Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Book Reports A Personal interpratation of The Fall of the House of Usher By Edgar Allan Poe A Personal interpratation of The Fall of the House of Usher By Edgar Allan Poe A Personal Interpratation Of The Fall Of The House Of Usher By Edgar Allan Poe The Fall of the House of Usher: A Personal Interpretation If there is one thing that is widely agreed upon in regards to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” it is surely the fact that the short story is one of the greatest ever written. The very words that Poe selects and the manner in which he pieced them was nothing short of phenomenal. This however, is pretty much all that people are able to agree upon. Indeed, to almost everyone who reads it sees the story as great, but for different reasons. In a way the tale can be compared to a psychiatrist’s inkblots. While everyone may be looking at the same picture, they all see different things. What mainly gives “The Fall of the House of Usher” this quality is the double meanings and symbols Poe seems to use throughout. We encounter such a double meaning almost immediately, the title. While it is obvious that Poe is referring to the building itself, the reader must also realize that he is more importantly referring to the Usher family. In Poe’s time, a family was often referred to as a house; for instance my family would be called the house of Gilliam. This relationship is important when reading the opening paragraph of the tale. The first reason that the paragraph is successful is the fact that it sets the key element of the story, the tone. When reading the introduction, the narrator’s description of the house paints a crystal clear image in one’s mind of horror, dread, death, and decay. The reader is overwhelmed with a sense of evil. However, if one was to read deeper than what is on the surface, they may be surprised. As I mentioned earlier, in Poe’s time a family was often referred to as a house. Keeping this in mind while reading the opening paragraphs, the reader can very well wonder if our narrator is referring to the building in which the Ushers live in or the family that occupies it. “The discoloration of the ages had been great, minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No part of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones.” The usher family was an ancient one, and the narrator makes it clear that the years have taken a toll on them. The narrator could easily be referring to this as a “discoloration.” Fungi and vines can wreak havoc on a building; it can grow into the nooks and crannies of a structure and break it apart. The fungi could quite easily represent the very illness that plaques Roderick and Madeline, slowly destroying his mental and her physical states. The Usher clan as the narrator put it, “in the direct line of descent.” The line that tells us there has been no extraordinary dilapidation could be referring to the Usher’s extremely pure bloodline. The “there seemed to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts and the crumbling of the individual stones could easily be a reference to Roderick and Madeline. They are the perfect adaptation of that pure bloodline, yet they are “crumbling” or falling apart. These and many other clues in the text indicate that when our narrator refers to the house and its human characteristics he is also referring to the family that occupies it at the same time. While he is most likely directly referring to the building in these opening lines, the indirect similarities and references are there for a reason. They let us know that the building and its dwellers are one, and are likely to even share the same soul. The relationship between Roderick and Madeline Usher is essential to the understanding of the tale. It becomes obvious that the two were most likely lovers when the narrator reveals that the Usher family was one that practiced incest. However what is not blatantly apparent is the fact the Poe seems to suggest as though the two were actually one. Take their illnesses for instance, Roderick’s mind is slowly falling apart, he is driven insane by his heightened senses. He can speak of things only that are evil and dreadful; at no point in the story did he ever convey a happy thought (accept for the beginning of his poem, which had a gothic ending). His sister on the other hand seems to suffer from a physical ailment, or “a gradual wasting away of the person” as her brother put it. Roderick even went as far as to say “much of the particular gloom which affected him could be traced to a more palpable origin -to the severe and long continued illness-indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution- of a tenderly beloved sister.” This line seems to suggest that Roderick’s well being depends on that of his sister, this is the first hint that one can not survive without the other. So why then one may ask, would he bury his sister prematurely, and if his claims of hearing her try to break free were true, why would he not set her free. I think this question can best be answered by reflecting on Roderick’s painting. The picture was of a long tunnel with low walls, which had no access point for light. Yet for some reason “a flood of intense rolled throughout and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate splendor.” As the reader continues with the tale he may notice the more then slight resemblance between the tunnel in Roderick’s painting and the tomb in which he buries his sister. Rays of light have always been associated with life and the heavens. In Roderick’s mind, the house the he and his ancestors have lived in for so many years may seem like a part of his family, a mother even. He could even see the tomb that he placed his sister in as the mother’s womb, which would explain the ambiance of light in the painting, and why he did place her in this tomb; in hopes that the house would breath new life into her, which in turn would also relieve his malady. It is also possible that in his desolate mental state that he sees Madeline’s trying to break free as a natural occurrence, such as when a child kicks in a mother’s womb. However this was all most likely a delusion of Roderick’s. He himself stated that his twin suffered from “frequent although transient affection’s of a particularly cataleptically character. As defined by The Oxford Desk Dictionary transient means temporary; passing shortly, and cataleptic as a trance or seizure accompanied by unconsciousness and stiffness of the body. Roderick most likely mistook one of her unconscious trances as her death, and buried her prematurely. When she awoke, she broke the wooden planks of her coffin (which surely was not as solid as those made today). Also many years ago the fear of being buried prematurely was popular, rich families (such as the Ushers) even had alarms and door releases installed in their tombs just in case such a mistake ever took place. Since it unlikely for Madeline to rip her way through a steel door, she was probably fortunate enough to have such a mechanism installed on her tomb door, and thus was able to make her escape. The next two scenes can again be interpratated in a few different ways. When Madeline enters the narrator’s room we are given the line “bore him to the floor a corpse. This can be taken a few different ways. Did she kill Roderick? Did she die in his arms (surely a fear that he anticipated)? Or did the die in each other’s arms? Because of Poe’s frequent suggestions that the two were actually one and they needed each other to live the last interpretation is most likely the correct one. The final scene in which the narrator flees the building in fear of his life and probably his sanity as well can be viewed two different ways. The first one is of course the literal one. However if you think about it as in the beginning of the story the narrator may very well be referring to the family and the destruction that follows as the house of Usher. This makes a little more sense then the spontaneous combustion of a building. No matter what your interpretation of “The Fall of the House of Usher” may be, it is almost impossible to deny it as one of the greatest short stories ever written. It stands as one of the many great testaments to the literary genius of Edgar Allan Poe and helps affirm his high ranking of American history. Bibliography: Work Cited Thompson, G.R. “Edgar Allan Poe.” Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol.3. Detroit: Gale Research, 1979 Dameron, J. Lasley, and Robert D. Jacobs. “Edgar Allan Poe.” Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 59. Detroit: Gale Research, 1979 Harris, Laurie Lanzen and Sheila Fitzgerald eds. Short Story Criticism: Excerpts From the Works of Short Fiction Writers. Vol.1. Detroit: Gale Research, 1988 Word Count: 1580
Copyright © 2005 College Term Papers, INC All Rights Reserved.