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Decent Into Madness In The Yellow Wallpaper By Edgar Allan Poe

495 Words2 Pages

Decent into Madness In most short stories, the writer intends for the reader to feel one type of emotion throughout the story. Poe believed short stories should be able to be read in one sitting. This often contributes to the story's effect by allowing the reader to experience the complete effect of the story all at once, rather than leaving the story and having to regain the feeling of being in the story after coming back. Poe obtains the single effect theory of decent into madness through the narrator and the Usher mansion. It was clear that the narrator had changed drastically from the beginning of the story to the end. When the narrator first arrived at the house he was completely normal, but as the days went on and he continued to live there, the house and the things that happened inside and out of it began to affect him tremendously. He began to decent into madness when Usher told him that Madeline had died. The narrator stated “ her decease,” he said, with a bitterness which I can never forget.”(Poe 299-300) He was astonished that Usher …show more content…

There were many peculiar and unearthly things that were going on inside the house. There were many strange sounds and the narrator also described the windows to look as if they were eye shaped. The location of the house also provided more evidence of the decent into terror because the house was in the middle of the woods isolated from everyone else. The mansion collapsing is like the “final straw.” So many out of this world experiences have happened and the house collapsing is signifying how the reader should be feeling at the end of the story. Usher said as the house was collapsing “my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder…”(Poe 310) The house in itself was something that made the reader feel as if they were going insane and when it finally collapse its as if a weight was lifted and strange things were going to

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In this analysis I want to focus on how Poe’s writing in The Raven progressively gives the reader the feeling that the narrator turns insane. How does he create the progression from a seemingly normal man to an insane one? Firstly I would like to start off with the effects of repeating the last line of each stanza in The Raven. Throughout the poem Poe follows the rhyme scheme ACBCCC ,which puts quite a heavy focus on the last lines of each stanza.

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The story begins with the narrator admitting that he is a "very dreadfully nervous" type. This type is found throughout all of Poe 's fiction, particularly in the over-wrought, hyper-sensitive Roderick Usher in "The Fall of the House of Usher. " As with Usher, the narrator here believes that his nervousness has "sharpened my senses — not destroyed — not dulled them." Thus, he begins by stating that he is not mad, yet he will continue his story and will reveal not only that he is mad, but that he is terribly mad. His sensitivities allow him to hear and sense things in heaven, hell, and on earth that other people are not even aware of.

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He also tries to convince the reader not to let fear overcome him. The use of character provides action and suspense in the story through the characters' dialogue and actions. Roderick, who is a hypochondriac, is very depressed. "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.” This quote is showing, “FEAR” emphasizes that it’s the primary feeling Poe is attempting to evoke in this story.

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The narrator describes the house of having “vacant eye-like windows-upon a few rank sedges-and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees-...” (Poe, line 9) and “There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart-...” (Poe, line 12) the “sickening of the heart” and “vacant eye-like windows” are examples of figurative language that foreshadows the misinterpreted death of Usher’s twin sister Madaline as they placed her in the the cellar of the house for later examination by physicians to find what disease she had come down

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The narrator notices the decay of the home despite its structured building and the lack of care in the environment surrounding it, which symbolizes the inevitable fall of the Usher

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This is evident due to many characteristics. These incidents include Roderick’s looks, why the house fell down, and why Madeline rose from the dead! As the narrator of The Fall of the House of Usher rides on his horse to Ushers home, the setting quickly changes. He states that he saw, “the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain-upon the bleak walls - upon the vacant eye-like windows” (Poe, Page 21)

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Deep within every person there is a sense of fear that terrifies them for life. In Edgar Allen Poe’s story “The Fall of the house of Usher”, the narrator enters the home of a lifelong friend, Usher, who has fallen to the fear he has held within him. Usher’s twin sister, Madeline, has Usher on edge thinking that she is dead. When they bury her, she comes back to life and takes him away to die with him. They are the last two of the family of Ushers.

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The narrator feels “utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium” (“Fall of the House of Usher”474). The narrator openly confesses that he uses drugs and that he is depressed which can cloud a person 's judgement. By the end of the story the narrator becomes frighten by the house but says, “irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, hearkened --I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me --to certain low and indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not whence” (“The Fall of The House of Usher” 488). At this moment the narrator has become more frightened than ever and it is unlikely that see things for what

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He makes sure to mention that the trees out front are dead, almost as if to foreshadow about what lies ahead. The house itself

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When talking about the house, the narrator's use of parenthesis: “I am afraid, but I don't care—there is something strange about the house—I can feel it”, conveys the her desperation at the physical confinement. While the wallpaper is a symbol for her figurative confinement. The pattern of the wallpaper is “at night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars”. The use of anticlimax suggests that the woman is imprisoned and “trapped” at any time, no light can help her. The pattern slowly confines the narrator’s mind behind those imaginary “bars”, so the house becomes her prison cell and drives her to madness.

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Throughout “The Fall of the House of Usher,” metaphor and symbolism are heavily relied upon to express the extent of the madness that resides within the Usher House. In the short story, Poe creates a symbolic parallel between the art and stories that are seen and told. It can be implied, from a painting, in the Usher house, that Lady Madeline Usher is still alive. The reader can also imply that there is a hidden tunnel or room under the entirety of the house. “The Mad Trist” indirectly tells the reader of Lady Madeline’s escape from the tomb she had been placed in.

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In the story “The Fall of The House of Usher”, Usher thinks that his sister is dead when in reality she is alive but he talks about her in the past tense as if she is dead. In the story Usher thinks Madeline is dead but she isn’t, in fact she has the same mental illness as him, this is what he says about her, “Her decease, he said with a bitterness I could never forget, would leave him the last of the ancient race of the Ushers. While he spoke, the lady Madeline passed slowly through a remote portion of the apartment.” (Poe 19). Usher says his sister is dead but she is walking around the house as he explains to the narrator what he means.

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Poe is able to describe how anger feels, describe how it feels to love someone than lose them in a matter of seconds, describe how it feels to hate and despise someone with a burning passion, until the reader feels as though they will crack under pressure. Poe’s fantastic grasp on diction and the creation of images in the reader’s mind, can be seen in the The Fall of the House of Usher, when the narrator says “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…” (paragraph 1) . Poe was able to show how the sky looked even though the reader wasn’t able to see it through their own eyes. His words has a certain way to them, to make the reader believe they are standing right next to him as he is writing the story. The imagery in the piece can also materialize the thoughts of the reader to see how the characters are beginning down a slippery-slope toward nothingness.

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The narrator believes himself to be very intelligent and clever when he goes into the old man’s room at midnight. Poe’s word choice of “caution” and “how wisely” represents the man’s view of his own sanity. Yet the act he performs and the reasoning behind his murderous intention convinces the reader that the narrator has lost his sanity. He plots and is driven to kill a man after claiming, “ I loved the old man.

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Another theme is the power of the dead over the living. Even when the cat dies he still haunts the narrator after life. This help the madness drive within the characters mind. A barrier is broken between life and death in “The fall of house Usher” the sister rises back in bloodied clothes and “The Fall of the House of Usher” the dead actually comes back to life. “It was …the figure of lady Madeline of House Usher” (Poe 515).

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