r also automatically turns away from an unpleasant truth by reasoning or by redirecting his focus. When he and Roderick go down to bury Madeline, he speculates that she may not be completely dead yet. Studying her face, he notes “the mockery of faint blush upon the bosom and the face”(469). Yet, rather than mentioning his suspicion to his friend, he remains silent and continues the burial. Furthermore, when Roderick claims that there are ghosts in the house, the narrator feels fear too, but he dismisses the fear by attributing it to natural causes. He tells Roderick that “the appearances are merely not uncommon”(470). In the end, this fear finally overcomes him. Although the narrator had been able to suppress his fears, Lady Madeline’s reappearance runs him out of the house. The three characters are unique people with distinct characters, but the same type of “mental disorder” ties them together. All of them suffer from insanity, yet each responds differently. Lady Madeline seems to accept the fact that she is insane and continues her life with that knowledge. Roderick Usher appears to realize his mental state, and struggles to hold on to his sanity. The narrator, who is slowly contracting the disease, tries to deny what he sees, hears, and senses. He, in the end, escapes from the illness because he flees form the house. Poe uses the imagery and the life-like characteristics of an otherwise decaying house as a device for giving the house a supernatural atmosphere. For example, from the very beginning of the story, the reader can tell that there is something unusual and almost supernatural about the building. As the narrator approaches the home of his long-time friend, Roderick Usher, he refers to the house as the “melancholy House of Usher”(461). Upon looking at the building, he even describes the feeling he has as “a sense of insufferable gloom pervading my spirit”(4...
