"The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allen Poe

In his short story "The Fall of the House of Usher", Edgar Allen Poe presents his reader with an intricately suspenseful plot filled with a foreboding sense of destruction. Poe uses several literary devices, among the most prevalent, however are his morbid imagery and eerie parallelism. Hidden in the malady of the main character are several different themes, which are all slightly connected yet inherently different.

Poe begins the story by placing the narrator in front of the decrepit, decaying mansion of Roderick Usher. Usher summoned his childhood friend, the narrator, to his home by sending a letter detailing only a minor illness. After the narrator arrives and sees the condition of the house he becomes increasingly superstitious. When the narrator first sees his host he describes his morbid appearance and it arouses his superstition even more. Over a period of time the narrator begins to understand his friends' infliction, insanity. He tries in vane to comfort his friend and provide solace, however to no avail. When Roderick's only remaining kin, his sister Madeline dies, Rodericks insanity seems to have gone to a heightened level. Shortly after his sister's death, Roderick's friend is reading him a story. As things happen in the story, simultaneously the same description of the noises come from within the house. As Usher tries to persuade the narrator that it is his sister coming for him, and his friend believing Roderick has gone stark raving mad, Madeline comes bursting in through the door and kills her brother. The narrator flees from the house, and no sooner does he get away than he turns around and sees a fissure in the houses masonry envelop the house and then watch the ground swallow up the remains.

In "The Fall of the House of Usher" Poe introduces the reader...