Narrator
In "The Fall of the House of Usher", Poe's unnamed narrator is called to visit the House of Usher by Roderick Usher. As his "best and only friend,"[3] Roderick writes of his illness and asks that the narrator visit him. The narrator is persuaded by Roderick's desperation for companionship. Though sympathetic and helpful, the narrator is continually made to be an outsider, watching the narrative unfold without fully becoming a part of it. The narrator also exists as Roderick's audience as the men have not remained close. Roderick is convinced of his impending demise and the narrator is gradually drawn into this belief after being brought forth to witness the horrors and hauntings of the House of Usher.[4]
From his arrival, the narrator notes the family's isolationist tendencies, as well as the cryptic and special connection between Madeline and Roderick, the final living members of the Usher family. Throughout the tale and her varying states of consciousness, Madeline completely ignores the narrator's presence. After Roderick Usher claims that Madeline has died, the narrator helps Usher entomb Madeline in an underground vault despite noticing Madeline's flushed, lifelike appearance.
During one sleepless night, the narrator reads aloud to Usher as eerie sounds are heard throughout the mansion. He witnesses Madeline's reemergence and the subsequent, simultaneous death of the twins. The narrator is the only character to escape the House of Usher, which he views as it cracks and sinks into the mountain lake.
Roderick Usher
Roderick Usher is the twin of Madeline Usher and one of the last living members of the Usher family. Roderick writes to the narrator, his boyhood friend, about an ongoing illness.[3] When the narrator arrives, he is startled to see Roderick's eerie and off-putting appearance. He is described by the narrator as having:
gray-white skin; eyes large and full of light; lips not bright in color, but of a beautiful shape; a well-shaped nose; hair of great softness — a face that was not easy to forget. And now the increase in this strangeness of his face had caused so great a change that I almost did not know him. The horrible white of his skin, and the strange light in his eyes, surprised me and even made me afraid. His hair had been allowed to grow, and in its softness, it did not fall around his face but seemed to lie upon the air. I could not, even with an effort, see in my friend the appearance of a simple human being.[5]
Roderick Usher is a recluse.[3] He is unwell both physically and mentally. In addition to his constant fear and trepidation, Madeline's catalepsy contributes to his decay as he is tormented by the sorrow of watching his sibling die. The narrator states:
He admitted [that] much of the peculiar gloom which thus affected him could be traced [to] the evidently approaching dissolution [of] his sole companion.[3]
According to Terry W. Thompson, Roderick meticulously plans for Madeline's burial to prevent "resurrection men" from stealing his beloved sister's corpse for dissection, study, or experimentation as was common in the 18th and 19th centuries for medical schools and physicians in need of cadavers.[6]
Roderick and Madeline are twins and the two share an incommunicable connection that critics conclude may be either incestuous or metaphysical,[7] as two individuals in an extra-sensory relationship embodying a single entity. To that end, Roderick's deteriorating condition speeds his own torment and eventual death.
Like Madeline, Roderick is connected to the mansion, the titular House of Usher. He believes the mansion is sentient and responsible, in part, for his deteriorating mental health and melancholy. Despite this admission, Usher remains in the mansion and composes art containing the Usher mansion or similar haunted mansions. His mental health deteriorates faster as he begins to hear Madeline's attempts to escape the underground vault she was buried in, and he eventually meets his death out of fear in a manner similar to the House of Usher's cracking and sinking.
Madeline Usher
Madeline Usher is the twin sister of Roderick Usher. She is deathly ill and cataleptic. She appears near the narrator, but never acknowledges his presence. She returns to her bedroom where Roderick claims she has died. The narrator and Roderick place her in a tomb despite her flushed, lively appearance. In the tale's conclusion, Madeline escapes from the tomb and returns to Roderick, scaring him to death.
According to Poe's detective methodology in literature, Madeline Usher may be the physical embodiment of the supernatural and metaphysical worlds. Her limited presence is explained as a personification of Roderick's torment and fear. Madeline does not appear until she is summoned through her brother's fear, foreshadowed in the epigraph, with a quote from French poet Pierre-Jean de Béranger: "Son cœur est un luth suspendu; / Sitôt qu'on le touche il résonne", meaning "His heart is a tightened lute; as soon as one touches it, it echoes".[1]
