When people die, it is not expected of them to rise again. To see a dead human being rise from their deathbed and live once again is more than just unsettling, it’s maddening. This event, referred to as doubling, is most famously known for it’s use in Alfred Hitchcock’s award winning movie Vertigo, as well as in Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Fall of the House of Usher”. These two stories, despite being different in medium and nature, have often been analyzed and reviewed for being similar to one another. To many, it is almost as if Poe’s short story died and rose again as a movie. While that may not be entirely true, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo is almost a direct adaptation from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” that
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He decides to quit his job and to instead become a private detective. During his new career, he gets a call from an old friend to visit help him with an issue concerning his wife. Scottie’s friend, out of a mix of paranoia and fear, wants Scottie to assist him in finding out where his wife Madeline goes throughout the day, and make sure she does not have any suicidal tendencies. This initial calling is almost exactly the same as in Usher, where an unnamed narrator arrives at the house of Usher by request of his old childhood friend Roderick Usher in order to assist him with something. Usher, who suffers from an acuteness of the senses, asks his childhood friend to help him prepare and cope with his sister Madeline’s impending death. These two beginnings bear a striking resemblances to one another for their similarity in both nature and detail. They both involve a childhood friend calling upon another to assist them with a loved one named Madeline. Furthermore, the protagonists of both stories obtain or reveal an obsession with their respective Madelines. However, the most prominent similarity would be how both Roderick Usher and …show more content…
While Scottie does suffer from vertigo, as the story progresses he begins to go clinically insane, specifically after Madeline’s death. During the time between Madeline’s death and when he meets Judy, he gets depression, and spends some time in a psychiatric hospital. As one of the doctors puts it, “He’s suffering from acute melancholia, together with a guilt complex”. Roderick Usher also seems to suffer from the same kind of brand of obsession when his sister temporarily passes away despite already suffering from several bizarre symptoms. His mental state’s decrepitation peaks right as the storm and Madeline begins to emerge from her tomb. He yells at the narrator “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!”. These are both men who obsessed, and still obsess, over people they believe to have died. In the absence of the people they love, they decend beyond simple madness and instead fall down the path of insanity. Roderick becomes erratic and paranoid in response to his sister’s death, while Scottie is almost completely catatonic. In a way, they both descend into two separate pits of insanity, with Scottie ending in the more mentally strenuous pit and Roderick in a spastic madness. It is only in another death do these men find a degree of peace from their
He decides to quit his job and to instead become a private detective. During his new career, he gets a call from an old friend to visit help him with an issue concerning his wife. Scottie’s friend, out of a mix of paranoia and fear, wants Scottie to assist him in finding out where his wife Madeline goes throughout the day, and make sure she does not have any suicidal tendencies. This initial calling is almost exactly the same as in Usher, where an unnamed narrator arrives at the house of Usher by request of his old childhood friend Roderick Usher in order to assist him with something. Usher, who suffers from an acuteness of the senses, asks his childhood friend to help him prepare and cope with his sister Madeline’s impending death. These two beginnings bear a striking resemblances to one another for their similarity in both nature and detail. They both involve a childhood friend calling upon another to assist them with a loved one named Madeline. Furthermore, the protagonists of both stories obtain or reveal an obsession with their respective Madelines. However, the most prominent similarity would be how both Roderick Usher and …show more content…
While Scottie does suffer from vertigo, as the story progresses he begins to go clinically insane, specifically after Madeline’s death. During the time between Madeline’s death and when he meets Judy, he gets depression, and spends some time in a psychiatric hospital. As one of the doctors puts it, “He’s suffering from acute melancholia, together with a guilt complex”. Roderick Usher also seems to suffer from the same kind of brand of obsession when his sister temporarily passes away despite already suffering from several bizarre symptoms. His mental state’s decrepitation peaks right as the storm and Madeline begins to emerge from her tomb. He yells at the narrator “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!”. These are both men who obsessed, and still obsess, over people they believe to have died. In the absence of the people they love, they decend beyond simple madness and instead fall down the path of insanity. Roderick becomes erratic and paranoid in response to his sister’s death, while Scottie is almost completely catatonic. In a way, they both descend into two separate pits of insanity, with Scottie ending in the more mentally strenuous pit and Roderick in a spastic madness. It is only in another death do these men find a degree of peace from their