The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe

Table Of Content

• The House of Usher (2006 film)
• Breaking Down the Brutal Ending of The Fall of the House of Usher
• 'Challengers' Heats Up: How Zendaya's Star Power and a Sexy Love Triangle Could Give Gen Z Its Next Movie Obsession
• Tamerlane Usher
• A Summary and Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’

On the other hand, there are plenty of strange things about the Usher family. For one, “the entire family lay in the direct line of descent,” meaning that only one son from each generation survived and reproduced. Poe implies incestuous relations sustained the genetic line and that Roderick and Madeline are the products of extensive intermarriage within the Usher family. The Fall of the House of Usher, supernatural horror story by Edgar Allan Poe, published in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine in 1839 and issued in Poe’s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840).

The House of Usher (2006 film)

Many critics have interpreted the story as, in part, an autobiographical portrait of Poe himself, although we should be wary, perhaps, of speculating too much about any parallels. Poe was often dismissed by contemporary literary critics because of the unusual content and brevity of his stories. When his work was critically evaluated, it was condemned for its tendencies toward Romanticism. The writers and critics of Poe’s day rejected many of that movement’s core tenets, including its emphasis on the emotions and the experience of the sublime. Accordingly, commentaries on social injustice, morality, and utilitarianism proliferated in the mid-19th century. Poe conceived of his writing as a response to the literary conventions of this period.

Breaking Down the Brutal Ending of The Fall of the House of Usher

In exchange for this protection, both Roderick and Madeline had to consent to the bargain that at the end of Roderick's life, just before he was fated to die anyway, his entire bloodline would die with him. Roderick and Madeline would also have to die at the same time, leaving this world the same way they came into it. The siblings agreed to the deal, left the bar, and soon after became convinced that the whole thing had been a shared delusion. 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.

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Within a few hours of the narrator’s arrival, Roderick begins to share some of his theories about his family. Much to the narrator’s surprise, Roderick claims that the Usher mansion is sentient and that it exercises some degree of control over its inhabitants. According to Roderick, Madeline suffers from a cataleptic disease that has gradually limited her mobility. As Roderick talks about his sister’s illness, the narrator sees her pass through a distant part of the house.

The Fall of the House of Usher review – a gleefully terrifying take on Edgar Allan Poe

Roderick and Madeline sold their souls the night they killed Fortunato CEO Rufus Griswold (Michael Trucco) — the same night they met Verna, on New Year’s Eve 1979. Using Griswold as a fall guy to begin Roderick’s takeover, the twins drugged him on the night of the company holiday party. When Griswold woke, he found that they’re sealing him behind a brick wall in the basement of the new Fortunato building he’s constructing. His cries for help were useless, because the holidays meant no one would be back in the building for days. But he wouldn’t last the night anyway — Madeline poisoned him with cyanide.

Deconstructing The Fall of the House of Usher's Murderous Poe Mash-Up - Vulture

Deconstructing The Fall of the House of Usher's Murderous Poe Mash-Up.

Posted: Fri, 13 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

(Poe had one too.) Roderick has been haunted by all his awful children who have shuffled off this mortal coil, and it’s because it feels like the ghosts are finally coming for him that he is ready to confess. He’s having visions of monstrous ghosts, including the recurring specter of Verna (Carla Gugino), a figure that connects most of these tall tales as a sort of vengeful force of karma, the devil come to take what she’s due from a man who profited off the pain of others. ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ is an 1839 short story by Edgar Allan Poe ( ), a pioneer of the short story and a writer who arguably unleashed the full psychological potential of the Gothic horror genre. The story concerns the narrator’s visit to a strange mansion owned by his childhood friend, who is behaving increasingly oddly as he and his twin sister dwell within the ‘melancholy’ atmosphere of the house. The overarching narrative of The Fall of the House of Usher loosely follows Poe's 1839 short story of the same name, with Roderick recounting his decades-spanning tale to Auggie inside his decrepit childhood home.

Tamerlane Usher

Roderick eventually declares that he has been hearing these sounds for days, and that they are being made by his sister, who was in fact alive when she was entombed. The House of Usher is a 2006 American drama thriller film based on the 1839 Edgar Allan Poe short story "The Fall of the House of Usher". This horror-comedy takes place when high school kids journey to find out what this entity around them is and try to find out how a teen named Harold Biddle died 30 years ago.

