The Fall of the House of Usher
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Author | Edgar Allan Poe |
|---|---|
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Horror |
| Released in | Burton's Gentlemen's Magazine |
| Media Type | Monthly magazine |
| Released | September, 1839 |
"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe. The story was first published in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine in September 1839. It was heavily revised before being included in a collection of his fiction entitled Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840. It contains within it the poem "The Haunted Palace", which had earlier been published separately in the April 1839 issue of the Baltimore Museum magazine.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
The tale opens with the unnamed narrator arriving at the house of his friend, Roderick Usher, having received a letter from him in a distant part of the country complaining of an illness and asking for his comfort. Usher's symptoms include hyperesthesia (extreme hypersensitivity to light, sounds, smells, and tastes), hypochondria, and acute anxiety. It is revealed that Usher's twin sister, Madeline, is also ill, suffering from catalepsy. The narrator is impressed with Usher´s paintings, and attempts to cheer him by reading with him and listening to his improvised musical compositions on the guitar. Usher sings "The Haunted Palace", then tells the narrator that he believes the house he lives in to be sentient, and that this sentience arises from the arrangement of the masonry and vegetation surrounding it.
Usher later informs the narrator that his sister has died and insists that she be entombed for two weeks in a vault in the house before being permanently buried. They inter her, but over the next week both Usher and the narrator find themselves becoming increasingly agitated for no apparent reason. A storm begins. Usher comes to the narrator's bedroom, which is situated directly above the vault, and throws open his window to the storm. He notices that the bog surrounding the house seems to glow in the dark, as it glowed in Roderick Usher's paintings, although there is no lightning.
The narrator attempts to calm Usher by reading aloud The Mad Trist, a novel involving a knight named Ethelred who breaks into a hermit's dwelling in an attempt to escape an approaching storm, only to find a palace of gold guarded by a dragon. He also finds hanging on the wall a shield of shining brass of which is written a legend: that the one who slays the dragon wins the shield. With a stroke of his mace, Ethelred fells the dragon, who dies with a piercing shriek, and proceeds to take the shield, which falls to the floor with an unnerving clatter.
As the narrator reads of the knight's forcible entry into the dwelling, cracking and ripping sounds are heard somewhere in the house. When the dragon is described as shrieking as it dies, a shriek is heard, again within the house. As he relates the shield falling from off the wall, a reverberation, metallic and hollow, can be heard. Usher, hysterical, exclaims that these sounds are being made by his sister, who was in fact alive when she was entombed. The bedroom door is then blown open to reveal Madeline standing there. She falls violently in death upon her brother, who also dies. The narrator then flees the house, and, as he does so, notices a flash of light causing him to look back upon the House of Usher, in time to watch it break in two, the fragments sinking into the tarn.
[edit] Major themes
Poe always conveys one human characteristic in each of his short stories as one of his major themes. The theme that Poe conveys through this story is that of fear.
The doppelgänger theme, prominent in such works of Poe as "William Wilson", appears as well in "The Fall of the House of Usher". The reflection of the house in the tarn is described in the opening paragraph, and "a striking similitude between the brother and sister" is mentioned when Madeline "dies".
The death and resurrection of a woman, a main theme in "Ligeia" and "Morella", is also present here.
The theme of mental illness is explored in this work, as it is in numerous other tales such as "Berenice".
Interment while alive is also explored in "The Premature Burial" and "The Cask of Amontillado".
There are also various Gothic elements, such as the decrepit castle and tarn, whose signs of decay reflect the mental condition of Usher, which is rapidly deteriorating.
[edit] References to other works of art
- The tale opens with a slightly altered quotation from "Le Refus" (1831) by the French songwriter Pierre-Jean de Béranger (1780-1857):
Son cœur est un luth suspendu;
Sitôt qu'on le touche il résonne.
his heart is a suspended lute, as soon as it is touched, it resounds.
Béranger's original text reads "Mon cœur" (my heart) and not "Son cœur" (his/her heart).
- The narrator describes Usher's musical compositions, commenting that:
"Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber."
Poe here refers to a popular piano work of his time -- which, though going by the title 'Weber's Last Waltz' was actually composed by Carl Gottlieb Reissiger (1798-1859).
- He goes on to discuss Usher's painting, saying:
"For me at least -- in the circumstances then surrounding me -- there arose out of the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries of Fuseli."
