What Happens In The Fall Of The House Of Usher

In Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, the narrator visits his childhood friend Roderick Usher, who has recently fallen ill. The house in which the Ushers reside had a supernatural aspect. J.O. Bailey, author of "CRITICAL READINGS: What Happens in ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’?" argues that these supernatural forces have a negative effect on the mental composure of the Ushers and the narrator. In his essay “Poe and the Apocalyptic Sublime: "The Fall of the House of Usher", Jonathan Cook describes the physical appearance of the house and its surroundings and how it insites a feeling of depression within the characters. Keith Neilson argues that the house is possessed by an evil spirit that torments its residents in his essay "The Fall of the House of Usher”. In his essay “Unity of Effect in Poe's 'The Fall of the House of Usher'”, Peter Obuchowski gives a detailed account of …show more content…
Roderick Usher’s “increasing pallor” (Bailey 132) and his dead eyes “suggests an increased sapping of vitality” (Bailey 132). This sapping is assumed to be due to the fact “that the house itself is a vampire” (Voloshin 422) because “[other] influences are not defined” (Bailey 132) specifically by Poe in the story. (ONE MORE SENTENCE TO SUM IT UP)
The narrator experiences extreme loneliness within the home leads to a degradation in the his mental health. The worsening of his mental state is due to the “isolation and [the] atmosphere” (Obuchowski 407) he experiences because the home is empty except for an unstable man and his dying twin sister. Throughout the story, there is a clear and obvious decay in mental wellbeing of Roderick as well. Roderick is “[driven] to the edge of madness” (Neilson 3) because of his “prolonged isolation” (Neilson 3). The comfortless house caused the people within it to become increasingly mad as time