Madeline's Nonexistence

Madeline’s Nonexistence In Edgar Allan Poes’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” readers are left contemplating whether or not Madeline is still alive or if she is just a figment of Roderick’s and the narrator’s conscious. Throughout the story, we are given supporting evidence for both sides, but the reader must choose which they are going to believe. At the beginning of the story, we learn that Roderick is going insane and that he can not see the difference between reality and fantasy. In the end, this caused Roderick to hallucinate Madeline coming towards him to kill him. Another piece of supporting evidence is the fact that Roderick and the narrator screwed the coffin lid down in a sealed vault with very little oxygen. With this evidence there is no way Madeline could of survived. …show more content…
Readers find out from the beginning that he is suffering from this illness and that he is losing his mind. That is the entire purpose of the narrator coming to visit him in the first place; to help him out of this miserable state of sickness. Roderick made himself believe that he buried Madeline alive because of her dead like state caused by catalepsy. He was afraid that because of this she would come back to kill him. This proves that Roderick is extremely paranoid and insane for thinking that she could still be alive. Another issue was all the noises Roderick heard, which he thought was Madeline escaping, but was only caused by the fierce storm outside the house. Roderick was so afraid that Madeline was still alive, his conscience ate him alive and made him believe that she was haunting