realizes that he is entering a world of mystery when he crosses the tarn bridge. He observes, "What was it–I paused to think–what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher ? It was a mystery all insoluble."
Strange Phenomena
The narrator describes the mansion as having a “pestilent and mystic” vapor enveloping it. He also says Roderick Usher “was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted.”
--- Critical Appreciation on “The Fall of the house of Usher” :--
"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a landmark in literary history. While telling an eerie tale of gothic horror, Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) manages to echo the literary past, embody contemporary ideas and imagery, and anticipate the development of modernism. This short story, which first appeared in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine in September 1839, begins as Poe's nameless first-person narrator describes how he feels upon approaching the ancestral mansion of the Usher family where his boyhood friend Roderick Usher lives with his sister Madeline, the last descendants of a formerly grand family. The narrator first sees the house cloaked in shadow and considers it a melancholy sight, but he quickly modifies his reaction: he is overcome by "a sense of insufferable gloom," insufferable because the feeling is "unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible" (p. 145). The narrator is obviously used to taking pleasure in both the melancholy and the sublime. His inability to do so as he approaches the Usher mansion disturbs his equanimity. Try as he might he simply cannot achieve the pleasurable feelings he typically enjoys and sees that "no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime" (p. 145).
Poe's diction in this opening paragraph recalls literary concepts that had become prevalent in the critical discourse during the preceding century, when poets cultivated intense emotions to heighten philosophic contemplation and enhance aesthetic appreciation. Melancholy—"a not unpleasing sadness," in Herman Melville's words—emanates from the contemplation of death or adversity. The sublime, on the other hand, involves the pursuit of beauty in the face of terror. Using these two critical terms, Poe's narrator associates himself with the complex literary impulses they embody. Neither are sufficient to help him understand the appearance of the Usher home, however. When these traditional literary concepts fail him, he tries something new: he attempts to dispel the gloom by changing his physical relation to what he sees. Repositioning himself has quite the opposite effect, however: it only serves to heighten his fear. He now sees an image of the same house made more sinister by its reflection in the dark tarn.
Poe, it seems, has introduced these traditional concepts of late-eighteenth-century verse only to call them into question. Deprived of his usual, poetic way of coping with sadness and fear, the narrator has lost his moorings and must find new methods of dealing with what he encounters. One of these ways, his attempt to change his physical relation to the environment, fails, too. Recovering his presence of mind after this failure, he dismisses his attempt to adjust the physical world to suit himself as a childish experiment. As he looks at the house again, it seems as if "around the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity" (p. 145). Capturing the mansion as it appears to the narrator, Poe uses a method of description Nathaniel Hawthorne used so well: he depicts the ambiguity of individual perception. Poe's narrator sees the mansion enshrouded with a weird vapor but shakes off that impression and redoubles his efforts in order to perceive "the real aspect of the building," which may be best characterized by its profound decrepitude (p. 145).
THE GOTHIC AND POE
The gothic imagery that fills "Usher" reflects a style of literature that had emerged during the late eighteenth century and was flourishing in the early decades of the nineteenth. The large mysterious castle filled with dark corners and secret passageways had been an important feature of gothic literature at least since Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto (1765). Poe explicitly aligns "Usher" with such literature. Upon dismounting from his horse, the story's narrator enters "the Gothic archway of the hall" (p. 146). Once inside a valet leads him through "many dark and intricate passages" (p. 146). Having his narrator enter the mansion through a gothic archway, Poe identifies this short story as a piece of gothic fiction. Furthermore, he establishes a parallel between the narrator's experience and his reader's. Much as the narrator enters the gothic by entering the home, the reader enters the gothic by reading the story. Establishing such a parallel between reader and narrator, Poe incorporates a doppelgänger theme, another motif characteristic of gothic fiction. Poe's "William Wilson" (1839) is the classic story of a double or doppelgänger in the English language, but "Usher" also makes sophisticated use of this motif. Not only does Poe establish a parallel between narrator and reader, he also parallels the narrator and Roderick Usher, Roderick and his sister Madeline, and Roderick and the house itself.
Poe is the last great gothic writer, but his attitude toward the gothic often seems ambiguous. At times, he incorporates gothic elements only to spoof them. "The Raven" (1845), though a great example of the literary gothic, is not without satiric moments. Of course, the use of humor in gothic fiction was not unprecedented. As Benjamin Fisher has observed, humor had frequently been an element of the gothic before Poe's time. "Usher," however, treats the gothic with profound seriousness. Reading the story, one gets the impression that Poe set out to write the gothic tale to end all gothic tales.
