"The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar allen Poe is a psychological tale of loss and acceptance. Roderick is the last of a dying line which reminded me of a Solomon Kane story called "the moon of skulls." In the story Kane goes searching for a kidnapped girl in Africa and ends up in the lost Atlantean colony of Negari. While exploring the city Solomon comes across the last member of the Atlantean line. He listens to the lament of the last of a dying race. That's the tone of "the fall of the house of usher." The last of the Usher line is slowly wasting away along with his house just like everything eventually succumbs to the forces of entropy. Roderick is kept alive only because of his sister whom he refuses to accept the death of. Once Roderick finally accepts the death of his sister everything finally comes to an end and the house crumbles into dust along with the last of the Ushers. Besides the psychological aspects of the story their are also creepy descriptive elements. The house looks like it has eyes, there's a crack running through it, and the trees around the house are described to have a consciousness about them. Internally the house is dark and enclosed. The description of the inside calls to mind images of cobwebs and flickering lamps. The observer in the story represents all of us. We all had that one friend when we were kids that was a little weird and had us convinced that he lived in a haunted house or something.
"Afterward" is a different take on the haunted house idea. The house doesn't have ghosts initially, the ghosts are brought to the house by mary's husband. The couple leave America so that Ned can run away from his guilty conscience and live in England far away from the buisiness dealings of America. Elwell however does not want him to get away with what he did so easily and takes Ned away. The story showcases the things wrong with the United States at the time. These things include shady buisness and exploitation of labor. This story is less about the evil that exists within a delapidated building and more about the evil that exists within the human heart.
Do you feel, though, in the story, it says that he Roderick does not like "light." Do you get a feeling that maybe he is a Vampire of some sort? Along with his sister?
ReplyDeleteI mean, his sister does come back from the dead and is able to lift herself out from her coffin. Not to mention, it says in the story that Roderick, too, does not like the smell of flowers. And I feel the story focuses more on, "where reality was overtaken by fantasy which creates a maddening mind and death of the mental work ability."
I don't think poe meant to convey his behavior as vampiric. His forced seclusion inside the house is more symbolic of the end of his family.
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