88) The now apprehensive narrator continues to the house to meet his boyhood friend, Roderick, whom he has not seen in many years. He is ushered through the house by the valet to Roderick’s studio. As he sits, he observes Roderick closely.Roderick has changed dramatically in such a short period of time. Yet, at the same time the narrator notes these changes, he also is reminded of the remarkable, unfaded character of Roderick’s face. His face is such a contrast of remembered features, altered to so great a degree. Usher’s face has a generally decayed aspect, like the house itself, but especially noticeable are his large and luminous eyes and his hair ‘of more than web-like softness and tenuity.’ This tangled, ‘web-like,’ ‘silken hair,’ of a ‘wild gossamer texture,’ thus imagistically merges the facelike structure of the house with Usher’s face, the ‘arabesque expression’ of which the narrator cannot ‘connect with any idea of simple humanity. (Thompson 93)Maurice Beebe, emphasizes the physical similarity of the house with Roderick: The ‘wild inconsistency’ between the house’s ‘perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones’ is the ‘inconsistency’ which arises from Roderick’s ‘feeble and futile struggle to overcome an habitual trepidancy.’ The crack in the building corresponds to Roderick’s struggle against insanity, his effort to maintain his composure against what may be called the ‘kingdom of inorganization. (153) David Herbert Lawrence goes so far as to explain: “. . .it is no surprise to find that the Usher mansion has ‘vacant eye-like windows,’ and that there are mysterious physical sympathies between Roderick Usher and the house in which he dwells. The House of Usher is, in allegorical fact, the physical body...