The narrator also notes that Madeline's body has rosy cheeks, which sometimes happens after death. Over the next week, both Roderick and the narrator find themselves increasingly agitated. Siblings Roderick and Madeline Usher have built a pharmaceutical company into an empire of wealth, privilege and power; however, secrets come to light when the heirs to the Usher dynasty sta... She possessed the warmth and moral compass of Annabel Lee, he thought, the “best of her without a broken heart.” She’s the one who called 911 and saved her mom from her father’s brutality. Her death brings Verna no joy, but she does tell Lenore about all the good her mother does in the future thanks to Lenore’s heroic choice to save her — before allowing the youngest and kindest Usher to die peacefully.

Dreams, for instance, are the way our unconscious mind communicates with our conscious mind, but in such a way which shrouds or veils their message in ambiguous symbolism and messages. ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ can also be analysed as a deeply telling autobiographical portrait, in which Roderick Usher represents, or reflects, Poe himself. After all, Roderick Usher is a poet and artist, well-read (witness the assortment of books which he and the narrator read together), sensitive and indeed overly sensitive (to every sound, taste, sight, touch, and so on).

Poe’s writing helped elevate the genre from a position of critical neglect to an art form. “The Fall of the House of Usher” stands as one of Poe’s most popular and critically examined stories. Contemporary readers and critics interpreted the story as a somewhat sensationalized account of Poe’s supposed madness. (As a recluse, Poe often invited such accusations.) Later scholarship pursued alternative interpretations. Some scholars speculated that Poe may have attached special importance to the fact that Roderick and Madeline are twins, noting that Poe previously investigated the phenomenon of the double in “Morella” (1835) and “William Wilson” (1839).

The narrator is the only character to escape the House of Usher, which he views as it cracks and sinks into the mountain lake. Fearing that her body will be exhumed for medical study, Roderick insists that she be entombed for two weeks in the family tomb located in the house before being permanently buried. The narrator helps Roderick put Madeline's body in the tomb, whereupon the narrator realizes that Madeline and Roderick are twins.

It was shortly after this that Auggie arrived at the house to hear Roderick's confession. Only, as evidenced by the noises coming from the basement, Madeline wasn't quite dead. Decades later, once it became clear that Verna was the one killing off the Usher children, Madeline tried to sidestep the deal by convincing Roderick to kill himself.

Guilt permeates every frame of Flanagan’s Poe universe, and buys into not so much the horror as the terror. The feeling that something awful is imminent makes for an engaging watch. Described by Frederick as “Gucci Caligula,” Perry is the youngest of the Usher children. Having only recently been thrust into the life of the ultra-rich, Perry’s goal is to make life one big party, and he’s hoping to use his family’s money to achieve just that. Extremely cunning and biting, Camille L’Espanaye runs the PR for the family. She’s made her life’s work not only about spinning bad behavior into good press, but also collecting files filled with every dirty secret of those closest to her.

It’s “Succession” meets The Tell-Tale Heart, a story of vengeance, power, betrayal, and bloody parts. As Roderick nears the conclusion of his story, which jumps back and forth between his early years working at Fortunato and the events that led up to each of his children's deaths, he finally arrives at the fateful night that changed everything, New Year's Eve of 1979. As the doting mother of both Frederick and Tamerlane, Annabel Lee was devastated to lose custody of her children after Roderick gorged them with money they couldn’t refuse. We discover in the final episode, when she appears as a vision to Roderick, that she literally could not live without them.

Incredibly intelligent, driven, and calculating, Madeline has always been the brains behind Fortunato. Whenever her brother falters, she’s always there to give him a push, making them a formidable duo. While she loves Roderick, her unrelenting drive and desire for success wouldn’t hold her back from stepping over him, if need be. To secure their fortune — and future — two ruthless siblings build a family dynasty that begins to crumble when their heirs mysteriously die, one by one. Once Roderick and Madeline were the only ones left in the bar after a long night of drinking, Verna revealed to the twins that she knew what they had done. But, if they agreed to her terms, she could guarantee that they would not only get away with Rufus' murder but also rise to control Fortunato's billion-dollar painkiller empire and never be convicted of a single crime.

Further, Roderick believes that his fate is connected to the family mansion. The first two episodes of The Fall of the House of Usher premiered at Fantastic Fest in September 2023 before the Netflix release the following month, being viewed more than 13 million times in its first two weeks. It was met with positive reviews, with critics praising its production values, directing, and performances (in particular from Gugino, Greenwood and Mark Hamill), although they were divided on its narrative, notably in relation to the source materials.