Mental Illness in The Fall of the House of Usher Essay

Comparing Poe and the Fall of the House of Usher

Edgar Allen Poe has been recognized as one of the greatest American writers for many years. His dark and eerie tales are like no others. Many say that his darkness comes from his own life and the tragedies he had gone through. However, recent claims say that Poes ideas were created in a mind that suffered from a mental illness, Paranoid Schizophrenia. This claim is clearly evident when looking at his short story: The Fall of the House of Usher. Roderick Usher, the main character, suffers from a mental illness himself which closely resembles some of the symptoms of a schizophrenic. Could Poe be trying to send a message about himself in the form of a character, Roderick Usher, or maybe he is trying to show how a paranoid schizophrenic mind works? If he did suffer from a mental illness like paranoid schizophrenia, this story can be looked at from an entirely new perspective.

The fall of the House of Usher is about a man, Roderick Usher, who lives with his sister in an old family mansion. Both the brother and sister are both withering away as time passes. Roderick feels the need to talk to his old childhood friend, Poe (who is also the narrator), before he passes. Roderick wrote to the narrator of a mental disorder which oppressed him (Poe 150). This gives a first impression of the schizophrenia which was mentioned. Poe tells in great detail how the house looks, feels, and sounds upon his arrival. Further on Poe is describing the house but then stops and looks at it from a different perspective and then begins to describe it from that viewpoint. Roderick sister, Madeline, also suffers from a mental illness which is described in the story as apathy, wasting away, and transient affections of a partially cataleptical character (153). Today these symptoms may pertain to a person suffering from Paranoid Schizophrenia, or other mental illnesses.

Not only do the characters in the story seem to suffer from a similar mental illness that Poe may have suffered from, but they also deal with similar tragedies. No one in the Usher family is alive besides his dying sister and Roderick himself. In Poes lifetime he constantly had to deal with death, his entire family had passed on and he was left with only his wife and his writing, where as Roderick is left with his sister and his home. Also like Poes wife, Madeline dies before her loved one, Roderick, and he is forced to burry her in the family tomb. Thus causing his mental state to worsen with time, but that is how the story is looked at just from the writing, what if it was meant to be looked at differently.

Once learning that Poe may have been mentally ill while writing he is looked at astonishingly different, along with his writing. His story can be completely turned around when looking at it from a schizophrenic point of view. Who knows what is supposed to be really happening and what isnt real at all, what was the imaginary sound (158) Roderick was rocking back and forth to? This can also lead to new questioning of Poes mental state. For instance, did he only suffer from Schizophrenia, or could there be more like multiple personality disorder, or post traumatic stress disorder. There could be many things wrong that we may have not known that Poe wanted to tell through his writing

Poes darkness could have came from many different reasons, but one thing is clear, he involves his own life stories and events to shape the events, characters, and plots in his world famous writings. Whether or not it is found that he in fact was mentally ill after claims like these the stories can be looked at and read from different point of views and have vastly different symbols and meanings. Even if it is later found out that Poe did suffer from multiple mental disorders and that was the reason for his darkness it will only build his name up more in American Literature. It may never be clear what his writings represented, his life as a dark empty soul or his life as a wildly confused paranoid schizophrenic, or maybe he did not mean for them to represent anything. It will be clear however, that Poe is one of the greatest writers of America.