Roderick Usher Downfall

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Roderick Usher
The Fall of House Usher by Edgar Allen Poe, focuses on the turmoil of Roderick Usher. Roderick Usher suffered from a mental disease, which caused him to be overly nervous and emotionally unstable. Roderick knew of his disease and struggled with overcoming it. He was also dealing with the sickness of his sister. Roderick and Madeline had a special relationship, she was his only companion and last living relative, but she was dying. Distraught, he wrote his friend, the narrator of the story, and asked him to visit. Through character analysis, the physical and emotional conflictions of Roderick Usher are observed through his friend’s viewpoint.
At first glance, the narrator …show more content…
Roderick’s sister health took a toll on Roderick’s emotions. “He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin --to the severe and long-continued illness --indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution-of a tenderly beloved sister.” (Poestories.com) Madeline’s state of health seemed to cause Roderick to fear that which was inevitable, death. When Madeline died, Roderick lost all instances of his usual self, which was already almost non-existent, “His ordinary manner had vanished.” (Poestories.com) He became even more paranoid and superstitious. His friend tried to help Roderick grieve and move on, but it did not seem to work. Roderick grew more nervous and fearful as the days passed, anticipating that he buried his sister alive. “I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them --many, many days ago “ (Poestories.com) Realizing that he had, in fact, buried Madeline alive, Roderick died, not of some physical condition, but of fear, “bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.”
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