In terms of the relationship of "Usher" to the American literature of its day, Poe's tale differs considerably. The middle third of the nineteenth century was a time of great literary jingoism. Numerous critics clamored for a national literature commensurate with the greatness of the nation and urged American writers to incorporate its mountains and rivers and plains into their work. Poe considered such jingoism, or extreme nationalism, hogwash. The way to make great national literature was not to make it represent the physical and political character of the nation: the way to make great American literature was to make it original. In so doing, it could stand on a world stage. Consequently, Poe seldom felt compelled to use American settings for his fiction. Instead, he frequently set his tales in the dark corners of Europe. "Usher" is no exception. The vault beneath the mansion dates back to "remote feudal times" and thus suggests an indeterminate European setting (p. 150).
CONTEMPORARY VISUAL CULTURE IN "USHER"
Many of Poe's gothic tales have similarly indeterminate time settings, but a bookish reference in "Usher" and the narrator's careful diction help give the story a contemporary setting. In no other tale does Poe describe a character's books in more detail than he does in "Usher." The narrator closely associates Roderick's personal character with the books he reads and lists several specific titles. One of the books is listed as "the Selenography of Brewster" (p. 149). The author Poe names, Sir David Brewster, was best known for his groundbreaking optical experiments. His Treatise on Optics (1831) and Letters on Natural Magic (1832) offered Poe rich sources of information about various optical phenomena. Poe gives "Usher" a contemporary setting with his reference to Brewster, whose most well-known works were published the same decade "Usher" appeared. Brewster never wrote a book called Selenography, however. What Poe had in mind was a work by Charles F. Blunt entitled Selenographia, a Telescopic View of the Moon's Disc (1833).
Attributing the Selenographia of Blunt to the more well-known Brewster, Poe allows himself to make optical phenomena an important aspect of the story. "Usher" also makes imaginative use of a popular entertainment that created optical illusions for purposes of amusement. As the valet first leads him through the mansion, the narrator describes what he sees: "The carvings of the ceilings, the somber tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode" (p. 146). The narrator's use of the adjective "phantasmagoric" to describe the furnishings of the Usher home calls to mind the contemporary phantasmagoria, a popular form of entertainment that used weird noise and lighting effects for the purpose of scaring audiences. Later in the story the word phantasmagoria specifically pertains to Usher's mental state. The narrator speaks of Usher's "phantasmagoric conceptions" and finds books in his library "in strict keeping with this character of phantasm" (p. 149). The narrator finds his own mental state influenced by the home's interior, too:
I endeavored to believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to the phantasmagoric influence of the gloomy furniture of the room—of the dark and tattered draperies, which tortured into motion by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. (P. 150)
Much as the producers of contemporary phantasmagoria shows did and much as he had done himself earlier in "Ligeia," Poe uses lighting effects, sound effects, and the semblance of movement in "Usher" to enhance the ghastly nature of the setting. Madeline Usher's reappearance at the story's end resembles the specters depicted in the denouement of a phantasmagoria show, as she is enshrouded with "blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame" (p. 152).
Discussing the history of the word phantasmagoria, Terry Castle has used "The Fall of the House of Usher" to show how the term underwent a paradigmatic shift from the external to the internal around the time Poe published the tale. The word originally entered the English language to describe a form of entertainment, but when the popularity of phantasmagoria shows waned, the word stayed in the language to refer to hallucinatory images conjured up by the mind. "Usher" finely captures this shift from the external to the internal. Though Poe uses the adjective "phantasmagoric" to describe home furnishings early in the story, before its end, he is talking about phantasms of the mind.
Poe's reference to Brewster and his use of the word "phantasmagoria" clearly fix the action of "Usher" in the present. The other books Roderick and the narrator read in the story help link past and future. Several of Usher's books describe imaginary journeys to utopias. In Iter Subterraneum (1741), for instance, the great Danish writer Baron Ludvig Holberg takes his fictional narrator, Nicholas Klimm, on an imaginary voyage underground to a fantastic place. Tommaso Campanella's City of the Sun (1623), another book Roderick reads, describes an ideal utopian society inspired by Plato's vision of the universe. As Priscilla Rice has suggested, Poe's reference to Campanella reinforces important themes of the story. Campanella posited that the health of the individual family reflected the health of the political state in which they lived. Implicitly, the unhealthfulness of the Usher family reflects the decrepitude of their home. The works by Campanella, Holberg, and others suggest that the books Roderick and the narrator read in the present come from the past yet anticipate life in the future.
