Impermanence In Fall Of The House Of Usher By Edgar Allan Poe

Impermanence, and the Power of the Dead Over the Living in Poe Edgar Allan Poe experienced a lot of death throughout his life, many of his loved ones had slow and painful deaths as he looked on helplessly. These experiences and his feelings of uncertainty are mirrored in his writing, in Fall of the House of Usher and in Berenice.

In Fall of the House of Usher, the narrator receives a message from an old friend from boyhood, Roderick, asking him to come to his home because he is very sick and wants to see his friend again before he dies. When the narrator goes to his Roderick’s house he is reminded that his friend comes from a very rich, old family that goes in a direct line of descent. His friend lives in the family’s old mansion with

Roderick and the narrator spend some time together until Roderick informs him that Madeline has died. The men avoided burying Madeline until she was declared dead by doctors, because she had an illness causing catatonic fits, but they finally put her in a coffin in a sealed basement. While they were laying her in the coffin, Roderick told the narrator that he and Madeline had always shared a telepathic twin power. Towards the end of the story, Roderick becomes more anxious and uneasy and unable to sleep, the narrator reads Roderick a story foreshadowing the events about to come. Roderick tells his friend that he can hear Madeline trying to escape and he is terrified of her. Madeline escapes her tomb and runs into the room Roderick and the narrator are in, she rushes in and dies in Rodericks arms as he dies too. In Berenice, Egaeus has a disease called monomania, he lives in a gloomy mansion and spends most of his time in the library, where he was born and his mother had died. He had grown up with his lively cousin, Berenice. Berenice developed an illness which also caused catatonic fits, like Madeline in Fall of the House of Usher. Egaeus’ monomania causes him to develop

The rising action in Fall of the House of Usher is finding out that Madeline has “died” and encasing her in the basement, while the climax of the story is Madeline and Roderick’s actual deaths. In Berenice, the climax of the story is Berenice “dying.” In Fall of the House of Usher, Roderick has made the decision to secure his sister in her coffin in their basement, even though he knows she may actually be dead. He seems to be dealing with his decision for several days until he realizes Madeline is fighting for a way out of her coffin, and he knows he will have to face her and the repercussions of what he thought was a permanent solution to his problem. “His head had dropped upon his breast—yet I knew that he was not asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught a glance of it in profile. The motion of his body, too, was at variance with this idea—for he rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and uniform sway.” (Poe, 23) Roderick is behaving this way because he knows his sister has returned from what would have been her final resting place. In Berenice, Egaeus’ describes his cousin in their younger years as “...agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy…” with “gorgeous yet fantastic beauty.” (Poe) However, as they grow she is struck by an illness, seizing her being in every way, “the spirit of change swept over her, pervading her mind, her habits, and her