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Analysis

"The Fall of the House of Usher" is considered the best example of Poe's "totality", where every element and detail is related and relevant.^[1]

The theme of the crumbling, haunted castle is a key feature of Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto, a late 18th Century novel which largely contributed in defining the Gothic genre.

The article written by Walter Evans "'The Fall of the House of Usher' and Poe's Theory of the Tale," reprinted in Short Story Criticism, says house and the setting is really a reflection of Roderick Usher. As described in "The Fall of the House of Usher," could symbolize the "'bleak' cheeks, huge eyes...'rank' and slightly bushy mustache, and perhaps even 'white trunks of decayed' teeth" of Usher.

"The Fall of the House of Usher" shows Poe's ability to create an emotional tone in his work, specifically feelings of fear, doom, and guilt.^[2] These emotions center on Roderick Usher who, like many Poe characters, suffers from an unnamed disease. Like the narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart", his disease causes his hyperactive senses. The illness manifests physically but is based in Roderick's mental or even moral state. He is sick, it is suggested, because he expects to be sick based on his family's history of illness and is, therefore, essentially a hypochondriac.^[3] Similarly, he buries his sister alive because he expects to bury her alive, creating his own self-fulfilling prophecy.

The House of Usher, itself doubly referring both to the actual structure and the family, plays a significant role in the story. It is the first "character" that the narrator introduces to the reader, presented with a humanized description: its windows are described as "eye-like" twice in the first paragraph. The fissure that develops in its side is symbolic of the decay of the Usher family and the house "dies" along with the two Usher siblings. This connection was emphasized in Roderick's poem "The Haunted Palace" which seems to be a direct reference to the house that foreshadows doom.^[4]

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". The explicit psychological dimension of this tale has prompted many critics to analyze it as a description of the human psyche, comparing, for instance, the House to the unconscious, and its central crack to the personality split which is called Dissociative identity disorder. Mental disorder is also evoked through the themes of melancholy, possible incest, and vampirism. An incestuous relationship between Roderick and Madeline is not explicitly stated, but seems implied by the strange attachment between the two.^[5]

Major themes

• The doppelganger 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".
• Poe uses the theme of the death and resurrection of a woman here as well as in "Ligeia" and "Morella."
• 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.

Allusions and references

• The opening epigraph quotes "Le Refus" (1831) by the French songwriter Pierre-Jean de Béranger (1780–1857), translated to English as "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 one of Usher's musical compositions as "a ... 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).^[6] A manuscript copy of the music was found among Weber's papers upon his death in 1826 and the work was mistakenly attributed to him.

• Usher's painting reminds the narrator of the Swiss-born British painter Henry Fuseli (1741–1825).

• In the popular book series Skeleton Creek by Patrick Carman, the first code given for sarahfincher.com is houseofusher, or House of Usher. The corresponding video shows Sarah filming her visit to a dredge. It spooks her a bit. The narrator is unsettled by The House of Usher.

• The song "The Casket of Roderick Usher" by Finch was named after the character in this short story.

Roderick Usher's library

Though Poe does not always render the titles correctly, 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 Rejse (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 have been 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.

Evans, Walter. "'The Fall of the House of Usher' and Poe's Theory of the Tale." Studies in Short Fiction. 14.2 (1977): 137-44. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Laurie Lanzen Harris an Sheila Fitzgerald. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 1988. 403-5.