Figurative Language In The Fall Of The House Of Usher

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Set in a Gothic atmosphere, The Fall of the House of Usher, written by Edgar Allan Poe, dramatically portraits how the bloodline of the Ushers comes to an end. The story starts with an unnamed narrator, who apparently is a childhood friend of Roderick Usher— the head of the house— arriving by horseback. Roderick Usher wrote a letter to the narrator, asking the latter to visit him and help him with the agitation that he is undergoing. By the time he entered the mansion, the narrator finds out that Roderick is sick and anxious about something. He also finds out that Lady Madeline, the twin sister of Roderick, is acutely ill. Lady Madeline eventually dies and Roderick decides to preserve her body for a fortnight in one of the vaults in the mansion before they completely bury her. …show more content…

In multiple parts of the short story, he uses the house of the Usher as a metaphor to the Usher bloodline and even to Roderick and Madeline’s conditions. In the first part, he keeps mentioning about the eye-like¬ windows of the mansion. “I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain— upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows— upon a few rank sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—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 every-day life—the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime” (3). The descriptions of the house, from the narrator’s point of view as he arrives at the mansion, clearly reflects the condition of the people living inside it. Also, towards the end of the story, not only did the House of Usher fell and crumbled down, but also the Usher

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