Artifact 7: The House of Usher

The House of Usher from The Fall of the House of Usher

Edgar Allen Poe

In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Edgar Allen Poe, used the object of the house to symbolize or duplicate the mind of Roderick and Madeline Usher: “These suggestions seem to mean that the House itself has some evil, destructive life, manifest in a spirit faintly visible as a vapor” (Bailey 451). Roderick and Madeline both suffered from mental illness, where Roderick’s senses were overly active, and no doctor could explain the issues that Madeline Usher was dealing with. The house began to give similar sensations to the feelings that Roderick and Madeline were experiencing: “It follows that ‘fall’ also acquires both a literal and figurative meaning: Roderick and Madeline Usher will fall dead and the House. Already divided by a fissure, will collapse” (Hermann 36). Eventually a large storm made the house of Usher fall, killing Roderick and Madeline. If Edgar Allen Poe is using the house as a double to both Roderick and Madeline, this is symbolic to them committing suicide: “The ‘fall’ of the House of Usher involves not only the physical fall of the mansion, but the physical and moral fall of the two protagonists” (Spitzer 352). The beauty in the object of the house is that it was a beautiful mansion that served as a home for Roderick and Madeline, yet ultimately it led to their melancholic demise.