Table Of Content
- Summary: “The Fall of the House of Usher”
- Must Read
- Episode 7: “The Pit and the Pendulum”
- Episode 5, "The Tell-Tale Heart"
- Character Names
- Roderick Usher
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Some of these connections are fairly obvious due to the episode titles, others less so. Then there's Verna (Carla Gugino), the supernatural entity who makes young Roderick (Zach Gilford) and Madeline (Willa Fitzgerald) an offer that sets them on a self-imposed road to ruin before later returning to call in their debts. An anagram of "raven," Verna represents the Usher family's reckoning just as Poe's black bird symbolizes the near-unbearable guilt and grief of the poem's narrator.
Summary: “The Fall of the House of Usher”
There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold — then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated. In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence — an inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy — an excessive nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. As you've probably already noticed, Mike Flanagan's The Fall of the House of Usher is jam-packed full of Edgar Allen Poe references. But as well as the Usher children being named after Poe characters, each episode of the show is also largely based on one of Poe's short stories, just one of many clues that help predict exactly how each of Usher will die.
Must Read
Outside, he looks back just in time to see the house split in two and collapse. An interpretation which has more potential, then, is the idea that the ‘house of Usher’ is a symbol of the mind, and it is this analysis which has probably found the most favour with critics. Sigmund Freud would, over half a century after Poe was writing, do more than anyone else to delineate the structure of the conscious and unconscious mind, but he was not the first to suggest that our conscious minds might hide, or even repress, unconscious feelings, fears, neuroses, and desires. The secret that is buried and then comes to light (represented by Madeline) is never revealed. The symbol which represents the secret – Madeline herself – is hidden away by Roderick, but that symbol returns, coming to light at the end of the story and (in good Gothic fashion) destroying the family for good. When the narrator arrives, he notes the decrepit, evil atmosphere of the stately house and the nearby tarn, or small lake, that luridly reflects the house’s visage.
The Fall of the House of Usher: Edgar Allan Poe References Explained - Den of Geek
The Fall of the House of Usher: Edgar Allan Poe References Explained.
Posted: Thu, 12 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Episode 7: “The Pit and the Pendulum”
His mental health deteriorates faster as he begins to hear Madeline's attempts to escape the underground vault she was buried in, and he eventually meets his death out of fear in a manner similar to the House of Usher's cracking and sinking. The finale is another episode that takes its inspiration from a few different Poe stories. The titular poem, "The Raven" references the tragic death of Roderick's granddaughter Lenore. Roderick and Madeline bricking up Griswold (Michael Trucco) behind a wall in the basement is the same unpleasant method of murder found in "The Cask of Amontillado", complete with fool's costume. Meanwhile, Madeline's death at the hands of her own brother is pretty much straight out of "The Fall of the House of Usher" — though his grisly technique is more akin to "Some Words with a Mummy." Although it borrows its title directly from one of the Poe's most famous stories, Episode 7 really has a couple of different sources.
Episode 5, "The Tell-Tale Heart"
He is best known for his poetry and short stories, which treat themes of mystery, ill-fated love, madness, the macabre, and the supernatural. Auguste Dupin, who appears in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), “The Purloined Letter” (1845),” and “The Mystery of Marie Roget” (1845). “The Fall of the House of Usher” is a foundational Gothic text and helped to cement the Gothic aesthetic. This guide uses the Elegant Ebooks version of the text, which is freely available through the University of Pennsylvania library’s Online Books Page. This guide also maintains Poe’s use of the term “madness” to refer to physical and mental torment, the dark and delicate balance between reality and wild figments of the imagination.
Character Names
A 179-year-old Edgar Allan Poe Poem Reveals What Fall Of The House Of Usher's Verna Really Is - Screen Rant
A 179-year-old Edgar Allan Poe Poem Reveals What Fall Of The House Of Usher's Verna Really Is.
Posted: Mon, 27 Nov 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]
She writhes and throws herself upon Usher “in her now violent and final death-agonies,” killing him (25). No one mentions Madeline, and Roderick spends his time painting, playingmusic, reading, and writing. He paints a dark underground tunnel with beams ofstrange light shining through. Usher writes songs on his guitar, and thenarrator recounts one entitled “The Haunted Palace.” In the song a prosperouspalace falls, and only dancing ghosts remain.