Thoughts of the future send Roderick into a state of terror. As he tells the narrator: "I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of my soul" (p. 148). Roderick's comments are a reflection of his illness, which involves a hypersensitivity to any external stimuli. He can eat only the blandest of foods: mulligatawny has no place at his dinner table. He can tolerate the sound of no musical instruments save the quiet strumming of his own guitar. He exists by keeping himself in extreme stasis, by never trying anything new, never experimenting with anything unfamiliar, never leaving his house. He is an exile in time. Madeline Usher is afflicted with a different condition, but one that has much the same result. She is cataleptic. She literally exists in a state of physical torpor. She, too, seems trapped in an eternal present, never slipping back into a happier past, never going forward to an eternal future.
Roderick and Madeline possess these afflictions as the narrator arrives. Through much of his time in the mansion, their conditions only intensify. Roderick's sensitivity becomes even more acute. Madeline's catalepsy becomes so severe that it seems as if she has died. Her apparent death introduces a catastrophic element of change to Roderick's life. They entomb her in an ancient vault that forms a part of the dungeons from the feudal past. Entombed below the house, Madeline is removed from the present into the realm of the past. But hers, like those of so many other Poe characters, is a premature burial. She escapes her sepulchre to accost her brother. Her reappearance only precipitates the inevitable. She confronts Roderick, and the two die in each others's arms. The narrator flees the house. As he escapes, a huge crack forms in the masonry, and the house collapses into the tarn.
"USHER" AND THE AVANT-GARDE
"The Fall of the House of Usher" would be recognized by many as Poe's finest tale and, indeed, one of the best short stories in the English language. In the introduction to his edition of Poe, Padraic Colum, for example, calls the story "splendid" and names it as one of the "world's best tales" (p. 148). A reprinting of it in the New York Times (17 January 1909) to celebrate the centenary of Poe's birth introduced it with the headnote: "Students of Poe and his works hold differing opinions as to which of his tales is entitled to the first place among his prose writings. But certainly a large number of these—and possibly a majority—would give first place to 'The Fall of the House of Usher.'" The tale has inspired numerous other works including Claude Debussy's La Chute de la Maison d'Usher, an opera he left unfinished at the time of his death; Jean Epstein's impressionistic film, La Chute de La Maison d'Usher (1928); and The Fall of the House of Usher (1928), a highly experimental avant-garde short film created by James Sibley Watson Jr. and Melville Webber. The character of Roderick Usher also anticipates many of the protagonists of some of the most influential literary works of the modernist period. Allen Tate sees a little Roderick Usher in such literary characters as Stephen Daedalus, J. Alfred Prufrock, and Mrs. Dalloway. In Poe's story, neither Roderick nor Madeline have a future, but the story itself has had a profound influence on the development of modernism.
Some have claimed more credit for the story's influence on modernist art than it may deserve, however. During the course of the story, Roderick often amuses himself by painting. The narrator describes Roderick's paintings as "pure abstractions" that Roderick "contrived to throw upon his canvas" (p. 152). Roderick Usher is the first abstract expressionist, a few commentators have asserted. Such claims may be more clever than useful, but it is productive to see "Usher" as yet another of Poe's stories that symbolize the life of the artist. Roderick's paintings may identify him as an artist, but his mental and physical condition are more important for understanding his attitude toward art. Roderick is like many authors Poe critiqued in his day: he is afraid of the future. Consequently, he does not experiment; he does not take chances; he does not stray from what is comfortable, from what he already knows. His death in the story parallels the death of any artist who refuses to take risks.
The narrator, however, who alone survives to tell Roderick's tale, survives because he runs from the house. Instead of being immobilized like Roderick, the narrator possesses a dynamic quality that allows him to flee. Closing his narrative, he explains, "I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder—there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters—and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the 'House of Usher'" (p. 152). This is no statement of a man struck with terror who has just witnessed the death of a friend and his sister and has just barely escaped from death himself. This is the voice of a meticulous literary artist. The clever simile, the biblical echo (Ezekiel 43:2), the conjoined, alliterative word pairs: all bespeak a meticulous literary crafts-manship. "The Fall of the House of Usher" is the story of two artist figures, Roderick Usher and the narrator, but the narrator is the one Poe wants his readers to emulate. Artistic stasis leads to death. Dynamic experimentation leads to the future.
