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I fear, fear itself.
The Fall of The House Of Usher
Edgar Allen Poe
by Jon Ritenour
Roderick and his twin sister Madeline are the last of the all time-honored "House of Usher." They are both suffering from rather strange illnesses which may be attributed to the intermarriage of the family. "...[T]he stem of the Usher race...had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain." Roderick suffers from "a morbid acuteness of the senses"; while Madeline's illness is characterized by "...a settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent although transient affections of a partly cataleptical character..." which caused her to lose consciousness and feeling. The body would then assume a deathlike rigidity. Besides his own illness and being depressed by Madeline's deteriorating condition, Roderick becomes "...enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the [mansion]...." He believes that somehow the mansion controls his behavior, and what eventually will become of him. "...[F]or many years, he had never ventured forth--in regard to an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be restated...." In his desperation, Roderick pens a letter to a boyhood companion to whom he refers as "...his only personal friend..." in hopes that "...the cheerfulness of [his friend's] society ...[might alleviate]...his malady....[I]t was the apparent heart that went with his request--which allowed [the friend] no room for hesitation...." The friend travels on horseback to the House of Usher. It is the autumn of the year, and there is a sense of death and decay surrounding the Usher mansion. Although "[n]o portion of the masonry had fallen...there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones....[T]he eye of a scrutinizing observer might have [noticed] a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn." Once inside, the friend notices "[a]n air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom [which] hung over and pervaded all." Roderick arose from the sofa as his friend entered the chamber. "Surely, [a] man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher!" He had a "cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous; lips...very pallid; a nose...with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a...chin...in...want of moral energy; hair of a...weblike softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten." "For several days ensuing...[the friend busied himself] in earnest endeavors to alleviate the melancholy of [Roderick]....[They] painted and read together, or [the friend] listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of [Roderick's] speaking guitar." One evening, Roderick informed his friend that "the lady Madeline was no more, [and] he stated his intention of preserving the corpse for a fortnight (previously to its final interment)..." due to the unusual characteristics of his sister's illness as well as the possiblity of "eager inquiries of her medical men....At the request of Usher, [his friend] personally aided him in the arrangements for the temporary entombment." As the two men carried the encoffined body to its temporary resting place, the friend became aware of the similarities of the vault and a painting Roderick had done. The vault or dungeon, although lying at a great depth, was located directly beneath the portion of the building in which was located the friend's own sleeping apartment. It was also at this point, that the friend was made aware of the fact that Roderick and Madeline were not just brother and sister; they were twins who shared "...sympathies of a scarely intelligible nature...." As they secured the lid to the coffin, a "faint blush upon the bosom and the face, and [a] suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip..." were noticed as was usual in cases of a cataleptical character. "And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change came over the mental disorder of [Roderick]....He roamed from chamber to chamber....The pallor of his countenance had assumed...a more ghastly hue [and] the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out....[He gazed] upon vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound." It was the seventh or eighth night after the placing of Madeline in the vault. A fierce storm raged outside, and neither Roderick nor his friend were able to sleep. Roderick entered the friend's chamber more agitated and restless than he had been in the past few days. His friend tried to calm him by reading from the Mad Trist by Sir Launcelot Canning. The hero of the tale was Ethelred who must break into the dwelling of the hermit and slay the dragon who guards the palace of gold with a silver floor in order to capture the brass shield which hung upon its wall. As his friend read, it seemed that "...from some remote portion of the mansion, there came indistinctly to [their] ears what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo...of the very sound[s] that Sir Launcelot had so particularly described." Completely unnerved, the friend leaped to his feet. Roderick had, in the meantime, moved his chair so that it was now facing the door of the chamber. His head had dropped upon his breast, but he was not asleep. His eyes were rigid and open while staring at the doorway, and his lips trembled as he muttered inaudibly. His body gently rocked from side to side in a constant and uniform sway. As the friend placed his hand on Roderick's shoulder, "...a strong shudder [came] over [Roderick's] whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and [his friend heard Roderick speak] in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of [his friend's] presence. Bending closely over him, [the friend] at length drank in the hideous import of his words." "Not hear it?--yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long--long--long--many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it--yet I dared not --oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!--I dared not--I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them--many, many days ago--yet I dared not--I dared not speak!" Roderick then explains to his friend that the corresponding sounds which they had heard during the reading of the Mad Trist were actually Madeline returning from the grave: "...the breaking of the hermit's door...[was] the rendering of her coffin; the death-cry of the dragon...[was] the grating of the iron hinges of her prison [as she opened the door], and the clangor of the shield [corresponded to Madeline's] struggles within the copper archway of the vault!" At this point Roderick sprang to his feet. "Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!" At that moment, a gust of wind blew open the doors, and "...there did stand the enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline....There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold, then with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon...her brother, and in her violent and now final death agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse...." Suddenly the wrath of the storm increased, and the mansion began to shake and crumble. The friend frantically fled from that chamber and from out of that mansion. Only once did he turn to glance back, when his attention was arrested by a wild light. "The radiance was that of the full, setting...blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that once barely discernible fissure...." While [he] gazed [upon the scene], [the] fissure rapidly widened...." There was a loud explosion, and the walls of the mansion came crashing down. Then the "deep and dank tarn...closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the House of Usher."
