What Does The Haunted Palace Symbolize In The Fall Of The House Of Usher

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Mental illness, incest, pure horror, and maybe even vampires, “The Fall of the House of Usher” has WORD symbolism and metaphors that can be hard to decipher. The symbolism in his stories reflects his horrific past in a unique way for each piece. By using imagery and symbolism in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe creates very controversial topics to be discussed by the reader such as what Poe meant with the imagery he used to describe the appearance of The House of Usher, Roderick and Madeline's supposed mental illness, and "The Haunted Palace". As previously stated, Poe uses symbolism to show the house's relationship with Roderick's mental illness, but more importantly he uses it again in "The Haunted Palace". "The Haunted Palace" is a song that Roderick writes in "The Fall of the House of Usher". It contains a very elaborate story of how a ruler, Thought's, beautiful palace is destroyed by regret and the palace which was once a place full of love and happiness has changed and is now full of death and despair. The poem shows the transformation in saying: And all with pearl and ruby glowing Was fair palace door, Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing …show more content…

Throughout the song, the readers hear of a golden and glorious palace that is tenanted by angels and has spirits whose job as solely to sing, but then evil spirits come into it and destroy the palace. The palace in this song represents a human head which is having a joyous life then ends up corrupted by human logic. As seen in the above quotation, the ruler is described as "And all with pearl and ruby glowing" in which pearl represents teeth and ruby represents lips. That also leads to the next line, where “A fair palace door” which represents a mouth is constantly singing and full of life. The song also says that the ruler's name is Thought which leads to more evidence of this being about a mental struggle that the speaker is having. Later in the song it