Example Term Paper on “The Fall of the House of Usher”

The Fall of the House of Usher Term Paper

Imagine hearing a song or reading a story that suddenly becomes your life and what is going on close to you. This happens to 1 man in “The Fall from the Household of Usher“. As the story opens, the narrator is traveling to his friend Roderick Usher’s home in response to a letter from Roderick. The letter sounded dire and important; therefore he could not deny him the visit (Poe 234). As the narrator arrives at the house, he is confronted with eerie surroundings.

Days later, Roderick sings him a ballad about a palace that seems like the really household wherever they reside. Then, near the end of his visit, he reads a tale of the hero that may be closely followed by the strangest coincidence of all. In his work “The Fall in the Residence of Usher,” Edgar Allan Poe makes very good use of parallels and foreshadowing to contribute towards overall horror with the story.

On the first day of the narrator’s visit, he notices numerous strange similarities in between the household and also the those who resided within. The area about the residence is dark and desolate. Dying hedges and decaying trees are strewn for the landscape. Also, the property lies next to a gloomy, dark tarn. The residence itself is significantly like the landscape. A fungus covers it and it looks “excessively antique” (Poe 236). It contains a fissure that ran from roof to foundation, splitting the house in two. Over a interior, it's dark and gloomy and some of the ceiling is out of sight, as a result of the shadows. The furniture is old and seems uncomfortable. When the narrator meets Roderick and his sister, he finds them to be a lot like the house. Roderick and his sister have a split personality, significantly like that the household includes a fissure separating the home in half. He also seems incredibly gloomy and gray. His hair is like cobwebs atop his head (237). His sister, Madeline, is a lot more physically ill having a severe situation of catatonia. As soon as she is inside a trance, she can look and act like she is dead for a quantity of days. The narrator finds that house and its occupants turn into a reflection of eachother.

After the course of the few days, Roderick sings an eerie ballad of the palace that is certainly extremely similar for the Usher house. “The Haunted Palace” begins by detailing of prosperous times. The palace was “stately” and “radiant” (Poe 240). However, evil comes. It attacks the palace and destroys nearly everything. The occupants come to be much like Roderick and Madeline, alone and desolate. The property has not often been during the condition it's now. The loved ones was prosperous, but the residence became unkempt and deteriorated as every household branch it made soon died off. You'll find strong parallels between the Haunted Palace and also the Home of Usher.

Near the conclusion of his visit, the narrator reads Roderick a tale called “The Mad Trist of Sir Launcelot Canning,” that that may be soon followed by a strange coincidence. Unfortunately, Madeline has been prematurely entombed, and Roderick is being more and more mentally ill every day. A single night, the narrator decides to read Roderick a tale to soothe his nerves. In this tale a hero is in pursuit of the goal – a shield which he believes to become inside a hermit’s lair. As the narrator reads this story, he begins to hear noises inside additional reaches on the house. When he reads on the hero smashing the door to the hermit’s lair, he hears a incredibly similar sound inside property (Poe 243). He then reads of Sir Launcelot’s attack on a dragon and hears an even more prominent crack. Then, when the hero retrieves the shield, Madeline comes crashing from your door. She walks across the room, falls onto Roderick, as well as the each of them die (Poe 244). The story the narrator reads is nearly exactly parallel to what is happening to him in Poe’s story.

These many strange parallels and foreshadowed events are what occur together and make this story obtain Poe’s objective of horror. The residence and individuals within becoming so eerily alike shocks and frightens the narrator and reader alike. In addition, Roderick’s ballad predicts what's heading to happen towards the Usher family. Finally, the story parallels the end of each Roderick and Madeline’s lives. This story was a horror during the true sense in the word.