Poe’s use of personification, the act of giving human characteristics to nonhuman things,
assigns the house of Usher a powerful and evil presence
. In the first paragraph of the story, the narrator describes the house as having “vacant eye-like windows”.
Why does Poe personify the house?
D. from University of Miami (Fla.) Edgar Allan Poe uses personification in “The Fall of the House of Usher
How is the Usher house described?
The story’s narrator describes the interior of
the Usher home as dark, gloomy, eery, and Gothic
. The floor are black and there are many “intricate” passages to Roderick’s study, a vast, dimly lit room with a vaulted ceiling.
What words are used to describe the Usher house?
He describes the house as
“melancholy”
, having “a sense of insufferable gloom”, as “desolate or terrible” The walls are “bleak”; the windows are like “vacant eyes”; the trees are “decayed” “There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart” when the narrator approaches the house.
How does the House of Usher fall both literally and metaphorically?
The title “The Fall of the House of Usher” has both a literal and a
figurative meaning
. The literal meaning refers to the physical collapse of the house in which the Ushers live. The figurative meaning refers to the decline of the Usher family.
What disease does Madeline Usher have?
According to Roderick, Madeline suffers from
a cataleptic
Why did Usher bury his sister alive?
It has already been demonstrated that Roderick’s decision to hide away Madeline’s body followed his burial of her while she was still alive. Roderick, therefore, buried his sister alive
because his hypochondria caused him to fear that her disease might spread to him
. This is his motive for the murder.
What inconsistencies are there in Usher’s behavior?
Pg 268: What might have been the reasons for Usher’s strange behavior?
His illness, his heightened senses, or superstitions
. His sister is dying from a strange illness also.
Why does Poe spend so much time describing the house?
While he claims that the house appears structurally sound, he takes time to comment upon
“the crumbling condition of the individual stones
.” He also emphasizes the long history of the house by stating that its features recall an “excessive antiquity.”
What is Roderick Usher afraid of?
In “The Fall of the House of Usher
Why is it called the House of Usher?
The title refers not just to the literal fall of the physical house, but
the metaphorical fall of the Usher family
. The narrator revealed that Roderick and his sister were the last two alive in the family, so when they die, so dies the whole family. This decline, too, is foreshadowed in the text.
What are the two meanings of the House of Usher?
The “house of Usher” has two meanings.
Symbolic of deterioration of Madeline’s body, Roderick’s mind and Usher family line
. “The Haunted Palace” (poem) reflects the Usher family life in the house. “The Mad Trist” (story) parallels Madeline’s return from the grave.
Who lives in the house with Roderick Usher?
Roderick Usher and
his sister Madeline
are the only two surviving members of the aristocratic Usher family. For many years, they have lived together in the ancient mansion which is their ancestral family home. Madeline Usher has been ill for a long time and is not expected to live much longer.
Is Madeline Usher vampire?
Madeline is
a vampire —
a succubus — as the family physician well knows and as her physical appearance and effect upon the narrator sufficiently demonstrate. The terrified and ineffectual Roderick, ostensibly suffering from pernicious anemia, is her final victim.
What’s wrong with Madeline?
Madeline suffers from
a form of seizure disorder called catalepsy
. An important fact to remember is that victims of this disease could enter into a state like a coma in which they appeared to be dead. Madeline, who has been gradually growing sicker, appears to die, and is buried by Roderick and the narrator.
What happens to Madeline Usher?
A cataleptic is a person who has seizures and can go into a death-like trance afterward. … Madeline supposedly dies and her body is entombed below ground.
Madeline breaks out of her tomb and comes upstairs to scare her brother to death
.
