Hey you guys this is Cristy. So I thought I'd do a little preliminary analysis of The Fall of the House of Usher. From the moment that the narrarator encounters the Usher house a heavy darkness descends upon the setting of the story. The house becomes a character itself by the fantastical descriptions that Poe uses. "vacant and eye-like windows." He says that upon seeing the building he is overwelmed with a "sense of insufferable gloom" and he likens the feelings to the dissapointing return to harsh reality after the wonderous dreams brought on by opium use(gothic). The house seems to represent the family in its decay. The poem/song called "The Haunted Palace" referring to the Usher Mansion adds more superstition to the plot. The poem may describe the past prosperity of the family and mansion that then fell into decline. The cause for this decline in the song is only vaguely explained by the the arrival of "evil things, in robes of sorrow" who "assailed the monarch's high estate". Perhaps this was when the first Master Usher fell to the disease and died after suffering from the mental illness.
After the narrarator re-tells the poem he tells us how his friend persists that there is "sentience of all vegetable things". Sentience means consciousness or the capacity for sensation or feeling. So Usher believed inanimate objects to be conscious? He hints that he believes therefore that the Usher house is conscious. The house seems to mirror the state of its masters. The idea of a spirit being in everything seems to connect to the idea of romantics with nature and the omnipotent holy spirit.
On another topic, Poe mentions books that he and his friend read to pass away the days.I was interested why these particular books were chosen to be mentioned and looked up a few.Directorium Inquisitorum by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne- was basically a manual on how to torture Catholic heretics.
Another book was "Belphegor of Machiavelli, Niccolo Machiavelli wrote Belphegor, a satire on marriage in which a demon comes to earth to prove that women damn men to hell."
Blue Distance of Tieck - Tieck was a romantic poet of the 18/19th century.
Chiromancy - is the art of palm reading (superstitious art connects to Gothic beliefs)
Also at the beggining of the story are a few lines in Latin? that I was unable to translate on my own. But I did find that De Beranger was a French poet.
Here's a site I found helpful and interesting in dissecting and understanding Poe's terminology.
http://www.poestories.com/wordlist.php
In this story the idea of being buried alive appears again. In this case,Roderick Usher's sister was buried alive by mistake. It seems that the words from a story the narrarator reads are actually bringing her back to life. The failure of reason and logic on the part of the doctors to diagnose and treat the Usher disease is contrasted with the supernatural power literature seems to have over the Usher sister. The Master of Usher claims he heard her alive in the coffin but was too scared to do anything about it and dreads her anger. Finally the woman reappears with blood on her gown, mysteriously having broken out of the screwed iron coffin which suggests some magical force working to achieve her return. Also I think the fact that they are twins and have a special connection adds to the mysticisim in the story. The superstition and mystical elements of this story fit perfectly with Gothic beliefs in the Romantic era.
Okay, those were just a few things I had on my mind and I look forward to discussing all the other details of the story with you in class.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Hey, it's Erin.
I think the first lines are in French. This is what I got (with a translator - I don't know any French): His heart is a suspended lute (which is a stringed instrument that kind of looks like a guitar), no sooner than one touches it it re-rings.
The Gothics were really interested in human psychology and this story is definitely a good example. When we talked about the Gothics in Euro, some of their themes were death, decay, and mystery, which show up in the story. The description of the house is like something dead: the "vacant eye-like windows", "decayed trees", "reeked up." The atmosphere by the house is still, oppressive, and silent, giving the sense that the area is empty and void of life. The house itself is in decay and a sense of mystery surrounds both it and Usher, who the narrator admits knowing very little about and is described like a corpse. There is also a sense of the paranormal - about the family illness, Usher, and the return of his sister.
Another Romantic idea in the story is the elevation of emotions over reason. When the narrator arrives at the Usher house, something about it causes him to shudder, but tries to find the reason and calls it "superstition and strange fancy." In the story there is almost a battle between emotions/instinct and reason. As the story nears its end, reason is slowly losing. Usher is on the brink of insanity (if he's not there already) but the narrator still tries to fight off his fears with reason. He says he begins to feel the influence of Usher's "superstitions" and very soon after Madeline is buried he feels the "full power of such feelings." However, he still tries to "reason off the nervousness" that he feels. Again, he tires to explain the strange storm outside to Usher, saying "these appearances ... are merely electrical phenomena not uncommon." Finally, as he is reading, the narrator talks of the correspondence between the story and the sounds he hears as coincidences, rejecting the unnatural. As Madeline is about to enter, Usher accuses the narrator of being a "madman" because he refuses to acknowledge the sounds of her return. Still the narrator tries to hold off, describing the door blowing open as "the work of the rushing gust" - only there stands Madeline. In the end, reason is proved inferior to instinct and emotion - the instinct that caused the narrator's terror at the sight of the Usher House and the instinct that told Usher that Madeline was alive within the coffin.
(Sorry for the long post)
Post a Comment