Fall Of The House Of Usher Essay

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The “Fall of the House of Usher” can be portrayed as a comprehensive account of the confusion and dissipation of a person’s personality. Beyond that, the story of the Fall of House of Usher is full of symbols. The first symbol is the House of Usher or the Mansion which manifests the deterioration or decline of the Usher family health and the disintegrating house reflects the actual fall of the Usher family. Roderick represents the mind or the intellect, whereas the portion of personality, the senses is represented by Madeline. Roderick wrote to an old classmate and friend and spoke of “acute bodily illness ---of mental disorder which oppressed him” (Poe 1). In addition to the fissure, the house is infested with fungi. “The belief, however, was connected with the gray stones of the home of his forefathers. The conditions of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of these stones --in the order of their arrangement, as well as in that of the many fungi which overspread them, and of the decayed trees which stood around --above …show more content…

It symbolizes the split of the twin personalities of the surviving Ushers, signifying the destruction of the family and the house. Roderick is the intellect or the mind, whereas Madeline is the sensory senses. At a point in the story, Roderick attempts to separate itself from its’ more physically dependent twin, Madeline. This is evident in Roderick’s desire to utilize his own senses as well as by his premature burial of Madeline. “While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened --there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind --the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight --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 --and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the House of Usher" (Poe

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