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Other scholars pointed to the work as an embodiment of Poe’s doctrine of l’art pour l’art (“art for art’s sake”), which held that art needs no moral, political, or didactic justification. An interpretation which has more potential, then, is the idea that the ‘house of Usher’ is a symbol of the mind, and it is this analysis which has probably found the most favour with critics. The secret that is buried and then comes to light (represented by Madeline) is never revealed. The symbol which represents the secret – Madeline herself – is hidden away by Roderick, but that symbol returns, coming to light at the end of the story and (in good Gothic fashion) destroying the family for good.
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For example, the narrator observes that the mansion is a reflection in the shallow pool or tarn that joins the front of the house. The house is doubled through its image in the tarn; however, the image is upside down, which characterizes the relationship between Madeline and Roderick. When his children die one after the other, Roderick discovers that he has CADASIL, the disease that killed his mother. The deaths make Madeline meet Verna, who had left an address for the siblings. She is then haunted by the ticking sound of her heart technology until she stabs herself to death in front of her father. After Victorine’s death, Roderick is left with his two legitimate children, who were born to his first wife, Annabel.
Further reading
During the reading, the narrator believes he hears strange noises coming from deep within the house. In the story, Ethelred moves the dragon’s corpse to obtain an enchanted shield. When the shield clangs to the ground in the story, the narrator hears a similar sound somewhere in the house.
Edgar Allan Poe
This traveler, also the first-person narrator and boyhood friend of Roderick Usher, the owner of the house, has arrived in response to a summons from Usher. Very soon we understand that, whatever else it may mean, the house is a metaphor for the Usher family itself and that if the house is seriously flawed, so are its occupants. Summoned to the House of Usher by a “wildly importunate letter,” which “gaveevidence of nervous agitation,” the first-person narrator goes to reside for atime with the writer of this letter, Roderick Usher.
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He immediately feels depression and fear when he sees themansion. He describes a childhood friendship with the owner, Roderick Usher.Roderick had requested the narrator’s company during his convalescence from anillness. The narrator reflects on the once-great Usher family and that theyhave only one surviving direct line of descendants, comparing the beautiful butcrumbling house to the family living inside. In the story “The Fall of the House of Usher,” strangely mingles the real with the fictional.
However, when Madeline comes out from the tomb, she possesses more power in the story and counteracts the weak, immobile, and nervous disposition of her brother. The story deals with the family that is so remote and isolated from the world that they have developed their own non-existing barriers to interact with the world outside. The house of Usher has its own reality and is governed by its own rules, with people having no interest in others.
Several days later, Roderick tells the narrator that Madeline has died, and they lay her to rest in a vault. In the days that follow, the narrator starts to feel more uneasy in the house, and attributes his nervousness to the gloomy furniture in the room where he sleeps. The narrator begins to suspect that Roderick is harbouring some dark secret. Inspired by the work of Edgar Allan Poe, House of Usher traces the downfall of the uber-wealthy Usher family and their corrupt drug company, Fortunato Pharmaceuticals. The story centers on Usher family patriarch and Fortunato CEO Roderick (Bruce Greenwood), who, as the show begins, calls up his longtime rival, assistant U.S. attorney C. His behavior becomes even more erratic and distracted, and it begins to affect the narrator’s own mental state.
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Hestates that the house has moulded generations of the Usher family and hascaused his current state. Roderick decides to keep his sister preserved in ahouse vault before moving her to the isolated family cemetery. He soon abandonshis former hobbies, and the narrator observes that Roderick is beginning tolose his mind.
A Summary and Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’
This extreme isolation makes the family closer and closes to the extent that they become inexplicable to the outside world. Roderick contacted him when he was suffering from emotional and mental distress. He does not know much about the house of Usher and is the first outsider to visit the house in many years. The narrator has visited the house because Roderick Usher has sent him a letter that sincerely asks him to give him company. In the letter, Roderick has mentioned that he has been physically and emotionally ill due to which the narrator has rushed to help his friend.
Roderick’s wife, Annabel, who was a good woman, realized that her husband is a greedy man who has no qualms about getting his hands dirty and left him. When their children got a little older, Roderick took them away from her by enticing them with his wealth, and Annabel died. Napoleon, a game developer who is a drug addict, is the third one to go. He adopts a cat to replace his boyfriend’s cat, which he found dead after one of his drug trips.
With this foreboding introduction, we enter the interior through a Gothic portal with the narrator. With him we encounter Roderick Usher, who has changed drastically since last the narrator saw him. We learn, too, that his twin sister, Madeline, a neurasthenic woman like her brother, is subject to catatonic trances. These two characters, like the house, are woefully, irretrievably flawed. The suspense continues to climb as we go deeper into the dark house and, with the narrator, attempt to fathom Roderick’s malady. On a stormy autumn (with an implied pun on the word fall?) evening, a traveler—an outsider, like the reader—rides up to the Usher mansion.
In exchange for this protection, both Roderick and Madeline had to consent to the bargain that at the end of Roderick's life, just before he was fated to die anyway, his entire bloodline would die with him. Roderick and Madeline would also have to die at the same time, leaving this world the same way they came into it. The siblings agreed to the deal, left the bar, and soon after became convinced that the whole thing had been a shared delusion. From the start of the first episode of The Fall of the House of Usher, we know that all of Roderick Usher's children are dead. It's the how and the why of their deaths that plays out over the course of Mike Flanagan's new horror anthology series, now streaming on Netflix.
Usher is suffering from a physical and psychological illness and hopes his friend’s presence will help him recover. The narrator has not seen Usher in years and is somewhat perplexed by the letter, nevertheless, he decides to honor his friend’s request. The door opens and Madeline stands with blood on her robes, trembling. Shecries out and falls on her brother, and both die as she drags him to the floorwith her.
Hezekiah Usher House could provide a source of inspiration for Poe’s story. The sources indicate that the owner of the house caught a sailor and his young wife in the house and entombed them in their place of trysting. In 1830, when the house was torn down, two bodies were found in the cellar cavity.
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