The Fall of the House of Usher (Criticism)

Criticism

Carl Mowery

Carl Mowery hold a doctoral degree in rhetoric and composition and has taught at Southern Illinois University and Murray State University. In the following essay, he calls “The Fall of the House of Usher” a cerebral story with little physical action and emphasizes the many interpretations the story inspires.

Of the many short stories Edgar Allan Poe wrote, “The Fall of the House of Usher” is likely the most cerebral. There is little action to carry the plot, no trips into a catacomb, no descent into a whirlpool, no crimes to be solved. Everything that occurs is told by the narrator. Despite this lack of physical action, this gothic story has remained one of Poe’s most popular.

In “The Philosophy of Composition” Poe says, “If any literary work is too long to be read at one sitting, we must be content to dispense with the immensely important effect derivable from unity of impression.” Furthermore, he says, “It appears evident, then, that there is a distinct limit, as regards length, to all works of literary art — the limit of a single sitting — and that, (except in certain cases), it can never be properly overpassed.” Poe developed and refined the genre of the short story based on this philosophy. His effort was so successful that this genre was taken up by authors from France as well as from the United States. This type of fiction is still popular among writers of today.

But if brevity is the rule, then intensity of presentation must accompany it. It is important to note that a short story is more a “style” than a “length,” although most will have less than thirty pages of text. Short stories have few characters and the development of those characters will be limited and sharply focused.

When discussing a short story, or any piece of literature, several options may be considered. These include discussions of plot (the order of the events in the story), theme (what the story means), imagery (descriptions), dialogue (how and what characters say), historical context (its relation to events that occurred when it was written), characterization (who the characters are and how they got that way), literary techniques (the use of puns or binary opposites), and even the reliability of the narrator (is he or she telling the truth?), especially one who is a part of the story itself. In the following discussion two of these options will be examined: the reliability of the narrator and the use of binary opposites.

Since this story is a first person narrative (it is told by a narrator from his, and only his, point of view), we have to make a decision about his reliability. (Remember, the narrator of a story is a creation of the author, NOT the author himself.) During the first passages of the story, the narrator gives us clues to his reliability. As he looks at the house he says that what he sees is more like “the after-dream of a reveller upon opium.” Later, still looking at the house, he says, “Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned . . . the building.” Taking these two statements together, the narrator seems to be dreaming more than dealing with the reality before him. By his own admission, then, his narration must be scrutinized with great care.

Additionally, as the narrator contemplates the purpose of his trip and the mystery that is before him, he says, “What was it — I paused to think — what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluable.” Later he says, “. . .the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth.” Now, despite his admission that the mystery is beyond solution, he enters the house and attempts to solve it for the reader.

Another aspect of the narrator’s character which is cause for our concern is his shift from telling about Roderick’s madness to revealing his own madness. During their first meeting, he describes Roderick’s manner with the following words: incoherence, inconsistency, excessive nervous agitation, and “lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium.” Alone, these would not describe madness, but together they create the image of madness. Add to this Roderick’s inability to endure harsh sensations of any kind, and we have a more convincing picture of a madman.

The most compelling discussion of this madness comes in the final scene when Roderick comes to the narrator’s room. He enters the room, very agitated, and opens a window to the raging storm. As the narrator reads from the novel Mad Trist Roderick sits sullenly in a chair looking at the door. They both hear noises outside the door and Roderick speaks, “Said I not that my senses were acute?” Roderick explains that he has heard noises from the tomb for several days because of his acute hearing, and, like the narrator in “The Tell-tale Heart,” claims to hear Madeline’s heart beating. In one final cry, he screams, “Madman! I tell you she now stands without the door!” Madeline appears when the door is blown open. She lunges toward him and they fall to the floor, dead.

In these last scenes some of Roderick’s madness is transferred to the narrator. In the beginning the narrator thinks that what he sees is a dream, yet for the first several days he is at the house, he seems sane and in control of his senses. But after Madeline is entombed, the narrator becomes more agitated, just as Roderick does, and on the evening of the “seventh or eighth day” he is so uneasy that he cannot sleep. He is nervous and bewildered but he rationalizes that this is the result of sleeping in a room with drab and gloomy furniture. As the night progresses, he loses more and more control. “An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame.” The madness ascribed to Roderick is now afflicting the narrator.

As the final scene unfolds, the narrator also claims to hear the noises from the tomb. He dismisses this since the window was still open and there was a great deal of noise coming from the storm. As he reads more of the novel, Mad Trist, he stops abruptly and says, “I did actually hear. . . a low and apparently distant. . . sound.” By his own admission, the narrator reveals his own acuteness of hearing, an aspect that he uses to define madness in Roderick. Now, the narrator himself has succumbed to the same madness.

Binary opposition is the literary technique of setting two situations, persons, or objects in opposition to one another. Some examples are good and evil, light and dark, open and closed, near and far, or any set of items or concepts that can be reduced to two aspects. Of course, in most situations, things are more involved and complicated than this. But for our purposes, as well as for use in analysis of other literature, the use of binary opposites provides a focal point for discussion. But what is more important than just listing binary oppositions is determining the sense of conflict that the opposites create in the story. (Remember, if there is no conflict in a tale, there is no interest generated by it.)

