loom, and were both excessively reserved. The poem “Alone” by Edgar Allan Poe best describes the fear of loneliness the narrator experiences, “And all I loved - I loved alone -. Then - in my childhood, in the dawn. Of a most stormy life - was drawn.” Although the narrator knows little about Roderick he refers to him as his best friend to cope with his fear of being alone. He is intrigued with the Ushers family history and is drawn towards him for the sake of excitement and adventure. Roderick introduces the narrator into the world he has created while being secluded inside the mansion for years. He shares that the books he reads are about death, magic, medieval torture, and poetry. All of these things show that Roderick is unstable and obsessed with death. As they become reacquainted several days pass he informs the narrator that Madeline has passed on. Madeline’s death leaves Roderick the last of the Ushers and in great depression. Roderick and the narrator place her body in a vault that “was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light; lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my own sleeping apartment.”(Poe 33) Alvarado, 4 The narrator is not at all concerned with the location of her body and goes along with Roderick’s request. Edgar Allan Poe’s House of Usher writes it is, “Not altogether insignificant that Madeline’s burial chamber is located beneath what the narrator describes as, “my own sleeping compartment”. The narrator mentions a dream earlier concerning his perceptions of the house. Could the whole experience have been a dream?” To settle Roderick’s mind the narrators reads him a story the “MadTrist” of Sir Launcelot Canning that lets all the madness loose. As he readsthe story, “No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than as if a shield of ...
