The Fall of the House of Usher
Madeline of the House of Usher Role-playing games are a great past time for literature enthusiasts. A player sits down, creates a character with quirks and a personality, usually special abilities, and meets with other people who have done the same. They sit at tables, in couches, on porches all around the world. They sit down to hear and participate in a story, a story told by the storyteller. The storyteller creates a scenario, a background, extra characters (NPCs), and certain rules. Once the story begins, control is a relative term. The storyteller knows the story, but the characters are free to move about and unknowingly change the story as they go. In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the storyteller and characters interact in a very strange way. The storyteller tries to maintain control and the characters try to free themselves. It is a struggle against two aspects, the oppressor and the oppressed, masculine and feminine. Madeline Usher, the sole female character in the story, is kept in the background, but holds her own by being the main drive for much of the plot. Roderick Usher, the male descendant of the Usher household, has qualities of the feminine, but introduces a powerfully masculine identity into the house. The line of triumph of the oppressed feminine over the oppressive masculine is blurry and leaves much to be desired. The first key to the house as a story and backdrop is the connection often attributed to Roderick and the house. The idea that the house deteriorates with the last wielder of the Usher name has been argued before. Roderick’s slow descent into madness is marked by cracks in the foundation of the house. This theory holds good merit from textual evidence. The story itself follows that line; Roderick describes the house as having “an effect which the physique of the gray walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length, brought about upon the morale of his