What Is The Irony In The Fall Of The House Of Usher

“The Fall of the House of Usher” is a tale about a man who is written to by an old childhood friend named Roderick Usher. Roderick Usher is part of the Usher family who was known for having an extraneous family name due to their closed off reputation from the world around them. Their bloodline is known for being “pure” and having put off no branches “..that the stem of the Usher race, all time honored as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch..” (Poe, 23), alluding to the thought that they were an incestual family. Nonetheless, in the letter, Roderick explains to the narrator that he is suffering from a mental and bodily illness and that he wishes to see his one childhood friend so that he may help to relieve him from the
symptoms of this illness. Therefore, the narrator feels that it is necessary to visit and to spend a few weeks with Roderick and finds himself at the house of Usher. Upon the narrator’s arrival at the house, the first things that he notices is the setting and how eerie, dark, mysterious, and run-down it is “..I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down- but with a shudder even more thrilling than before- upon the remodeled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.” (22).
Later on in the story, the realization is made that the house matches the mood and illness of Roderick Usher. Anyways, the narrator enters the house and finds his old friend Roderick laying on a sofa in a large room that he had been ushered to by a servant. Roderick obviously had an illness, as he carried an air of sickness about him and had a pallid sickly look to him “The now ghastly pallor of the skin..” (25) . They re-introduce themselves, as it had been such a long time, and the narrator settles himself
in. In the days that followed, Roderick Usher’s illness became fairly obvious and noticeable to the narrator. He had a nervousness to him and even while the narrator does not mention it himself, throughout his dialogue it is obvious that he too had become nervous and agitated. Even while he is focusing on helping his dear childhood friend, he’s making nervous observations about both Roderick and the house. Eventually, Roderick reveals that his illness stems from a different illness, one in which was afflicting his sister and that it also had some origin in his home “He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling in which he tenanted” (27) According to Roderick, his sister was doomed to die from an illness that had been long and severe, leaving him bitter due to the fact that he would be the last Usher to live. After hearing this information, the sister (lady Madeline) passed by in an odd manner of not acknowledging those in the room. While lady Madeline had only been in the narrator’s presence once, she became a lingering “feeling” in the house. With her name came dread, as well as depression on Usher’s part. Nonetheless, the narrator’s purpose of course was to distract Usher from these feelings through activity, even while he was not distracted from them himself. In the time following the appearance of lady Madeline, the narrator read many stories to Usher in which he subdued the dreadful feelings while also making the narrator more weary of the circumstances.
Roderick Usher preferred to read the manual of a forgotten church, causing the narrator to question the influence on the condition of Usher and how it was affecting him further. “I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its probable influence upon the hypochondriac..” (32). However, his state was being affected as well. As seen by when Madeline “died”, the narrator was beginning to think along the same lines as Usher. Usher desired to preserve Madeline’s body because he was worried that she would be experimented on in wonder over her peculiar disease. The narrator believed that this was for the best, leading the reader to perceive that he was becoming nervous about these circumstances as well. Furthermore, when they were closing her up in the tomb, the narrator noticed a faint blush still about her “....the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death.” (34), alluding to the idea that she was still alive. Nonetheless, they close her in the tomb and go on with their
business. As the story continues, the narrator describes Usher’s increasing madness after the death of his sister as unwaning and influential. He began to notice that he too was going mad and through his realization, sinks deeper into madness. He finds himself unable to sleep and eventually ends up sitting with Usher and reading during the terrible storm occurring. As he read, the events of the book were happening in reality. There was actually breaking of wood and he hears screaming as well. He rushes to Usher, but he is speaking about hearing it as well in a fast and alarming pace. Then, the sister appears in the doorway with blood covering her gown and falls over dead onto Usher. Usher dies as well and the narrator is so alarmed and unsure of the events that took place that he quickly leaves the house while it crashed down behind him. In conclusion, the narrator is of a stable mindset before staying in the House of Usher. From being around so much illness and being stuck inside the falling House of Usher, the narrator too becomes mad. The house seems off to him during his whole stay and he develops similar habits to those of Usher. His mindset changed and he became nervous and weary of everything that took place. By the time the sister returned to their presence alive, the narrator was basically expecting it. Nevertheless, when the house fell and he fled, the illness that was invading his mind also fell and he saw the peculiarity of the entire situation as a whole even while not being able to reason with what happened.