Analysis Of Roderick Usher

Analysis of Characterization of Roderick Usher Literature published during the Gothic era served as dreary and pessimistic examples for life. Gothic literature connects its own motivation to a character’s to communicate the bitter reality of consequences. It uses physical traits and personality to show fear and motivation behind specific events. By giving characters traits that connect to their motivation, gothic literature is able to play out events that would otherwise seem bizarre. In Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”, Roderick Usher is a hypochondriac, fearful, and mentally unstable. Roderick Usher is a hypochondriac; he self-diagnoses himself with disorders and diseases based on even the slightest symptoms. This contributes to his mental instability, and in his letter to the narrator, “The writer spoke of acute bodily illness-of a mental disorder which oppressed him…”(Poe, 414). This mental disorder that is spoken of is a self diagnosed illness. Roderick’s reactions and thoughts are all based around this sensitivity to his senses. His life has changed because of it as Usher wholeheartedly believes that his mental instability is a physical disorder that “He admitted...the peculiar gloom which thus …show more content…
He could be perfectly calm before shifting to “...an excessive nervous agitation… His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision… to that species of energetic concision…”(417). He feared any excessive stimulants, including sound, light, or interaction with the narrator. By the final scene, Roderick stirs himself into a frenzy so much that when “...[Madeline] fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother… bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated”(430). His own fear is what killed him as Madeline came back to exact her revenge. His mental instability caused him to bind together all his fear and cause physical