The Fall of House of Usher
Author: E. A. Poe
Genre: Gothic short story
Date of publication: 1839
Plot: The story begins with the unnamed narrator arriving at the house of his friend, Roderick Usher, having
received a letter from him in a distant part of the country complaining of an
illness and asking for his help. As he arrives, the narrator notes a thin crack
extending from the roof, down the front of the building and into the adjacent
lake.
Although Poe wrote this short story before the invention of
modern psychological science, Roderick's condition can be described according
to its terminology. It includes a form of sensory overload known as hyperesthesia (hypersensitivity
to textures, light, sounds, smells and tastes), hypochondria (an excessive
preoccupation or worry about having a serious illness) and acute anxiety. It is revealed that Roderick's twin sister, Madeline, is also
ill and falls into cataleptic, deathlike trances. The narrator is impressed with Roderick's
paintings, and attempts to cheer him by reading with him and listening to his
improvised musical compositions on the guitar. Roderick sings "The Haunted Palace", then tells the narrator that he believes the house he
lives in to be alive, and that this sentience arises from the arrangement of
the masonry and vegetation surrounding it.
Roderick later informs the narrator that his sister has died and
insists that she be entombed for two weeks in the family tomb located in the house before being
permanently buried. The narrator helps Roderick put the body in the tomb, and
he notes that Madeline has rosy cheeks, as some do after death. They inter her,
but over the next week both Roderick and the narrator find themselves becoming
increasingly agitated for no apparent reason. A storm begins. Roderick comes to
the narrator's bedroom, which is situated directly above the vault, and throws
open his window to the storm. He notices that the tarn surrounding the
house seems to glow in the dark, as it glowed in Roderick Usher's paintings, although there is
no lightning.
The narrator attempts to calm Roderick by reading aloud The Mad Tryst, a novel involving a knight named Ethelred who
breaks into a hermit's dwelling in an attempt to escape an approaching storm, only
to find a palace of gold guarded by a dragon. He also finds, hanging on the wall, a shield of shining brass on which is written
a legend:
Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin;
With a stroke of his mace, Ethelred kills the dragon, who dies
with a piercing shriek, and proceeds to take the shield, which falls to the
floor with an unnerving clatter.
As the narrator reads of the knight's forcible entry into
the dwelling, cracking and ripping sounds are heard somewhere in the house.
When the dragon is described as shrieking as it dies, a shriek is heard, again
within the house. As he relates the shield falling from off the wall, a reverberation, metallic and hollow, can be heard.
Roderick becomes increasingly hysterical, and eventually exclaims that these
sounds are being made by his sister, who was in fact alive when she was
entombed. Additionally, Roderick somehow knew that she was alive. The bedroom
door is then blown open to reveal Madeline standing there. She falls on her
brother, and both land on the floor as corpses. The narrator then flees the
house, and, as he does so, notices a flash of moonlight behind him which causes
him to turn back, in time to see the moon shining through the suddenly widened
crack. As he watches, the House of Usher splits in two and the fragments sink
into the tarn.
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