--- Reason for selection of “The Fall of the house of Usher” :--
I selected “The Fall of the house of Usher” because I like tales and horror short stories .As “The Fall of the house of Usher” is both horrible tale and short story ,it takes less time to read.I like reading but not too much lengthy books.So I selected this tale.
--- My own Comments :--
First, there is the stubborn resistance of the narrator to accept that he is experiencing any sort of supernatural phenomenon. He is very skeptical throughout the story to the very end, as he attempts to explain away every occurrence by some logical scientific reasoning. When Roderick complains of so many ailments, the narrator considers him to be a simple hypochondriac; when Roderick lectures him about the sentient qualities of moss and fungi, the narrator is doubtful, but he listens patronizingly. When Roderick sees odd lights beginning to surround his house and the clouds rushing by outside, the narrator turns him away from the window, dismissing this as a mere storm and the light as "electrical phenomena," choosing instead to escape into a book, which he reads aloud. When the narrator reads and hears frightful sounds, he ignores them and continues reading; and as Madeline opens the door to the room, the narrator says this is because of the wind. Only after witnessing the murder of Roderick does he flee for his life, and after observing the House of Usher swallowed entirely by the earth finally offers no explanation for this event.
Thus, the story may be seen as an ongoing struggle of the logical, rational human mind, and the primitive fears and worries that lurk deeper within, of which Roderick becomes a victim. The very thing which he had most feared, that he would be slain by the House, comes true in the form of his very sister Madeline. The narrator struggles to resist this frame of thinking, although eventually it "infects" him as well, so much that he cannot sleep at night. Poe thus sends a message that no matter how much we may rationalize and suppress our fears in light of logic, the fear is still there within all of us, however hidden, and any traumatic event such as what befell the narrator, may cause it to emerge at any given time, and consume us, as it had done to Roderick. One may wonder what the mental state of the narrator may have become after observing the House of Usher pulled into the ground; perhaps he, too, is as maniacal and as much of a hypochondriac as Roderick had been. At the same time, one may wonder whether the narrator would have even escaped from the house had he not maintained some hold on logic, for Roderick did not even attempt to escape death. Instead, he waited for it expectantly, going so far as to turn his chair to face the door, since his sister would soon enter the room.
Indeed, the fact that Roderick cannot seem to survive without Madeline points out another quality of the story's author. Throughout Edgar Allan Poe's life, he was forever searching for a female counterpart with whom he could share his thoughts, much like Roderick's close attachment to his twin sister Madeline. Poe had been lacking such a bond for much of his life, with the premature death of his mother Eliza and the loss of two other maternal figures in his life, Jane Stannard and Fanny Allan. He desperately sought female companionship and married his cousin Virginia in 1837, who would later die from the same illness that had taken his mother: tuberculosis. This craving for female companionship is evident throughout "The Fall of the House of Usher." The narrator's companionship is inadequate for the Roderick's needs, and after Madeline's death Roderick becomes sullen and depressed. Like Poe, Roderick himself is very artistic, singing a poetic song about "The Haunted Palace," and his love of other arts such as painting and literature is to be noted as well. Like Poe, Roderick is perceived by the "rational" mind, embodied in the presence of the narrator, as delusional and eccentric. Yet it is this man who in the end proves his point as the house crumbles as soon as he dies alongside Madeline. With Roderick's inability to function without his sister, the House of Usher thus comes to a magnificent end.
The destruction of the house mirrors the deceased Roderick, who had felt so much that the structure itself was a living creature. What the narrator had assumed to be baseless madness is revealed as truth. Also of note is the epithet that begins the tale from the poet de Beranger, meaning again "His heart is a tightened lute; as soon as one touches it, it echoes." Oddly, the original text from de Beranger's "Le Refus" read "Mon coeur," so Poe had changed this from "My heart" to "His heart," leaving one to wonder why this was done. Again, since the first person narrator is clearly not the artist of the story and "Mon" would hardly be appropriate, the reference is made to, again, Roderick Usher, whose heart craves the female companionship of his twin sister Madeline. Roderick mentioned the presence of a deep spiritual connection between the two, which would no doubt be broken once Madeline died. Roderick shouts out at one point "Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart?" revealing this close connection as his inner heartbeat and that of Madeline seem to become one and the same, a technique Poe also uses in "The Tell-Tale Heart." The only resolution is that Roderick die with her, since they are as much a part of each other as the House of Usher is a part of them.
