Edgar Allen Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher": Madness and Fancy Exposed

In "The Fall of the House of Usher" characters become enveloped lose themselves in fancy which attributes to their madness. The narrator of the story is consistently being lost in his own fancy: "nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered" (1535). This line demonstrates how the narrator is not in the right state of mind and can be a prelude to his madness. The narrator's madness can also be attributed to his sever opium usage: "with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium - the bitter lapse into common life" (1535). The narrator clearly does not like the way life presents itself to him in an ordinary fashion so he must escape into opium-like trances in order to make his life better. Raymond Benoit says that this is a sign of madness because any normal person would love reality and embrace it; normal people do not try to avoid personal problems of reality with drug use (80). The narrator continues to lose himself to fancy that is similar to that of an opium dream experience: "I listened as if in a dream to the wild improvisations of his speaking guitar" (1593). The narrator once again becomes separate from reality and enters a dream like trance without the apparent aid of opium. It is situations like this that lead the reader to believe that the narrator is mad without even the use of drugs.

The narrator's mind is compared to the "black and lurid tarn" (1535) that he stares into before ever entering the house, leading the reader to recognize the parallel between the two. The use of bodies of water is often compared to the mind within literature and most times it is clear and deep showing the vastness and wholesomeness of the mind as was the case in Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau uses Walden Pond, a clear, pure body of water, as a reference to his state of mind, yet in Poe the narrator has his mind compared to a dark and disturbing body of water: "I reined my horse upon the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down - but with a shudder even more thrilling than before - upon the re-modelled and inverted images" (1535). It is this reflection of the narrator that can directly relate his mind to that of the dark pond. At the end of the story the tarn is seen once again in the same light as it was in the beginning of the text: "and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the 'House of Usher' " (1547). The description is a way of showing the problems within the narrator's mind because it seems that if Poe wanted his readers to not see madness within the narrator than he would have chosen a clear, clean body of water as opposed to a dark, lurid one.

The narrator's interactions with other characters also lead the reader to believe that he is mad. When the narrator "meets" the Usher family physician he is given a look of disturbance from the physician: "He accosted me with trepidation and passed on" (1537). When the narrator is around Roderick Usher he also experiences brief periods of madness: "It was no wonder that his condition terrified - that it infected me" (1543). Usher is repeatedly referred to as mad and is described in ways that would be harmful if Usher has truly "infected" the narrator as he says Usher did. By using the word "infected" it prompts the reader to parallel the narrator with a disease and madness could definitely be considered a disease. When the narrator is reading to Usher and the two start to hear things that relate directly to the story it is Usher's perception of what the reader sees: " No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than - as if a shield of brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of silver" (1546). Roderick Usher also calls the narrator mad towards the end of the story at two different instances. The first is when he realizes Madeline, his sister, has been buried alive and he declares for the first time to the narrator "Madman" (1547). The next time Usher calls him mad is when Usher believes Madeline is outside his door and again he exclaims to the narrator "Madman" (1547). This is the second character in the story that the narrator is in contact with that looks and talks to him as if he were the madman and the only one in the story. But there are many instances within the story that also provide evidence that Roderick Usher is also mad.

Before Roderick Usher is ever seen in the text the narrator provides evidence that he is going to be a character who is not right in the mind and may be mad: "the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain" (1535). This line shows that Usher is inbred and his family has been for many generations. Benoit also notes that inbreeding is a serious problem because of the negative affects it can have on the body and mind. It is before the reader even meet Usher that they should be looking out for signs of madness within him (79). The narrator also discusses the condition in which he expects to find Usher because of what was written in the letter: "The writer spoke of acute bodily illness - of a pitiable mental idiosyncrasy which oppressed him" (1535). Even Usher has already recognized a disorder within himself that must be a case that needs to be dealt with. Usher seems to understand there is something wrong with him and needs the help to rid himself of it. Usher later tells the narrator what he believes to be the problem within him: "a constitutional and a family evil" (1538). This quote could relate to his being inbred and therefore has no chance of being cured because it was instilled with him from birth. Usher seems to be taking any attempt he can to rid himself of madness and this is why he called his friend, the narrator, because he is outside the family line of decent and needs some outside influence to clear his madness. The problem with his choice of help is that the narrator, whom he requests help from, also shares the same malady: madness.

