Repercussions Of Roderick's Mental State
Repercussions of Roderick’s Mental State
In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”, Roderick and Madeline Usher are quite clearly the product of a couple generations of inbreeding. Whether or not they’re engaged in incest themselves, there’s no proof, but they certainly pay the price for it. Madeline falls victim to physical afflictions, and Roderick to mental. Poe continuously references Roderick’s fragility of mind and the people around him suffer because of it.
Roderick demonstrates his mental vulnerability to the narrator as early as his letter requesting that he come stay at the Usher House. Regarding this strange and unsettling letter, the narrator says, “The MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation” (Poe 593). It is quite clear …show more content…
Madeline is somewhat elusive to the narrator for the majority of the story, for she pays no mind to him, and he says, “As he spoke, the lady Madeline (for she was so called) passed through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared” (Poe 600). Madeline suffers from a condition where she goes into a comatose state for extended periods of time. Roderick, in a very disturbed state of mind, mistakes one of her cataleptic episodes with death, and asks the narrator to help him bury her. Later that night, much to the narrator’s horror, Roderick reveals that they buried Madeline alive, and the sounds they were hearing was Madeline trying to escape her imprisonment (whether or not this was purposeful is debatable). Ultimately, this false burial leads to Madeline’s actual death, but before she dies, she comes into the room Roderick and the narrator are in and, quite literally, frightens Roderick to death. The narrator flees directly after, and the House of Usher collapses in on itself, to be swallowed by the tarn.
Madeline and the narrator both suffer greatly at the hands of Roderick’s illness. Not only does it lead to Madeline’s somewhat premature demise, but the narrator is forced to cope with the guilt of burying someone alive, the trauma of seeing two childhood friends die, and the horror of seeing a house (he was just inside) cave in with two, albeit dead, people
In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”, Roderick and Madeline Usher are quite clearly the product of a couple generations of inbreeding. Whether or not they’re engaged in incest themselves, there’s no proof, but they certainly pay the price for it. Madeline falls victim to physical afflictions, and Roderick to mental. Poe continuously references Roderick’s fragility of mind and the people around him suffer because of it.
Roderick demonstrates his mental vulnerability to the narrator as early as his letter requesting that he come stay at the Usher House. Regarding this strange and unsettling letter, the narrator says, “The MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation” (Poe 593). It is quite clear …show more content…
Madeline is somewhat elusive to the narrator for the majority of the story, for she pays no mind to him, and he says, “As he spoke, the lady Madeline (for she was so called) passed through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared” (Poe 600). Madeline suffers from a condition where she goes into a comatose state for extended periods of time. Roderick, in a very disturbed state of mind, mistakes one of her cataleptic episodes with death, and asks the narrator to help him bury her. Later that night, much to the narrator’s horror, Roderick reveals that they buried Madeline alive, and the sounds they were hearing was Madeline trying to escape her imprisonment (whether or not this was purposeful is debatable). Ultimately, this false burial leads to Madeline’s actual death, but before she dies, she comes into the room Roderick and the narrator are in and, quite literally, frightens Roderick to death. The narrator flees directly after, and the House of Usher collapses in on itself, to be swallowed by the tarn.
Madeline and the narrator both suffer greatly at the hands of Roderick’s illness. Not only does it lead to Madeline’s somewhat premature demise, but the narrator is forced to cope with the guilt of burying someone alive, the trauma of seeing two childhood friends die, and the horror of seeing a house (he was just inside) cave in with two, albeit dead, people