The House of Usher--A Brief Re-Telling

None of Poe's protagonists in these tales of hallucination and death seems able either to understand or to come to grips with his anima figure. Childish in their attitude, lopsided in personality, dependent on their own projections of the feminine principle to carry them through life, they are cut off and isolated from the world. In "The Fall of the House of Usher" , the reader immediately is immersed in an oppressive leaden atmosphere. The entire opening scene is steeped in blackness and melancholy. "the depressing influence of fear", Huysmans suggested, "acting on the will, like those anesthetics that paralyze sensibility and that curator that annihilates the nervous elements of motion," have taken over. Ruin and death permeate the atmosphere and proceedings. (Knapp., p. 134)

The narrator approaches a fetid pool of water beyond which he receives his first glimpse of the House of Usher. He is going there to comfort an old school buddy, Roderick Usher, who has fallen into a mental depression. Roderick is hoping the narrator's presence will heal and cheer him. The narrator, compelled by the heart felt plea of Roderick, is already skittish about the house. Desiring to correct his subjective fantasies, he feels another vantage point would be helpful, so he looks at the reversed image of the house within the water of the pool. His feelings are not allayed but intensified as he gazes into the water. The contours of his own countenance are superimposed upon the house, giving it the appearance of face.

From his arrival at the house to the end of the tale, the narrator experiences a heightening of fear, dread and doom associated with the mansion and its occupants. He finds Roderick in the extremity of nervous agitation, incapable of tolerating sound, harsh light, able to eat only the blandest food. Usher's disease may be clinically authenticated. A case in point is that of Gustav T. Fechener (1801-87) a German minister and experimental physicist who underwent an emotional collapse. His sickness was diagnosed as a neurotic depression with hypochondriacal symptoms complicated by a lesion of the retina. During his illness Fechner lived in isolation in a darkened room; even the walls were painted black. He was unable to tolerate most foods and had reached an almost life-death condition, when by some strange occurrence, a friend of the family had a dream in which she was told how and what to feed Fechener. His improvement progressed from that time on, and he was able to continue his active life. He did, however, change his profession from physicist to natural philosopher.

The narrator's old friend introduces him to the intellectual world of esoteric books,manuals of medieval torture, abstract aesthetics, and poetry set to guitar. In the midst of this overview, the frail frame of Madeline Usher glides soundlessly through the room. In her presence, Roderick is disturbed. Dreading her death as a great misfortune that would leave him the last of the Ushers, Roderick falls into depression. He explains, what he considers, the nature and origin of his calamity. He reveals that the Usher's, once a great family, have degenerated due to "collateral issue", that is - inter-breeding. This, in addition to Roderick's strange theory that the physical nature of the house possesses its occupants, causing them to crumble in the same manner as the masonry, is the root cause of his dilemma.

Several days pass as the men become reacquainted, whiling their time away reading, examining art and discussing topics of interest. One day Roderick curtly declares that Madeline has passed on. He requests that the narrator and himself ensconce her corpse in an underground vault, which incidentally is directly beneath his sleeping compartment, in order to prevent it from being victimized by grave robbers. The narrator sees nothing wrong in this and lends a hand. While placing Madeline in an airless, lightless vault the narrator notices that the sister and brother are identical twins. Screwing the coffin down and securing the huge iron door which is bolted from the outside the men retreat upstairs.

That evening a storm, accompanied by strange lights and fog, engulfs the mansion. In order to settle Roderick's mind, the narrator reads an old Medieval tale ,The Strange Trist of Sir Lancelot Canning. While reading the tale several synchronistic events occur. From within the mansion the narrator hears what appears to parallel the story's unfolding plot. The dropping of shields, the scraping of opened doors and finally the shriek of a dragon. Roderick has become catatonic and stares vacantly as the sounds become more apparent.

Simultaneous, with the slaying of a dragon in the story both Roderick and the narrator witness the drawing open of the doors to the library - Roderick in panic declares that in their impatience they have unwittingly buried his sister alive. As Usher cries out to the narrator, Madeline Usher's frail, blood stained body appears in the door. She falls on Roderick dragging him to the floor dead. The narrator, witness to all this, quickly flees the House of Usher, looking back only long enough to watch it light up and sink in the mud - turning to run he glances into the tarn where the House of Usher sinks forever out of sight.

(Click here for the extended tale).