Figures of speech in The Fall of the House of Usher, Book


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Figures of speech in The Fall of the House of Usher

Figures of speech in The Fall of the House of Usher Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, sets a tone that is dark, gloomy, and threatening. His inclusion of highly descriptive words and various forms of figurative language enhance the story’s evil nature, giving the house and its inhabitants eerie and “supernatural” qualities. Poe’s effective use of personification, symbolism, foreshadowing, and doubling create a morbid tale leading to, and ultimately causing, the fall of (the house of) Usher. Poe’s use of personification, the act of giving human characteristics to nonhuman things, assigns the house of Usher a powerful and evil presence. In the first paragraph of the story, the narrator describes the house as having “vacant eye-like windows”. He uses this description twice: first to show that the house has seen everything that has led to the fall of Usher, and again to emphasize the unidentified deception of the house. The narrator also describes his negative reaction to the house as a “hideous dropping off of the veil”. This statement describes what the house has revealed to the narrator, a disgusting and disappointing appearance. Poe also uses symbolism to compare the deterioration of the house to the fall of the Usher dynasty. In Roderick’s poem, “The Haunted Palace”, he describes the history of the house as it began as a strong and “radiant palace”, which over time became a decrepit, disease-ridden cage. The radiant palace represents the qualities of the Usher family, prosperous and resilient. Its later state, a condemned structure, represents the malevolence that has weakened the name “Usher”. In stanza III, the “luminous windows saw spirits moving musically”, the same two windows who, in stanza VI, become “red-litten windows, seeing vast forms that move fantastically to a discordant melody”. This weakening of the state of the house exemplifies the weakening of the Usher family, as there are only two members left, both of which are ill. Poe’s use of foreshadowing, the act of providing hints of future actions, in “The Fall of the House of Usher” foretells the “death” of Madeline Usher, along with her grandiose return. “She succumbed (as her brother told me at night with inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the destroyer”. The "destroyer" here is Roderick Usher, referring to the end of the story, when he buries his sister alive. Poe uses foreshadowing again when Roderick “stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight, in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls of the building”. By “preserving” Madeline’s corpse, Roderick leads the audience, as well as the narrator, to believe that she is still alive, thus giving her the ability to “rise from the dead”. A final form of figurative speech that Poe uses in “The Fall of the House of Usher” is doubling, where characters closely mimic each other to achieve a desired effect (in this case, the supernatural). As the narrator reads from a book, he hears similar noises to those he reads about: “…there came, indistinctly, to my ears, what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo of the very cracking and ripping sound which Sir Lancelot had so particularly described”. He refers to "cracking" and "ripping" to relate the condition if the house to the actions of Ethelred in the story. By doing this, Poe shows that the situations that have taken place in the story are directly correlated to those transpiring in the house. Poe’s use of figurative language in “The Fall of the House of Usher” gives life to an otherwise lifeless condition. The morbid and gloomy descriptions give the house, as well as it’s residents, a supernatural force. Poe’s effective usage of personification, symbolism, foreshadowing, and doubling cause the House of Usher, Madeline Usher, and her twin brother, Roderick Usher, to fall, assigning the title to Poe’s sinister tale, “The Fall of the House of Usher”. Bibliography:

Word Count: 644