46 pages • 1 hour read
Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall of the House of Usher
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1839A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Character Analysis
The Narrator
The unnamed first-person narrator is the story’s protagonist. He is a young man, probably in his late teens or early twenties, and the only detail the reader knows about him is that he and Usher were boyhood friends. The narrator is assumed to be from a wealthy background, as he does not have any obligations or responsibilities that would prevent him from staying with Usher for several weeks.
The narrator’s defining trait is sensitivity. He is keenly attuned to his emotions, his environment, and the people around him. He is also depicted as clearly rational. He conveys the overwhelming emotions and moods he experiences, as well as his fears and superstitions, accurately and without judgment. His narrative style is akin to reportage. Only rarely does he offer his opinion about the feelings and events he experiences. Rather, he presents the information in a factual manner. This establishes him as a reliable narrator, which is critical in a supernatural story, where the reliability of events is already suspect.
In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the narrator manages to escape and witness the house’s destruction. The narrator gives no indication of how events affected him afterward, even though readers know he is telling the story from a future point in time. This omission could signify that even though the narrator is the protagonist, the story is not about him. The narrator is a participant in the story’s events, but his most important role is that of the witness, a survivor who can testify to the story’s otherwise unbelievable events.
Roderick Usher
Roderick Usher is the narrator’s friend. He invites the narrator to his home in hopes that the narrator’s “cheerful” company can help alleviate his nervous illness (4). In terms of Gothic literary tropes, Usher is the damsel in distress. He is the character whom the narrator is meant to save from the mysterious, damaging effects of the haunted house. Usher’s main trait is his fear, which expresses itself as madness. After Madeline’s death, he becomes even more distraught, regressing to a near catatonic state.
Like most damsels in distress, Usher lacks agency. He has no power to free himself from the house, and he relies on the narrator for mental and emotional support. Their relationship is unidirectional, as Usher does not have the capacity to reciprocate. Usher has a compelling power over the narrator, which prompts the latter to stay despite his knowing that Usher’s ailments are incurable.
Usher’s association with the arts reinforces nineteenth century beliefs about madness being the source of artistic inspiration. This belief is seen as narrator describes Usher’s irrational but beautiful paintings and his fantastic musical improvisations (12-13). Aside from his artistic pursuits, Usher is a passive character. In horror narratives that use the “final girl” trope of having a young woman escape (either on her own or aided by someone else), the implication is that she will go on to procreate and perpetuate life. Usher does not have the power to procreate because he is a product of incest. By the logic of Gothic horror, Usher cannot be saved because he represents death and madness, rather than life.
Multiple interpretations exist about the true nature of Usher’s madness and whether he is as passive as he seems.
Madeline Usher
Madeline Usher is the story’s catalyst. Her illness and death trigger a series of events that lead to the story’s climax and, ultimately, its denouement. As Usher’s twin sister, she serves as his double. Similar to her brother, she suffers from an undiagnosed wasting illness and is the product of a sickly family lineage. Like Usher, Madeline does not have any contact with the outside world, except her doctors.
Madeline is the only woman with whom Usher has contact, and it is implied that they are in an incestuous relationship. As the incestuous female lover, Madeline symbolizes the monstrous female body, an inversion of the purity and virginity that Victorian upper-class women were meant to represent.
Poe leaves the ending ambiguous as to whether the Madeline who attacks Usher is dead or alive. Madeline and Usher’s deaths signify the period’s belief that God will not tolerate incest, and eventually, through an equally gruesome and unnatural act, that natural order will be restored.
Related Titles
By Edgar Allan Poe
