Edgar Alan Poe's The Fall Of House Of Usher

Edgar Alan Poe is an American writer, who is best known for his fondness for macabre, dualism of the world, mysterious atmosphere and incomprehensible events. He also likes to put very complicated and complex characters into his stories. In The fall of house of Usher Poe introduce us to Roderick Usher, one the main characters in the story. Roderick along with his twin sister Madeline are the last standing descendants of the Ushers. The family was prestigious and rather a wealthy one, but some of its members suffered from some kind of mental diseases. Also Madeline suffered from an unexplainable illness.
Roderick is totally isolated from the world. He does not go out, he does not like the light and he cannot stand the smell of the flowers. He buried himself in his creepy house, abandoning himself in grief.
At the beginning, Roderick, feeling that he is suffering from mental disorder, wrote a letter to his friend from childhood in
order to ask for help and comfort. He did not give himself over to despair. He wanted somebody to help him, but the situation changed dramatically later.
Roderick had some features that could describe him as a romantic hero. He was driven by his heart, not knowledge. He was also an artist. He played guitar and painted. There is also one other matter that is worth thinking it over. A romantic hero had always experienced a feeling of a huge, passionate love, but because of Roderick’s isolation we can assume that his sister was the only woman he did love. Maybe it was not only a brotherly love, more like an incestuous passion.
Roderick’s mental condition was getting worse and worse as the story progresses. When Madeline died, Roderick had a feeling that he cannot let her go. He did not want to bury her in the Usher’s family burial grounds, because they were distant from where he lived. Maybe Roderick did not want his sister to be so far away from him. Along with his friend, he decided to bury Madeline in a vault. From this moment on the situation got worse. Roderick seemed to fall completely into the madness. He almost lost contact with reality. The narrator noted this alarming mental condition:
“His ordinary manner had vanished.
His ordinary occupations were neglected or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue - but the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was labouring with some oppressive secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At times, again, I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness, for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his condition terrified -- that it infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive
superstitions”.
The one thing that is certain is that there was a strong, unexplainable and intangible bond between Roderick, his sister Madeline and the house. When the twins died, the house torn into parts and collapsed. Other important factor that influenced the self-destruction of the house was the appearance of Roderick’s friend. We can compare the house to the darkness and the outside world to the light. Roderick’s friend came from the outside world and brought light into the creepy, dark house and this disrupted the whole order of the dilapidated mansion. To sum up, Roderick Usher is a very complicated and complex personage. He is a perfect example to show what kind of character is typical in Poe’s stories, whose works may seem sometimes difficult to understand, but because of the fact that he added to the gothic tradition psychological elements, including description of abnormal states of mind, Poe is a noteworthy author