Analysis of The Fall of the House Usher Essay

The Fall of the House of Usher, by Edgar Allen Poe is his most popular short stories. It exudes his gothic style and emotional and mystical tone. The theme of the crumbling, haunted castle parallels with the destruction of Usher and his twin sisters existence. The house of Usher, itself refers to both to the actual structure and the family, playing a significant role in the story. In looking at "The Fall of the House of Usher," we will consider how Poe uses imagery to reveal character and we will find the decay of Usher is echoed in the decay of the house.

Poe gives direct reference to the house that foreshadows doom. The house is the first "character" introduced to the reader, personified as its windows being described as "eye-like. The fissure that develops in its side is symbolic of the decay of the Usher family and the house "dies" along with the two Usher siblings.

Poe represents an intimate connectivity between mind and body by making Roderick and Madeline Usher biological twins. For instance, when sickness arises in one sibling, it contagiously spreads to the other. Poe implies that the mysterious happenings, which move beyond biological means, also competently transmits physical illness.

A striking similitude between the brother and the sister now first arrested my attention; and Usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words from which I learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between them.

Poe suggests that the twin relationship involves not only physical likeness but also psychological communication. The narrator realizes that Roderick and Madeline are twins only after the sister is nearly dead. This realization embodies the fact that the walls of the Usher mansion have protected the family from outsiders up to the point of the narrators presence. When the narrator, as an outsider, discovers the similarity between Roderick and Madeline, he begins to invade a privileged space of family knowledge that ultimately is the cause of all ruins, concerning the house and the twins.