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The Fall Of The House Of Usher Incest Analysis

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Written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1839, The Fall of the House of Usher, is one of the most important gothic stories in the American Literature. The story shows the virtuosity of Poe in “the creation of a psychological state of terror, loneliness and wickedness of his characters” (Howarth), and also the excellence in the using of figurative speech to create parallelism between the characters and the rest of the elements in the story. The aim of this paper is to examine how the incest instead of keeping a bloodline intact, eventually destroys an entire family generating its complete disappearance. In The Fall of the House of Usher incest is explored in a very subtle way. Traditionally “incest has been done by Royal or aristocratic families in order …show more content…

As he was approaching the mansion he realizes that "there was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart" (FHU 3). The narrator manages to convey the feeling that Roderick is connected to the house, "brought upon the morale of his existence" (FHU 10). Poe creates an extreme parallelism with the house and Roderick, using as an example Roderick’s hair, "wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face" (FHU 8) and with the outside of the home “in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves “(FHU 6). Poe is concerned not only in describing the psychological effects suffered by the protagonists, but also the physical ones. The mansion is a very visual example of the degree of degradation suffered by Roderick. Eventually the house pushes people away, like it does incest. For centuries incest in the Usher family has been natural episode that has produced many of their relatives suffer from "a peculiar sensitivity temperament, through long ages" (FHU 5) due to a bad family decision in the way of living. “This kind of relationships went against the dogma of society” (Allison) and as a result has created "an atmosphere unique to themselves and their immediate vicinity which had no affinity with the air of heaven" (FHU

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Throughout the story, the connection between the end of the Usher family name and home is apparent. The narrator gives a statement about the family that provides a fact about the bloodline, “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 …” (414). The Usher family had always been isolated to itself, never marrying other lines into itself and possibly changing the name. This tradition weighs heavily when the Usher family ends up dwindling to the last two remaining twins, who both currently have failing health. The narrator also gives evidence to the connection between the family’s tradition and the home by stating, “... original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the “House of Usher” -an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion” (415).

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As well as when both of the last Usher twins died, the house had some symbolic connection to the twins and completely split into two. Whereas in paragraph 48,” While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened- there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind- the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight- my brain reeled as i saw the mighty walls rushing asunde- 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” . According to the quote the narrator was fleeing the Usher house after the twins died and the Usher

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His sister is his only heir, and his only chance to keep the family from dying out. His sister contracts a disease, thus causing Usher to become mad, as the story progresses slowly. Throughout the story, Edgar Allen Poe uses many forms of literary elements, such as images and descriptive words, to frighten the reader. A paradigm of this imagery is exhibited in paragraph 11 when Roderick Usher explains his mental illness to the narrator, and he confesses he’s not afraid of danger, “except in its absolute effect–in terror”, and how he has begun to question whether or not he should, “abandon life and reason together” because of his, “struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR. "

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Imagery in Decay Topic: How Poe uses Imagery to further the plot in The Fall of the House of Usher Tentative thesis: Through the use of imagery Edgar Allan Poe shows a decrepit, dying family; by portraying the decay of both the house and those who reside in it Poe sets up the final fate of the two main characters in his short story. Topic sentence 1: Throughout the short story Poe uses the landscape and the very trees to give the house a supernatural life and induce horror in the reader.

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In Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Fall of the House of Usher,”

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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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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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1669 Words | 7 Pages

“ The Fall of the House of Usher “ by Edgar Allan Poe is a short story about a man named Roderick Usher who initiates some events such as evoking his friend The Narrator as a protagonist to the dreadful mansion. The images such as the house and gothic ambience are used to reinforce the idea of giving the mystery to the reader. Edgar Allan Poe uses gothic elements to show how they affect the atmosphere and the characters. In the beginning , the gothic atmosphere of the house is indicated with terrifying images such as “ dull, dark and soundless ” that the feeling of horror vaccinated into reader by the thoughts of the narrator.

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that the stem of the Usher race . . . 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. (Poe 2) Despite the incestual means of their conception occurring in the past, resulting genetic defects oppress the Usher siblings Madeline and Roderick—both physically and mentally—well into the future. Although the narrator provides no physical description of Madeline Usher prior to her entombment, of her brother Roderick he reports deformed features in line with those of products of

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The physical house reflects the end of the Usher bloodline as it still stands on the edge of ruin, away from civilization. While the house itself is splitting due to the fissure that is tearing it apart, the twins are being torn apart by the disease that will soon take them. Ultimately, the house does fall to the “black and lurid tarn” (Poe 196) and the twins return to the ground having met the demise that they had been molded to by “preternatural interconnectedness” (Timmerman

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1822 Words | 8 Pages

This sets the reader up to know that something is off. The manor is beginning to fall apart just like Roderick’s sanity. Poe plays up the tension towards the end of the story, presenting the fear as it comes to a head. Madeline, Roderick’s twin sister, is entombed by her brother and the narrator after they believe her dead. She’s put in another tomb by Roderick’s insistence before arrangements to be given a proper burial.

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1208 Words | 5 Pages

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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1001 Words | 5 Pages

Furthermore, his belief was focused that one needs to participate in negative emotions to relieve the pain that he or she feels. Edgar Allan Poe creates a character in desperate need of aid in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” utilizing an aspect of art: music, to try and relieve Roderick of the pain he is dealing with a the solution to his suffering, but does not provide permanent relief. Art in “The Fall of the House of Usher” is structured to have Roderick arouse feelings of cheerfulness as he listens to music. For instance, his mental state was abnormal based on the narrator 's initial description, “He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable...could wear only garments of certain texture... flowers were oppressive...tortured by a faint light...and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror” (Poe 164).

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910 Words | 4 Pages

In “The Fall of the House of Usher” the tone gives off an eerie and bizarre feeling. This is similar to many of Poe’s other short stories but this piece the most. The tone is gloomy compared to “The Black Cat” that Poe has also written. The author starts off the story with immense details of the setting. The readers get a dark vibe from these details.

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In the “Fall of the House of Usher,” Roderick Usher prematurely buries his sister, Madeline Usher, because he thinks she has died from an unknown illness. Poe describes the burial as, “We replaced and screwed down the lid, and having secured the door of iron, made out the way with the toll…” (Poe 425). When Roderick bolted the iron lid upon his sister’s coffin, all trust that had previously been built between the two had been broken. In Poe’s life, after the burial of his wife and mother, he felt like he could never trust anyone as well.

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