The reference here is to the British painter Henry Fuseli (1741-1825). A line near the end of the story is inspired by Fuseli's painting The Nightmare.:
I endeavored to believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room—of the dark and tattered draperies, which tortured into motion by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm.
[edit] Roderick Usher's library
All of the books mentioned in the story are real works except for The Mad Trist. No book like the Vigiliae Mortuorum secundum chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae exists exactly as Poe described it, though there is a real (and very rare) book by that title, which means "The Office of the Dead as sung by the choir of the Church of Mainz". Aside from these, the books are:
- Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gresset (1709-1777): Vert-Vert (1734), La Chartreuse
- Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527): Novella di Belfagor Arcidiavolo (1545)
- Emanuel Swedenborg né Swedberg (1688-1772): De Coelo et Ejus Mirabilibus, et de Inferno, et Auditis et Visis (1758)
- Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754): Niels Klims underjordiske Resje (1741)
- Robert Fludd/Robertus de Fluctibus (1574-1637):
- Utriusque Macrocosmi at Microcosmi Historia (published between 1617 and 1619)
- Integrum Morborum Mysterium: Medicinae Catholicae (1631)
- Joannes Indagine (1467-1537): Die Kunst der Chiromantzey (c.1523)
- Marinus Cureau de la Chambre (1594-1669): Discours sur les Principes de la Chiromancie (1653)
- Johann Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853): Das alte Buch und die Reise ins Blaue hinein. Eine Mährchen-Novelle (1835)
- Tommaso Campanella né Giovanni Domenico Campanella (1568-1639): Civitas Solis (1623)
- Nicolau Aymerich (c.1320-1399): Directorium Inquisitorum (1376)
- Pomponius Mela: De situ orbis (c.43 CE)
Notes:
- Fludd wrote two works which had sections on chiromancy (palmistry). Both are given above. The relevant sections are entitled, respectively, De Scientia Animae Naturalis cum vitali seu astrologia chiromantica and De Signis sine praesagis chiromanticis.
- Campanella originally wrote City of the Sun in Italian in 1602 as La città del Sole before rewriting it in Latin between 1613 and 1623, and its subsequent publication in Latin as Civitas Solis in Frankfurt in 1623.
- De la Chambre later published Discours sur les Principes de la Chiromancie as part of L'Art de Connaitre Les Hommes in 1662.
[edit] Literary significance & criticism
L. Sprague de Camp, in his Lovecraft: A Biography [p.246f], wrote that "[a]ccording to the late [Poe expert] Thomas O. Mabbott, [H. P.] Lovecraft, in 'Supernatural Horror,' solved a problem in the interpretation of Poe" by arguing that "Roderick Usher, his sister Madeline, and the house all shared one common soul".
Other writers have claimed that themes of incest and vampirism are suggested in the work.
[edit] Allusions/references from other works
Ray Bradbury's story "Usher II," which appeared in The Martian Chronicles, is an adaptation of Poe's story.
Brian Stableford's 1988 science fiction story, The Growth of the House of Usher expands on Poe's idea of the house being sentient. It features a dying architect who invites a friend to his house, which is entirely a product of biotechnology with Poe-related features (for instance, its basement produces cloned "Madelines" whose life-cycle is to climb to higher levels of the house then die).
The novel House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski features similar themes of a "living" house.
Themes similar to this were echoed in Stephen King's The Shining and Rose Red.
The ending of the story is somewhat parroted at the end of Brian DePalma's film Carrie, when the house collapses into itself. The same can be said for the film Poltergeist (though here the house at the end seems to collapse into thin air).
In an episode of the British science-fiction series Doctor Who, "Ghost Light", the primary antagonist Josiah Samuel Smith appears to be inspired by the character of Roderick Usher.
In The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror" Halloween Special, the house in the vignette "Bad Dream House" implodes at the very end Usher-style. In the ninth-season episode Lisa the Simpson, the Simpsons watch a TV special entitled "When Buildings Collapse." One of the buildings to fall is called The House of Usher.
Dodie Smith's novel I Capture the Castle, Neil compares the Mortmains' castle to the Usher house.
