the fall of the house of usher
Storyboard Text
- Personification
- Metaphor
- symbolism
- Poe's use of personification, the act of giving human characteristics to nonhuman things, assigns the house of Usher a powerful and evil presence. In the first paragraph of the story, the narrator describes the house as having “vacant eye-like windows”.
- foreshadowing
- In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Edgar Allan Poe creates a metaphor of the codependence of one’s mind and body through the use of the the Usher twins. First, the twins are bond together in an excessive mean that the two are seen as one psychologically unfit person. The relation of the two Usher siblings is not eluded to until later into the story.
- Doubling
- Most of the symbolism in “The Fall of the House of Usher” is internal. The House of Usher refers to both the house and the family. The ghastly images inside the house symbolize the madness of the house's inhabitants. The Gothic literature and stories of strange goings-on represent the inhabitants' thoughts.
- imagery
- Roderick says "I must perish in this bounden slave" (Poe, pg9) foreshadows that Roderick will die. Poe also foreshadows Madeline's death because she has a cataleptical disease that makes her sleep for long periods. This is an example because they can't really tell if she dead or just sleeping.
- In The Fall of the House of Usher Roderick's luminous eye indicates a Doppelgänger pair and can be interpreted as a foreshadowing of the twins' death. All of these doubling motifs will be analyzed with respect to the narrator, who is in many respects a doubled figure.
- Edgar Allan Poe is a master at using imagery to improve the effects of his stories. He tends to use the landscapes to symbolize some important aspect of the story. Also, he makes use of the landscape to produce a supernatural effect and to induce horror.
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