In “The Fall of the House of Usher” one such binary opposition is the male/female opposition of Roderick and Madeline. This is especially intense knowing that they are twins. To demonstrate how this simple opposition works, imagine how different this story would be if Roderick’s twin had been another male character. The tension of Madeline’s passage through the corner of the apartment (possibly wearing a flowing gown, making her seem ghostlike), of her untimely death, and especially of her return from the tomb, would be lost. Additionally, since the two lived alone in the house, some critics believe that there was an incestuous relationship between them. If they had been brothers, this kind of sexual innuendo would have to include a homosexual relationship. For Poe, writing about that sort of relationship in the early 19th century would have been almost impossible. Therefore, the binary opposition of male/female served Poe well in creating tension and conflict.

Regarding the male/female conflict, we see certain aspects of Roderick that can be called “feminine.” His delicate features, his aptitude for the arts, and his frailty, all add up to a feminine character. Madeline, on the other hand, summons up strength to break the bonds of the tomb and to slay her brother in the final scene. These qualities might be seen as masculine. It is in the subtle shifts in our expectations of the character that tension and conflict are developed. (The aspects of feminine and masculine should not be misunderstood in sexist or sexual ways. Rather, the broadest stereotypical definition of these terms is desired.)

Another important binary opposition is the difference between sanity and madness. At first the narrator seems to be a sane person going to visit a friend who (he believes) is going mad. During the first meetings he describes Roderick’s personal and psychological weaknesses. Roderick is feeble, shaking, and his voice is unstable. He looks ashen and cadaverous. He is also described as “alternately vivacious and sullen” which is a description of manic depression, a mental illness.

In contrast, the narrator tells of his own calmness and control of the situation. He says that he tried to calm his friend as they painted, wrote poetry and read novels together. Even in the final scene, when Roderick appears to have lost all sanity, the narrator reads to him in a vain attempt to calm the storm in Roderick as well as the storm outside the window. (It is ironic that the narrator tries to soothe his “mad” friend by reading from a novel entitled MadTrist.)

It is the binary opposition of sanity/insanity that is the main focus of this tale. Many critics and students have wrestled with the issue of who is or is not insane in the story. This question rests upon the reliability of the narrator. If the narrator is fully reliable, then it is relatively easy to come to the conclusion that Roderick is mad. But if the narrator is not telling us the truth, or if the narrator is mad himself, then our conclusion will be somewhat less certain. The reader must grapple with the uncertainty along with the narrator. The issue of madness vs. sanity provided Poe with the grist for many of his stories, including “The Tell-tale Heart” and “The Black Cat.”

As we can see, there are a variety of approaches to short story interpretation. None is exclusive of another; they may all contribute to our understanding. We cannot see binary oppositions in Roderick and the narrator without also seeing their characters and character development. We cannot examine the narrator alone without looking at his surroundings. The most important thing in any analysis is to trust the text itself. Two different interpretations may arise from one passage, as long as both derive from the text. We canot make up things, but we may interpret them.

Source: Carl Mowery, for Short Stories for Students, Gale Research, 1997.

Compare & Contrast

• 1830s: Common belief dictates that odors from water — such as the tarn outside the Usher house — could cause mental illness of the type suffered by Roderick Usher. Few, if any, effective treatments were available for mental illness.
  Today: Better understanding of the physiological causes of mental illness and a variety of medical therapies result in a vast improvement in the way the mentally ill are treated.
• 1830s: The deceased are commonly laid in-state at home for several days. Funeral homes are rare; families prepare and bury their loved ones themselves.
  Today: Most people the in hospitals and wakes are most often held in churches or funeral homes.
• 1830s: Travel is difficult, slow, and sometimes dangerous. Railroads are in their infancy and most long distance travel is in horse-drawn wagons. It was not unusual for guests to stay several weeks or for an entire season when invited to a relative’s or friend’s house.
  Today: Improved transportation — including railroads, airplanes, and automobiles — makes longdistance travel easier, while advanced communications technology like telephones and e-mail makes long visits with family and friends less popular than in previous eras.

What Do I Read Next?

• Poe’s epic poem “The Raven,” published in 1845, centers on a young scholar who is emotionally tormented by a raven’s ominous repetition of the word “nevermore” in answer to his question about the probability of an afterlife with his deceased lover.
• Poe’s “Ligeia” is a long poem in which a husband narrates the story of his beautiful dead wife who returns from the grave and assumes the identity of his second wife.
• “Young Goodman Brown” is a story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a contemporary of Poe. Written in 1835, it concerns a newly married Puritan in New England who ventures forth one night against the wishes of his wife, Faith, and encounters several of his neighbors conducting satanic rituals in the woods.
• Stephen King’s novel The Shining (1977) tells how the evil forces in a remote resort hotel manipulate the alcoholic caretaker into attempting to murder his wife and child.
• The short story “The Shunned House” by H. P. Lovecraft centers on a house possessed by evil powers. The somewhat Gothic horror story was inspired by “The Fall of the House of Usher” and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables, in which a haunted house inflicts terror upon its inhabitants.