[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
In the low-budget Roger Corman film from 1960, known in the United States as House of Usher, the narrator falls in love with the sickly Madeline, much to Roderick's horror. As Roderick reveals, the Usher family has a history of evil and cruelty so great that he and Madeline pledged in their youth never to have children and to allow their family to die with them. When Madeline falls into a deathlike slumber, her brother rushes to have her placed in the family crypt. When she wakes up, Madeline goes insane from being buried alive and breaks free through insanity-induced strength. She confronts her brother only to fall dead at his feet. Suddenly the house begins to collapse and the narrator flees as Roderick is killed by the falling house. The film was Corman's first in a series of eight films inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe.
Czech surrealist animator Jan Švankmajer made a movie based on this story.
[edit] List of films
- La Chute de la maison Usher (France, 1928) by Jean Epstein
- The Fall of the House of Usher (US, 1928) by James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber
- The Fall of the House of Usher (UK, 1949) directed by Ivan Barnett
- House of Usher (a.k.a. Fall of the House of Usher and The Mysterious House of Usher) (1960) by Roger Corman with Vincent Price
- The Fall of the House of Usher (1966) (TV)
- '"Zánik domu Usheru" (The Fall of the House of Usher) (1980) (animated version by Jan Svankmajer)
- "Histoires extraordinaires: La chute de la maison Usher" (1981) (TV) with Mathieu Carrière
- The Fall of the House of Usher (1982) (TV) with Martin Landau and Ray Walston
- "El hundimiento de la Casa de Usher'" (1983) by Jesus Franco with Howard Vernon
- The House of Usher (1988) with Oliver Reed
- The House of Usher (2005)
[edit] Music
Peter Hammill composed and recorded an opera based on the story in 1991. In this work, the house itself becomes a vocal part, to be sung by the same performer who sings the role of Roderick Usher. The libretto by Chris Judge Smith incorporates material from other writings by Poe, and also adopts the subplot of a romantic attraction between Madeline Usher and the narrator, who is given the name Montresor.
Another operatic version was composed by Philip Glass, with a libretto by Arthur Yorinks. Claude Debussy wrote about 30 minutes of The Fall of the House of Usher, an unfinished opera that was to be a companion piece to another short opera based on Poe's The Devil in the Belfry.
Composer Nikita Koshkin wrote a piece for classical guitar entitled "Usher Waltz". The name possibly refers to the "perversion... of the wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber" which Roderick improvises on his guitar, but the relationship between Koshkin's piece and Von Weber's "Aufforderung zum Tanz" is unclear. "Usher Waltz" more clearly relates to Poe's work in its dark mood and its compositional structure.
The Alan Parsons Project included an instrumental with the same name on 1976's Tales of Mystery and Imagination, an album of songs based on works by Poe. The song is in five parts ("Prelude", "Arrival", "Intermezzo", "Pavane", and "Fall").
The Hormones, a punk band from western Pennsylvania, has a song "Usher" after the tale.
The punk/post-hardcore band Finch released a song from their second full length CD, Say Hello to Sunshine, called "The Casket of Roderick Usher".
The folk rock band Lindisfarne had a number 3 UK hit single in 1972 with the Alan Hull song "Lady Eleanor", with lyrics alluding to this and other Poe stories which had been the subject of film productions by Roger Corman starring Vincent Price in the 1960s.
Geggy Tah has a song entitled House Of Usher on their second CD which makes reference to Madeline's being buried alive.
[edit] Other adaptations
The actor and director Steven Berkoff wrote a play based on the story.
In The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, one of the Dark Brotherhood quests involves killing a sick knight named Roderick by switching out his medicine with a poison.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- "The Fall of the House of Usher" - Full text from Works, 1850
- "The Fall of the House of Usher" Study Guide
- Summary, analysis, background and quiz on "The Fall of the House of Usher"
- "The Fall of the House of Usher"—eText at Bartelby.com
- Full text on PoeStories.com with hyperlinked vocabulary words.
