derick discuss his sister. While Roderick is describing Madeline’s ailment and his own fear of being left as the last descendant to the House of Usher, Madeline appears:“While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared. I regarded her with an utter astonishment not unmingled with dread—and yet I found it impossible to account for such feelings. A sensation of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed her retreating steps”(Poe 1161).Roderick explains that his sister is dying of a disease which the doctors are unable to diagnose. One of the symptoms of the disease is catalepsy. After the narrator’s first encounter with Madeline, she seems to give up her fight against the disease and takes to her bed. During the following days, Roderick paints a small picture which is described in the story in detail:“A small picture presented the interior of an immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and without interruption or device. Certain accessory points of the design served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch, or other artificial source of light, was discernible; yet a flood of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate splendour” (Poe 1162).When Madeline dies and Roderick decides to bury her within the house, the reader discovers that the picture Roderick painted in actuality is a picture of Madeline’s vault (Tate 385). After Madeline is interred in the downstairs vault, Roderick’s “ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and objectless step. The p...