When the narrator finally sees his friend for the first time again the scene is described in a decaying fashion similar to the mind of Usher: "Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene" (1537). Usher is related to death in a way by the way Poe describes the scene as having no "vitality." Usher's skin is also compared to that of a ghost, perhaps showing that Usher is just a ghost of what he used to be because of the madness that has taken over his mind: "The ghastly pallor of the skin" (1537). This should make the reader realize that Usher is beyond help and that he is going to be lost in his madness without return. Ghost like imagery is also used to describe Usher's hair: "it floated rather than fell about the face" (1537). It seems as though Usher is merely an apparition of himself and that he is otherworldly. This could be a relationship between the madness of Usher because they are both well beyond the help that anyone can provide.

Death and morbidity is always surrounding Usher in the story. When describing another one of Usher's maladies the narrator relates it to death: "He suffered from a morbid acuteness of the senses" (1538). It is almost as if the narrator is perceiving Usher as already being dead and otherworldly in his actions. Along the same lines of death is Usher's need for dark: "his eyes were tortured by even a faint light" (1538). Darkness is often associated with madness if one if left alone for a long time. John Timmerman notes that this could be put in the same respect as a person who is kept in "the hole" to long in a prison. The prisoner will start to lose their mind and become extra sensitive to all aspects of life (237). It seems as if Usher is experiencing these same problems but there is no one around to lead him from the prison of his madness that he has become trapped in.

Roderick Usher more recently had problems in dealing with his sister and has been uncomfortable with her for a long time: "his sole companion for long years - his last and only relative on earth" (1538). Madeline is recognized as a twin to Roderick and it is seen that the two can share the same type of problems: "a gradual wasting away of the person" (1539). If Roderick and Madeline are identical twins: "the deceased and himself had been twins" (1543), it is necessary for the reader to recognize that Roderick is most likely experiencing the same problems as his twin. To be wasting away surely would deteriorate the mind and every character within the story is experiencing a madness that is inescapable.

When Madeline "dies" Usher decides to entomb her in the house rather than taking her to an outside facility: "I personally aided him in the arrangements for the temporary entombment" (1543). This is an example once again of how Usher can not leave his house and is destined to die with his madness there. By choosing to bury Madeline, it can be referenced to a form of repression. Repression will lead to its own type of madness because not facing one's problems will cause a negative affect on the mind.

Usher also contains the trait of a person who likes to drift from reality in ways similar to that of the narrator. One way Usher does so is to lose himself in romance novel. Romance novels could be a representation for how Usher can not relate to the real world and must lose himself in created worlds: "Here is one of your favorite romances. I will read and you shall listen - and so we will pass away this terrible night together" (1545). It is also slightly ironic that they chose to read the "Mad Trist," a novel that is definitely distanced from reality. Both characters want to escape the night rather than face what lies ahead of them. Instead of facing problems they run and hide from them. This is also a form of repression that will lead both characters to madness as a result of isolation from the rest of the world.

The characters in "The Fall of the House of Usher" all experience madness though some have madness in different ways. Though the narrator manages to survive his ordeal at the house of Usher he will most likely end up as the Usher family has: lost to the world as a result of madness. Madness infects the minds of all the characters and Poe has used both subtle and direct means of providing the reader with the necessary information in determining the madness of his characters. Through Poe's usage of madness he is able to warn and readers about the dangers of becoming lost in a haze of drugs and caught up in the dangers of fancy.

Works Cited

1. Benoit, Raymond "Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher" Explicatorr 58 (Winter 2000): 79 - 81

2. Poe, Edgar Allen. The Cask of Amontillado. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 6^th Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

3. Timmerman, John H."House of Mirrors: Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher" Papers on Language & Literature 39 (Summer 2003) 227 - 245