- Full text of story from Project Gutenberg
- "The Fall of the House of Usher" at American Literature
- "The Poe Decoder - 'The Fall of the House of Usher'" An analysis on "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Martha Womack
| Edgar Allan Poe |
|---|
| Poems |
|
Poetry (1824) • O, Tempora! O, Mores! (1825) • Song (1827) • Imitation (1827) • Spirits of the Dead (1827) • A Dream (1827) • Stanzas (1827) • Tamerlane (1827) • The Lake (1827) • Evening Star (1827) • A Dream (1827) • To Margaret (1827) • The Happiest Day (1827) • To The River —— (1828) (1828) • Romance (1829) • Fairy-Land (1829) • To Science (1829) • To Isaac Lea (1829) • Al Aaraaf (1829) • An Acrostic (1829) • Elizabeth (1829) • To Helen (1831) • A Paean (1831) • The Sleeper (1831) • The City in the Sea (1831) • The Valley of Unrest (1831) • Israfel (1831) • The Coliseum (1833) • Enigma (1833) • Fanny (1833) • Serenade (1833) • Song of Triumph from Epimanes (1833) • Latin Hymn (1833) • To One in Paradise (1833) • Hymn (1835) • Politician (1835) • May Queen Ode (1836) • Spiritual Song (1836) • Bridal Ballad (1837) • To Zante (1837) • The Haunted Palace (1839) • Silence, a Sonnet (1839) • Lines on Joe Locke (1843) • The Conqueror Worm (1843) • Lenore (1843) • Eulalie (1843) • A Campaign Song (1844) • Dream-Land (1844) • Impromptu. To Kate Carol (1845) • To Frances (1845) • The Divine Right of Kings (1845) • Epigram for Wall Street (1845) • The Raven (1845) • A Valentine (1846) • Beloved Physician (1847) • An Enigma (1847) • Deep in Earth (1847) • Ulalume (1847) • Lines on Ale (1848) • To Marie Louise (1848) • Evangeline (1848) • Eldorado (1849) • For Annie (1849) • The Bells (1849) • Annabel Lee (1849) • A Dream Within A Dream (1850) • Alone (1875) |
| Tales |
| Metzengerstein (1832) • The Duc De L'Omelette (1832) • A Tale of Jerusalem (1832) • Loss of Breath (1832) • Bon-Bon (1832) • MS. Found in a Bottle (1833) • The Assignation (1834) • Berenice (1835) • Morella (1835) • Lionizing (1835) • The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall (1835) • King Pest (1835) • Shadow - A Parable (1835) • Four Beasts in One - The Homo-Cameleopard (1836) • Mystification (1837) • Silence - A Fable (1837) • Ligeia (1838) • How to Write a Blackwood Article (1838) • A Predicament (1838) • The Devil in the Belfry (1839) • The Man That Was Used Up (1839) • The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) • William Wilson (1839) • The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion (1839) • Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling (1840) • The Business Man (1840) • The Man of the Crowd (1840) • The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) • A Descent into the Maelstrom (1841) • The Island of the Fay (1841) • The Colloquy of Monos and Una (1841) • Never Bet the Devil Your Head (1841) • Eleonora (1841) • Three Sundays in a Week (1841) • The Oval Portrait (1842) • The Masque of the Red Death (1842) • The Landscape Garden (1842) • The Mystery of Marie Roget (1842) • The Pit and the Pendulum (1842) • The Tell-Tale Heart (1843) • The Gold-Bug (1843) • The Black Cat (1843) • Diddling (1843) • The Spectacles (1844) • A Tale of the Ragged Mountains (1844) • The Premature Burial (1844) • Mesmeric Revelation (1844) • The Oblong Box (1844) • The Angel of the Odd (1844) • Thou Art the Man (1844) • The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq. (1844) • The Purloined Letter (1844) • The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade (1845) • Some Words with a Mummy (1845) • The Power of Words (1845) • The Imp of the Perverse (1845) • The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether (1845) • The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (1845) • The Sphinx (1846) • The Cask of Amontillado (1846) • The Domain of Arnheim (1847) • Mellonta Tauta (1849) • Hop-Frog (1849) • Von Kempelen and His Discovery (1849) • X-ing a Paragrab (1849) • Landor's Cottage (1849) |
| Other Works |
| Essays: Maelzel's Chess Player (1836) • The Daguerreotype (1840) • The Philosophy of Furniture (1840) • A Few Words on Secret Writing (1841) • The Rationale of Verse (1843) • Morning on the Wissahiccon (1844) • Old English Poetry (1845) • The Philosophy of Composition (1846) • The Poetic Principle (1846) • Eureka (1848) Hoaxes: • The Balloon-Hoax (1844) Novels: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1837) • The Journal of Julius Rodman (1840) Plays: Scenes From 'Politian' (1835) Other: The Conchologist's First Book (1839) • The Light-House (1849) |
