The Fall of the House of Usher Edgar Allan Poe wrote, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, using characterization, and imagery to depict fear, terror, and darkness on the human mind. Roderick and his twin sister, Madeline, are the last of the all time-honored House of Usher (Jacobs and Roberts, pg. 462). They are both suffering from rather strange illnesses, which may be attributed to the intermarriage of the family. Roderick suffers from “a morbid acuteness of the senses”(464), while Madeline’s illness is characterized by “ a settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent all though transient affections of a partly cataleptical character”(465) which caused her to lose consciousness and feeling. The body would eventually assume a deathlike rigidity. Roderick believes the house is controlling his condition. He calls on the narrator, a boyhood friend, in a last ditch effort to cheer his life up by giving him someone to communicate with. The narrator arrives to a house of gloom and darkness with decaying furniture. He immediately is afraid for his life and wonders how his friend can live in a house of such darkness. Several days pass and it is filled with art discussions, guitar playing, and literature reading, all in an effort to keep Roderick’s mind busy (465). The narrator and Roderick prematurely encoffined Madeline in a vault in hopes to alleviate his metal condition. She is either dead, in a coma, or a vampire; Poe allows the reader to make his own assumption. She is possibly a vampire because they bolt down the coffin hoping she will not escape. As some days pass his mental condition worsens related to the fear and terror of the noises coming from the vault. The narrator is unaware if the noises are coming from the coffin, but he believes they are all throughout the house. As they are reading literature in the study, there is a loud knock at the door; it is Made...