In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old wood-work which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn. This time around, Flanagan turned to the poems and short stories of the Master of Macabre himself for a modern reimagining of Poe's 19th-century writings. The show puts a gothic spin on the story of the downfall of an opioid empire, featuring many of Flanagan's cast regulars and centering on the uber-wealthy Usher family and their drug company, Fortunato Pharmaceuticals—apparent fictional facsimiles of the infamous billionaire Sackler family and OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma. On a stormy autumn (with an implied pun on the word fall?) evening, a traveler—an outsider, like the reader—rides up to the Usher mansion.
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Usher tells him that they were twins and always shared an uncanny sensibility. They replace the coffin’s lid, and the narrator shudders at Madeline’s flushed face and slight smile, as if she could be alive. I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an adjoining staircase arrested my attention. In an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle touch, at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp.
It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within the donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings. I endeavored to believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room — of the dark and tattered draperies, which, tortured into motion by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I felt that I should sleep no more during the night), and endeavored to arouse myself from the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to and fro through the apartment. A week after Madeline’s death, the narrator lies awake with an unexplainedfeeling of fear.
The brother had been led to his resolution (so he told me) by consideration of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men, and of the remote and exposed situation of the burial-ground of the family. I will not deny that when I called to mind the sinister countenance of the person whom I met upon the staircase, on the day of my arrival at the house, I had no desire to oppose what I regarded as at best but a harmless, and by no means an unnatural, precaution. A servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence, through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity.
To that end, Roderick's deteriorating condition speeds his own torment and eventual death. Complete digital access plus the FT newspaper delivered Monday-Saturday. And travellers now within that valley,Through the red-litten windows, seeVast forms that move fantasticallyTo a discordant melody;While, like a rapid ghastly river,Through the pale door,A hideous throng rush out forever,And laugh — but smile no more. Banners yellow, glorious, golden,On its roof did float and flow;(This — all this — was in the oldenTime long ago)And every gentle air that dallied,In that sweet day,Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,A winged odor went away.
Within a few hours of the narrator’s arrival, Roderick begins to share some of his theories about his family. Much to the narrator’s surprise, Roderick claims that the Usher mansion is sentient and that it exercises some degree of control over its inhabitants. He declares that his illness is the product of “a constitutional and a family evil.” (The narrator later dismisses this as a cognitive symptom of Roderick’s “nervous affection.”) Roderick also reveals that Madeline, his twin sister and sole companion in the house, is gravely ill.
The writers and critics of Poe’s day rejected many of that movement’s core tenets, including its emphasis on the emotions and the experience of the sublime. Accordingly, commentaries on social injustice, morality, and utilitarianism proliferated in the mid-19th century. Poe conceived of his writing as a response to the literary conventions of this period. In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” he deliberately subverts convention by rejecting the typical practices of preaching or moralizing and instead focusing on affect and unity of atmosphere. ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ can also be analysed as a deeply telling autobiographical portrait, in which Roderick Usher represents, or reflects, Poe himself. After all, Roderick Usher is a poet and artist, well-read (witness the assortment of books which he and the narrator read together), sensitive and indeed overly sensitive (to every sound, taste, sight, touch, and so on).
His sister’s illness is only one reason for Roderick’s agitation, one reasonfor his desire to have the “solace” of the narrator’s companionship; it is notthe only—or most significant—reason. Usher himself is suffering from a “mentaldisorder,” which is “a constitutional and . Family evil, and one for whichhe despaired to find a remedy.” Why “evil”? One wonders, until one recallsthat, in the third paragraph of this story, even before Roderick has been seenfor the first time, the narrator mentions that the ancient “stem” of the Usherfamily never “put forth . So lain.” In other words,Roderick and Madeline Usher are the products and inheritors of an incestuousfamily lineage—one that has remained predominantly patrilineal, so that thename of the family always remained Usher.
Each episode is named for the Poe story that serves as its narrative spine, but none are to-the-letter adaptations. Instead, Flanagan filters this modern take on the toxicity of power and the persistence of karma through Poe’s creations, offering a sort of Sackler-esque family slaughterfest dressed up as a greatest hits homage to the master of the macabre. Poe was often dismissed by contemporary literary critics because of the unusual content and brevity of his stories. When his work was critically evaluated, it was condemned for its tendencies toward Romanticism.
He entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of his malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy — a mere nervous affection, he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms, and the general manner of the narration had their weight. No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than — as if a shield of brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of silver — I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous, yet apparently muffled reverberation.
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