Please excuse the delay in completing my analysis of
Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher.” I’ve had a complicated last few weeks. Part 1 can be found here.
As before, the quotes are taken from PoeStories. As before, citation will be by paragraph
number.
Now that we’ve looked at the opening paragraph and
some of the story’s motifs, I think it behooves us to place the story in its
form, which is Gothic fiction. In its essence, Gothic fiction entails a
story with excessive emotions, a complex and ancient abode, such as a castle, a
mysterious, moribund character, an atmosphere and sense of gloom, and an
element, either real or imaginary, of the supernatural, all of which add up for
the reader to a state of horror. What
drives the narrative is a journey into a labyrinth, either literally through
the castle or metaphorically through the psychology of the characters or the
enigma of the situation and events. Or,
of course, a combination of all them. Here
in “The Fall of the House of Usher” we have the decayed, gothic mansion, the
enfeebled aristocrat who is on the verge of emotional breakdown, and the
buried-alive woman who breaks out of her tomb.
The character of Roderick Usher is at the heart of
the story. Here is how the narrator
describes him upon first meeting.
Upon my entrance, Usher
arose from a sofa on which he had been lying at full length, and greeted me
with a vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at first thought, of an
overdone cordiality --of the constrained effort of the ennuye man of the world.
A glance, however, at his countenance, convinced me of his perfect sincerity.
We sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a
feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly
altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty
that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before me with
the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his face had been at
all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and
luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a
surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a
breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely moulded chin,
speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more
than web-like softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate
expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not
easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing
character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey,
lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of
the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eve, above all things startled
and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded,
and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the
face, I could not, even with effort, connect its Arabesque expression with any
idea of simple humanity.
In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence --an
inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and
futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy --an excessive nervous
agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by
his letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions
deduced from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. His action was
alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous
indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species
of energetic concision --that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding
enunciation --that leaden, self-balanced and perfectly modulated guttural
utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable
eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement.
It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest desire to
see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He entered, at some
length, into what he conceived to be the nature of his malady. It was, he said,
a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a
remedy --a mere nervous affection, he immediately added, which would
undoubtedly soon pass off. It displayed itself in a host of unnatural
sensations. Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me;
although, perhaps, the terms, and the general manner of the narration had their
weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most
insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain
texture; the odours of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even
a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed
instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.
To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. "I shall
perish," said he, "I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus,
thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not
in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the
most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of
soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect
--in terror. In this unnerved-in this pitiable condition --I feel that the
period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason
together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR." [par 8-11]
There are two points that stand out in that
characterization. The first is Usher’s
intense sensitivity to sensation. The
nature of his malady is to be hyper sensitive, due to his “excessive nervous
agitation.” This takes us back to the
opening quote of a heart being “strung tight” and “resounds” with touch. The narrator tells “he suffered from a morbid
acuteness of the senses,” and it touched all five senses: taste, touch, smell,
sight, and sound (par. 10). These
sensations set the foundation for Usher’s ability to sense beyond human
capacity, a capacity that transcends into the paranormal. The other point is that this sensitivity is
not a liberating ability but an enslaving one.
Usher has fallen into a condition alternating between vivaciously energy
and depressed ennui, nervous agitation and leaden sullenness, akin to both a
drunkard and an opium addict. Notice too
here the reflecting dualities. The
transcending sensations do not lead to an opening of a new horizon, but a
debilitating and suffocating constriction.
Usher’s emotional state—one in which he feels he’s “in some struggle
with the grim phantasm, FEAR”—reflects entombment state that Madeline, his
sister, will find herself later in the story.
I would be remiss if at this point I didn’t mention
the relationship between Poe, this story, and the American 19th
century philosophic and quasi religious movement, transcendentalism. The part of transcendentalism that’s relevant
here is that the transcendentalists believed that God exists everywhere in
everything all around us. It’s a
pantheistic belief, and through the senses God can be found. To the transcendentalist, though God is transcendent just beyond us with
effort we can get in touch with Him.
It’s a rather blindly optimistic outlook that all things are there for
the good. Poe is strongly an
anti-transcendentalist, rejecting that what the senses touch is not necessarily
God, and is certainly not always particularly good. Through the narrator’s impressions—which gave
him an “utter depression of soul” in the first paragraph—there is certainly
ambiguity to what he senses. But through
Usher’s fallen state we see that what he has sensed through his supernatural
intuition is definitely not good and possibly evil. Poe declares an anti-transcendental position
when he has the narrator state how the atmosphere within the House oppressed
his imagination, “an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven,
but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the
silent tarn --a pestilent and mystic vapour, dull, sluggish, faintly
discernible, and leaden-hued” (par. 4).
