The Fall Of The House Of Usher

Term Paper Title	The Fall Of The House Of Usher
# of Words	998
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	3.99

The Fall of the House of Usher

Casey Ochs                                                       Ochs1
Ms. Miller
The Fall of the House of Usher

     The Fall of the House of Usher is acclaimed as one of Edgar Allan Poe's greatest works.  Poe
uses Symbolism and analogies in both characters and setting to tell this gothic tale of death and
downfall.  He often drew apoun memory for the setting of his stories.  He combines atmosphere
and analogy to form the setting which provokes to the reader a sense of insufferable gloom.  Too
much of the horror has been attributed to its setting.  But the setting does have a double
impotance, discriptive and symbolic.  Poe introduces planlife in its most rudimentary form,
underscoring the miasmic elements in the tale.  The story connects plot and setting so that they
seem one.  From the first sentence to the last, the mood of desolation and impending doom never
leaves.  Poe used the principal of analogy very effectively in House of Usher.  Finding an
identical pattern in each the house and the family, he makes the events in the book being read
correspond to those going on in the house.  The entire opening scene is steeped in blackness and
melancholy.(Neilson, 197, Buranelli, 62)
     Another of Poe's writing techniques is anima.  Anima is giving a character qualities of having
an animal spirit.  Madeline Usher is the anima figure in the story  Poe's use of symbolism in his
gothic stories is a guiding thread to his literary art.  That he is not persistently a symbolist is one
of his strengths, for it means that he only turns to symbolism when it has a distinct role to play.
His symbolism generally takes the form of allowing some object to stand for an abstraction or
personal attribute.  Five persons figure into this tale, but the interest centers exclusively in one-
RoderickUsher.(Levine, 125, Buranelli 85)
     Roderick, cadaverous eyes, large liquid and luminous beyond comparison.  His lips are very
thin and pale.  Usher suffered from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most
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insipid food was alone bearable; he could wear only garments of a certain texture; the odors of
all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even the faintest light.  The characters also
show gothic tendencies.  Just as Usher simultaneously exploits and loathes his disease, he longs
for death and at the same time fears it.
at the same time fears it.  Roderick is himself a symbol of isolation, and of a concentration of
vitality so introverted that it utterly destroys itself.  He is   physically
isolated.(Buranelli,63)
     Madeline Usher, Roderick's twin sister is given to trances and sleepwalking and is completely
unaware of the world surrounding her, even the visitor's presence in the family home.
Madeline's cataleptic condition affects Roderick deeply.  He sees her wandering about the house,
her physical being, as well as her psychological being decaying daily, but he does nothing about
it.  It is Madeline, the anima figure, who has been Roderick's companion for many years, and He
has kept alive this psychologically incestuous relationship.  Madeline takes the initiative to bring
an end ...

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