Symbolism In The Fall Of The House Of Usher

The House of Usher falls, causing a fall to the House of Usher

Edgar Allen Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" is a chilling story written in the first person perspective through the eyes of a possibly crazed narrator. Part of the story's horror comes from the fact that the reader can never be entirely sure as to what is true and what is fiction. In any case, a main theme of the story is twin imagery. Many uses of identical traits exist in the story, like the similarities between the narrator and Roderick, or the fact that Roderick and Madeline are literal twins, but one pair of symbols stands out more clearly than the rest. In Edgar Allen Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" the house personifies the diseased, dying Usher family through
its description by the narrator, the supernatural acts encountered, and the house's physical condition.

Throughout the story the narrator describes everything in a dark, dismal, dour mood.
Everything about the house is dreary, all of the people are dreadful. The narrator starts his depressing spiel from the very beginning, when he's trotting up to the house upon his steed and he can only retell his feelings on the house as "a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded his spirit." (264) Then, upon the narrator and Roderick Usher first meeting, Roderick tells the narrator "I will perish." (268) Now, the narrator's uneasiness can work for Roderick or the house. The narrator's descriptions of the house usually end up applying to the Ushers, as well. He even describes his "view of the melancholy House of Usher" (264) when he first arrives, and is later "busied in earnest endeavors to alleviate the melancholy of his friend." (269) The narrator is also the first to point out to us the almost direct evidence of the house/family relation by "'The House of Usher'--an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry that used it, both the family and the family mansion."
(265)

Horror is our fear of the unknown. Roderick is convinced that he will surely perish "in some struggle with the grand phantasm, FEAR," (268) and, later, he does--or so we're told that he was a "victim to the terrors he had anticipated" (278). The supernatural acts in this story depend on the reliability, or even sanity of the narrator. Roderick admits to being very superstitious, in fact, he tells the narrator that the troubles are a result of "a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy." (268) Roderick believes he, the family, and the house is cursed. The narrator, however, takes a scientific standpoint toward anything that seems beyond the natural to Roderick. However, all of this still ties to relation. Madeline is said to have a strange disease, one that "had long baffled the skill of her physicians." (269) This rare catalepsy could cause her to lose all sensation and ability to move, rendering her outside body useless, pale, and obsolete yet she is still alive on the inside. This condition seems much like the narrator's observation of the house's "excessive antiquity" ( 265) in outer appearance, yet goes deeper to realize "the fabric gave little token of instability." (265)

The physical relationship between the Ushers and their mansion is the most obvious.
From the very beginning, the narrator personifies the mansion's features like humans with the "eye-like windows," (264) and clothing, "the dropping off of the veil." (264) The evidence of the "barely perceptible fissure" in the "zig-zag direction." (265) foreshadows the house's fate, while Madeline's physical illness and Roderick's mental and emotional illness foreshadow the end of the Usher family. The house has grown more dilapidated as the family has grown weaker, the climax of this, of course, comes at the end when the family of Usher is destroyed, the House of Usher follows along with them. The narrator leaves just after he is forced to witness Madeline Usher "bore [her brother] to the floor, a corpse," (278) and turns to the house where the light now "shone vividly through that once barely discernable fissure." (279) According to the narrator, regardless of his reliability, the house falls as soon as he escapes. We can assume both of the Ushers are dead, and with them being the only living family members, their deaths end the House of Usher, the family; with the house collapsed, this ends the House of Usher, the house. "I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder--there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters--and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the 'House of Usher'."
(279)

In conclusion, Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" is a relation between a house and a family through physical properties, perspectives, and either extraordinary situations or scientific coincidences. Poe, apparently, had the story planned to work out the way it did, showing the reader the obvious relations, but allowing a degree of mystery by relying on a first person perspective through the eyes of a crazy person. Everything is related to everything else, details only appear useless until you've pieced them all together.