Fear in The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe Essay

The only thing you have to fear is fear itself” -Franklin D. Roosevelt. For Roderick Usher fear in itself is worse than whatever he actually fears. The story is set in the Usher family’s old isolated run down home, Roderick Usher finds himself surrounded by phenomenon which skewed his perception of reality. Roderick could not properly develop due to his state of seclusion, which eventually drives him mad. He calls on his long lost friend who he hasn’t seen since childhood to help him deal with his emotions. The elements that Edgar Allan Poe demonstrate throughout “The Fall of The House of Usher” help exhibit the theme that fear and isolation leads to madness, and human interaction is important to maintain your sanity.

Fear is among one of the most universal human emotions that everyone is interconnected at one point or another during their lifetime. In the gothic stories, “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “House Taken Over” written by Edgar Allan Poe and Julio Cortazar respectively. Edgar Allen Poe writes about how the character Mr. Usher, who because of his mental illness and delusions, cannot come to terms with his reality. Cortazar writes about the relationship between a brother and sister who have normal everyday lives and have strange and odd nightmare that haunts them. The

During, “The Fall of the House of Usher” both the Narrator and Roderick felt that Madilyn Usher was still alive. One example of this was both Roderick and the Narrator heard Madilyn. When the Narrator first arrived at the house of Usher, Roderick explained that his sister Madilyn is dead and was claiming that he heard her. The Narrator knew Roderick was ill, but didn’t quite believe this to be true. Then, after being there for a while he, the narrator, began to hear Madilyn as well.

The house seems to be absorbing Usher’s mental health and physical health. Evidence of this is shown by the faltering health and growing fears of Roderick Usher in relation to the growing scariness of the house.

Another theme that Poe explores in The Fall Of The House Of Usher is fear. It is fear that drives the story, fear that traps the narrator, and eventually fear that kills Roderick Usher. Poe foreshadows the paradox of Roderick’s fear early in the story: “There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition…is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis.” Roderick Usher is quoted as saying “I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect--in terror." This means that he is not afraid of death, but of fear itself. And it is this fear of fear that eventually leads to his death, when Madeline ‘returns from the dead’ and scares him to death.

In the story, “The Fall of The House of Usher”, there are many mysterious happenings that go on throughout the story between the characters Roderick Usher and the narrator. Throughout the story, Edgar Allan Poe uses themes such as madness and insanity to connect the house back to Roderick Usher. In the “Fall of The House of Usher”, the narrator goes through many different experiences when arriving to the house. The narrator’s experiences start out as almost unnoticeable in the beginning, turn into bigger ones right before his eyes, and end up becoming problems that cause deterioration of the mind and the house before the narrator even decides to do anything helpful for Roderick and his mental illness. In “The Fall of The

In a recent course of events, the last two members of the Usher family passed away in a rather peculiar manner; “I fled aghast”, says our still terror-stricken source who was at the scene. According to the only eyewitness, who wishes to remain anonymous, Roderick Usher, a shut-in, had been suffering from hypersensitivity and anxiety for a while. His sister, Madeline Usher, suffered from catalepsy. However, these diseases did not directly cause their deaths or the mysterious disappearance of their house.

“...Madman!- he sprung to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul”(Poe 277). The short stories, The Fall in the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe, and The Minister’s Black Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne explore fear in a deeper context. Fear is a very common emotion. Fear is the result of encounters with the unknown. The Fall in the House of Usher, shows a very anxious Roderick Usher sending for a childhood friend to console him. The Minister’s Black Veil, is a story about a minister that is surrounded by hypocrisy and has taken upon himself to shield it with a veil. The fear and dread and analyzed in these stories show how the mind reacts to being

He describes the depressing effect the walls have on him as if his brain is suffocated looking upon the confines of its skull. Clearly, having never left the house seems to be the source of his ailment. Alternately, he highlights the tarn as another source of his troubles, for he understands his dilemma as framed by the nature that will destroy him from within, and without. In this sense, Roderick is quite aware of the dangers that nature present to him in his solitude, however, we have yet to broach the most disturbing pervasion of nature in this tale— Roderick’s twin

“The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe shows the power that fear can hold over a person. In the story, Poe exemplifies fear as something that can control us, as seen with Roderick who let the fear consume and control him. Poe’s story allows readers to get a deeper view on how his characters may relate to them, as he tries to generate emotion from the reader. Poe wants readers to feel emotion or a connection with his stories, and he accomplishes this through symbols, imagery, and point of view styled writing. Through symbols, Poe can make readers think thoroughly about the story’s meaning; leading to the reader to feel dark or mysterious emotions.

Roderick Usher was a complicated man. He was born into a family that only had one descendant for each generation. He was left to wonder whether he or his sister would live to continue that cycle. Consequently, he was stuck in a house that had no life to it with his sister who was dying. He was constantly worried about his sister Madeline, who was sick, and he also worried about his life and his sanity; that is the reason that he reached out to his friend, who was the narrator. Roderick has three characteristic and they are as follows: fear, anxiety, and sadness.

When the death of Roderick's sister occurs, Poe accentuates the feeling of isolation Roderick feels towards the narrator and his sister, Madeline. From the beginning of the story, when Roderick writes the letter to the narrator, it was like he was crying out for help because of how alone he felt even though he is living with his sister, but even then he still felt like the only person he had to reach out to was someone who he hadn’t spoken to in years. Once the narrator actually shows up to the house to keep Roderick company, and help him through whatever he is going through, the narrator notices that something is just not right with him. Throughout the story Roderick starts acting even stranger making the narrator scared for his own life at that point. Roderick clearly was facing physical and emotional isolation from beginning to

Roderick Usher obviously isn’t well, parts of his infliction seems to manifest themselves physically, in his overly-acute senses, his illness is mainly a mental illness. His sister is catacleptic and wasting away, Roderick is tormented by his own fear.

Due to the failure of his mental state Roderick’s psyche can be observed from outside perceptions so that one can examine the inner manner of that which they possess themselves, but are unable to view objectively. When the narrator first encounters his old friend he is “at once struck with and incoherence – and inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy, and excessive nervous agitation” (717). The inner struggles of the human psyche are brought outwards through Roderick. The narrator can physically perceive the inner struggle and inconsistency that Roderick’s mind is undergoing. Throughout his stay, the narrator observes these battles with more intensity and the reader to is able to see how hard the mind battles itself until finally it falls. With his sister’s assumed death, Roderick’s mind is at its breaking point, and when she comes back, Roderick dies of that which he has always feared of dying from: fear itself. Roderick’s fear or fear kills him due to his frail and lonely state of being.

You have the death of Roderick himself, the fear is what killed him. He was fragile and this is when the fragile theme of the story comes into play. He was so fragile that he was scared to death. So when Lady Madeline died, so did Roderick, “…Then, with a low-moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated” (512). Following the death of Roderick, the house also dies along with him, “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…” (512).