Gothic setting and characters in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher".

"During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens...as the shades of the evening drew on...with the view of the melancholy House of Usher" (Pg. 1534). With these words, Edgar Allan Poe begins one of his most famous works, The Fall of the House of Usher, a tale of horror, a horror implemented through Poe's gothic description of his settings and his characters.

The narrator, a childhood companion of Roderick Usher's, arrives to find an old mansion with "the re-modelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows" (Pg. 1535). His first view of the house comes in a large pool of tarn, or swampy, dead matter, surrounding the house. The narrator, who remains nameless throughout the story, immediately says that he is filled with "a sense of insufferable gloom" (pg.1535). This "sense" foreshadows the dark, dreary conditions to come in the story.

The narrator, upon entering the house, sees a typically furnished 19th century dwelling. However, he becomes confused as to why familiar objects such as the tapestries on the wall and the tall archways make him fell even more superstitious. He even describes the suits of armor on the walls as having a ghost or phantom like quality. "The somber tapestries of the walls [and] the ebon blackness of the floors...(Pg. 1536) and the "dark, tattered draperies" (Pg. 1540) all add to the eerie effect that Poe establishes for his reader. The narrator sees this setting as the cause of the mental illness that Roderick told his about in the letter that summoned him there.

When the narrator first meets his host, Usher greets him very warmly, and the narrator sits with Usher silently for some time. While he sits there, he cannot believe how much Usher has changed since their boyhood days. Usher is described as "cadaverous of complexion, (Pg. 1539) and has very thin and pallid lips, a finely molded chin, had very fine and thin hair that appears to not have been cut in ages. As the narrator continues his visit, he learns more of Usher's illness. First, he suffers from "a morbid acuteness of the senses" (Pg. 1539). He cannot bear more than the most bland food, his clothing can only be textured in a certain way, all flowers have an unbearable odor to him, his eyes cannot handle any bright lights, and his ears are hurt by any noises louder than the stringed instruments he is so found of playing. In addition, Usher suffers from severe paranoia.

After Usher is finished talking about his illness, he tells his friend of his Madeline. While conversing about her, she walks slowly across the far end of the room. The narrator is amazed at how much Madeline possesses the same gothic characteristics as her brother. The real action in the plot occurs when the narrator is asked by Roderick to help him place his recently deceased sister in a vault under the house for a fortnight because he fears the family doctor might exhume her. The apparent death of Madeline plunges Roderick even further into the depths of insanity. He wanders the hall aimlessly at night, and he forgets his usual habits of music and art. To the narrator, Roderick seems like he is hiding some great secret.

One night, Roderick entered the narrator's room and is extremely agitated about a storm brewing outside. The narrator sees that is Roderick upset and tried to calm him down by reading to him from the first story he picks up. As the narrator reads the story, the struggle between a knight and a dragon is paralleled by the struggle of Madeline from within her tomb. Her superhuman desire to live leads her to force her way out of the vault and stagger to the upper chambers. In her death-throes, she lands on her brother, causing him to die of fright. The narrator escapes only to see the entire house collapse behind him as its lone inhabitants die.

As the House of Usher crumbles to the ground, it symbolizes the no longer "human" existence of the Ushers. "While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened - there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind...and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the House of Usher" (Pg. 1547). Not only was the physical state of the "House of Usher" gone, but the ancient family name or dynasty, as it might be called, died also. Isolation and paranoia caused the decay of the Usher roots. These elements, in addition to the setting helped to create the perfect horror story.