Another motif that is central is that of the family
history. In fact, the dilapidated house
that the narrator rides up to is most certainly a metaphor for the family house
of Usher. What ails Usher is rooted in
the family history, perhaps even biology:
I had learned, too, the
very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honoured as it
was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the
entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very
trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. It was this deficiency, I
considered, while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character
of the premises with the accredited character of the people, and while
speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in the long lapse of
centuries, might have exercised upon the other --it was this deficiency,
perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission, from
sire to son, of the patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so
identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the quaint
and equivocal appellation of the "House of Usher" --an appellation
which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the
family and the family mansion. [par.3]
Usher claims his malady is “constitutional” (that
is, part of his nature) and a “family evil” (par. 10). We see a “dissolution” in his sibling (par.
13), though it’s unclear if she suffers from the same malady. Their demise would bring the end of the “ancient
race of the Ushers” (par. 13). It is his
aristocratic past, as exalted in the song Usher composes, that stands in
contrast to the dissolution of his current state. The germ of his disintegration is in his “race”
but the slow degeneration has now reached a climax in his generation.
So to pull the entire story together here, I think
what the reader should focus on how the various narrative movements unwind and lead
to the climax. This is how I would list the
movements, and remember the plot moves through the narrator’s first person
experience:
1. The movement to meet Roderick Usher.
2. The movement to grasp Usher’s condition.
3. The movement to understand why Usher is in this
state.
4. The decline and burial of Usher’s sister,
Madeline.
5. The breaking out of Madeline from her tomb
overlaid by the Ethelred story.
6. The concluding destruction of the house.
The plot is a progression into the labyrinth of Usher’s
mental state, his sensations, his creativity through the song he formulates,
through the reflection of his sister’s apparent death, and then through
reactions to the story the narrator reads Usher during the storm as Usher’s
sister breaks free of her tomb.
So what does these motifs and philosophic
underpinning and plot all amount to?
What is the theme here? With that
I want to bring it back to the beginning of the story. After that incredible first paragraph where
the first person narrator comes up to Usher’s house and sees the reflection in
the tarn, the character provides in three paragraphs the exposition of being
called by Usher and their youthful history together. But then he returns back to describing
Usher’s house.
Shaking off from my
spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of
the building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive
antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread
the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all
this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry
had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still
perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual
stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old
wood-work which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no
disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of
extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps
the eye of a scrutinising observer might have discovered a barely perceptible
fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way
down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters
of the tarn.
The narrator gleans the “zigzag” crack that splits
the house through from the roof down to the front. The reflection provides another set of
doubles—the actual, deteriorated house and the image. What we repeatedly have in the story are
contrasting doubles and fragmentation. Let
me list the doubles that I discern: sensation/reason, structure/image,
brother/sister, gloried past/degenerated present, life/death, enslaved/freedom,
story/reality, mental disorder/sanity, physical/metaphysical. I’m sure with effort one can find identify
even more.
And this once again brings us back to the very first paragraph
that I dissected in detail in the first blog.
There I pointed out how the pattern of the story was to build doubles,
aesthetic reflections. It is in building
of doubles and their ultimate fragmentation that we arrive at the full meaning
of the story. in the story’s last
paragraph, the narrator flees from the horrific death of Usher and his sister
in one climatic embrace. But as the
narrator flees, he looks behind him.
Suddenly there shot
along the path a wild light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual
could have issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The
radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon which now shone
vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure of which I have before
spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zig-zag direction, to
the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened --there came a fierce
breath of the whirlwind --the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my
sight --my brain reeled as 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." [par.
47, counting each stanza of the song as a paragraph]
The fissure cracks open and splits the house apart. The
central theme of the story then, if it could be so consolidated into a
statement, is that the degeneration of an individual is a schism between his
senses and his reason, a separation from those he holds dear, and a
fragmentation from his identity. This
story presents a gloomy vision of a broken world. But it makes for one of the greatest short
stories ever written.
But then there was a minor miracle. When we left the Vet's office with her
Friday, the vet forgot to include her pain killer medication. Remember she had
a biopsy and they opened up her entire belly. The medication was on the list
but we didn't have any and the instructions said only if necessary. And then Sunday
night it dawned on me that she was in pain. It was just the way she was walking
that tipped me off. So Monday we called the vet and he looked into it and found
they had left it out and didn't get into our bag. So I got on my horse and raced
down to the vet hospital (it's like forty miles away) and picked it up and got
back and gave her two pills and then she started moving better and interested
in eating. It was like that all week.
Actually yesterday, Friday the 29th was the most promising in
that she ate over a cup of leftover turkey in the morning and over a cup at
night.
I'm really looking
forward to Advent. I need a change. Poor Brandi is dying and has only a few
days, a week at the most, to live. I'm feeling all sorts of aches of love which
is clearly a desire for Jesus. One day this week we will have to make the final
decision, and it's really going to hurt. This Advent will be like no other.
Except for my grandfather when I was young, I have never lost a loved one
during the holidays, and his passing was rather sudden. May one day Christ come for the final time and bring all
my loved ones back together in one embrace. Come Jesus, come.
