Similarities Between Frankenstein And The Fall Of The House Of Usher

Mary Shelley wrote what can be considered the first science fiction novel; Edgar Allan Poe the first author to write detective fiction. Both authors were innovators of their day going beyond the considered logic of the populous, instating originality on their part. Shelley and Poe convey their beliefs within their works. At the time both stories were written in a period of scientific and technical advancement where such science fictions as the living dead and the supernatural seemed a possibility. Both Edgar Allan Poe and Mary Shelley push the known boundaries in their stories of “Frankenstein” and “The Fall of the House of Usher “as they cross the Ethical lines surrounding the matters of sanity and madness, life and death, fate and choice

In the house of Usher Roderick states that Madeline’s death, "would leave him (him the hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race of the Ushers."(Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher Paragraph 13) and so with their deaths there family and their house would end. In Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein originates from Geneva where the family has its own manor, the bloodline thriving undisturbed until the monster comes to town and just as Madeline Usher seek revenge upon her brother so too does Frankenstein’s monster swore revenge upon all of Frankenstein’s line. The monster kills Victor’s brother, wife and indirectly causes the death of a member of the help from the Frankenstein residence. Frankenstein had earlier asked “How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow?” (Mary Shelley, Frankenstein Chapter 4) he later got his answer with the loss of family, the loss of a home and the loss of happiness; all of this consequence to Frankenstein’s action of creating a monster which led to his

Victor Frankenstein created the monster that led to his utter distortion as Roderick entombed his living sister giving her her need for revenge he know of this as he himself said ”I shall perish, I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results. […] I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect--in terror. In this unnerved—in this pitiable condition--I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR.” (Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall Of the House of Usher Paragraph 11). Yet in his own madness he feared neither of death nor pain he was only afraid of fear, knowing it would be the death of him. As it was, once she had found her revenge she seems to die with her brother as his heart stops in terror. Madeline it seemed was a physical aspiration of Roderick’s fears. As both their fates are tied to one another with Roderick’s actions. This is seen on either side of the connection between Frankenstein and his monster. Frankenstein created the monster and abandons him, the monster with the influence of mankind’s cruelty chooses to seek revenge, Frankenstein then hunts the monster down to seek revenge upon the monster’s actions. The relationship between Frankenstein and