Reliability of Usher's Perspective on Madeline

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Throughout The Fall of the House of Usher, Poe chooses to reveal Lady Madeline’s illness through the perspective of her brother, Roderick, rather than giving readers an unbiased perspective of her illness. Considering that the only description of Madeline’s madness comes from Roderick, who himself had a compromised mental state, one must question the reliability of Roderick’s description of Madeline’s illness. One must closely examine the nature of Roderick’s mental illness in order to fully understand his inability to comprehend the reality of Madeline’s illness. After carefully analyzing Roderick’s hypochondria and Madeline’s escape, one will conclude that the Roderick Usher’s mental state renders his testimony throughout the story an unreliable depiction of reality. Therefore, his discernment of Lady Madeline’s illness cannot be relied upon; putting all of Roderick’s claims throughout the story into question. Reader’s will not get a first hand observation of Lady Madeline’s mental state because they only witnesses examples of her illness through Roderick Usher’s perspective. One is first made aware of Madeline’s mental disorder when Usher explains that his own affliction is an effect of his sister’s illness. “He admitted...that much of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced...to the severe and long continued illness of his beloved sister...A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person …”” (p.7). After Usher reveals his perception of his sister’s suffering, she enters and leaves the room without speaking, and “dies” soon after. The narrator implies that Madeline’s silence may have been a part of the cataleptic character associated with her illness. The reader is never given a chance t... ... middle of paper ... ...uried alive, Madeline did not continue to waste away in her lethargy, but rather made a conscious attempt to escape from the crypt her brother entrapped her in. “ ...did stand Lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame.” (19). Madeline’s successful escape after her entombment clearly gives one a very different impression of her mental state than the lethargy described by Usher. Usher’s description of Madeline’s mental estate is disproven by her ability to claw her way out of her grave. Usher’s inability to comprehend reality gave him a very different image of his sister than one would get when analyzing Madeline with a clear mind. The diagnosis of a madman cannot be relied upon, and therefore readers cannot believe Usher’s assertion of Lady Madeline’s illness.

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