Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Fall of the House of Usher

16. What inconsistency does he notice in Roderick’s behavior?
He notices an “excessive nervous agitation.” Roderick alternates between lively and sullen. The narrator claims that his voice goes from “tremulous indecision” to the guttural utterance of a “lost drunkard” or “eater of opium.”

17. What does Roderick mean by declaring he suffers “a morbid acuteness of the senses”?
His symptoms involve the five senses...
-Food was endurable
-He could only wear clothes of certain textures
-Smells were all oppressive
-Light hurt his eyes
-The only sound he could bear were from string instruments

18. Of what is Roderick afraid?
-Roderick fears that the severity of his condition will kill him.
-He fears any future event which may provoke his senses to be pained.
-He fears losing both life and reason.
-He holds superstitious beliefs about the power of the house.

19. Who is the only other occupant of the House, and what does Roderick say about that person?
The other occupant is Roderick’s diseased sister Madeline. Roderick says, “‘Her decease...would leave him...the last of the ancient race of Ushers.’”

20. How does the narrator spend his time with Roderick?
They painted and read together. The narrator listened to Roderick play his speaking guitar.

21. Of which of Roderick’s more concrete works of art does the narrator offer a description?
There was a small painting of a rectangular tunnel which unnerved the narrator. The tunnel was underground and without any artificial light, but “a flood of intense rays rolled throughout.”

22. The song “The Haunted Palace” is nearly the center of the story, and it contains a series of references that connect it to the idea established by answer to #14. Look at each stanza and identify the elements that connect the Palace to Poe’s establish imagery.

Stanza 1: “Once a fair and stately place” indicates that it no longer is hospitable. Establishes house as a “palace.”
Stanza 2: Repeats that the goodness of the Palace was “in the olden time long ago.” Shows that the palace is supernatural because it can transform a “gentle air” into “a winged odor.”
Stanza 3: Spirits who like music fill the palace, much like the Ushers fill the mansion. Spirit has a supernatural connotation which reinforces the eeriness of the house.
Stanza 4: Echoes come from the house, adding to the supernatural appeal. Spirits obey the higher power of the king, implying that occupants of the house obey some power that is not their own.
Stanza 5: “Evil things” invade the home, proving the house is now evil. The glory is “but a dim-remembered story.”
Stanza 6: The “red-litten windows” are creepy imagery. The “vast forms that move fantastically to a discordant melody” are the Ushers.

23. What do the literary works they read all have in common?
They are all set in foreign countries.

24. What does Roderick decide to do with Madeline after her death? Why?
He decides to preserve her in one of the vaults in one of the main walls of the building. He decides this because he fears the inappropriately inquisitive doctors of Madeline, the exposed position of the family burial ground, and Madeline’s odd personality.

25. What description does the narrator offer of the vault?
The vault was small, damp, and it was underground beneath narrator’s bedchamber. There was no way to light the vault. It had previously been used as a dungeon, then as storage for combustible powder. The interior, portions of the floor, and the iron door had been sheathed in copper.

26. What does the narrator notice during their last look at Madeline?
The narrator notices how alike Madeline and Roderick are, and discovers that the two are twins. Madeline had the “mockery of a faint blush” and a “suspiciously lingering smile.”

27. How does Roderick’s behavior and attitude change after they return from the vault? How does the narrator interpret this?
Roderick purposelessly wandered through the house, neglecting his usual occupations. He was paler, with no light in his eyes and a perpetually quavering voice. The narrator thought that Roderick may be keeping a great secret from him. He thinks Roderick had “fantastic but impressive superstitions” which began to affect him.

28. On the final night, how does the narrator describe Roderick’s behavior?
There was a mad hilarity in his eyes, and repressed hysteria about his demeanor.

29. What is happening outside the house? How does that relate to the action inside? (Think of Macbeth...)
Violent winds gust in all directions. The clouds were low and dense around the house, blocking out the view of the sky. Visible gaseous matter that had an unnatural glow hung around the mansion. I have never read Macbeth, and since I cannot glean the reference from a SparkNotes plot overview, I am going to ignore it. I would guess that the paranormal events outside reflect the supernatural occurrences in the house.

30. What volume does the narrator read to Roderick?
He reads “Mad Trist” of Sir Lancelot Canning, a dull romance.

31. What happens at the point in the story when Ethelred tries to force his way into the hermit’s house?
They heard an echo of a cracking and ripping sound in the house.

32. What happens at the point in the story when Ethelred slays the dragon?
They heard a screaming, grating sound.

33. What happens at the point in the story when Ethelred moves to claim the shield?
There was a metallic reverberation like a shield of brass falling on a silver floor.

34. What does Roderick admit?
Roderick rocks in his chair, speaking in a “gibbering murmur” to himself. Roderick admits that Madeline was alive when they put her in the tomb.

35. What were the true origins of the three sounds they heard?
The ripping sound was the breaking of her coffin. The scream of the dead dragon was the grating of the hinges of her prison. The metallic reverberation was her struggle in the copper archway of her tomb.

36. Who then arrives?
A gust threw back the antique doors of the room, revealing Madeline. She was emaciated, with blood on her white robes. Madeline moaned and trembled, reeling about the room. She then collapsed on her brother and they both died. The narrator fled from the house.

37. What happens to the physical House? What happens to the familial “House”?
The blood-red moon revealed a fissure from the roof to the base of the house. As the narrator watched, the fissure widened and a gust of wind caused the walls were torn apart. The tarn swallowed the fragments of the house. The familial house died out because Roderick and Madeline were the last two of the Usher bloodline.

19 Comments:

Blogger L Lazarow said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

11:11 PM  
Blogger Danielle G said...

Thanks, Theresa.

I was going to post 1-16, but I might be too tired to type it all up, so I'll just post what I have thus far.

3. Why does the narrator says he feel afflicted by “insufferable” gloom? How does his answer relate to the Romantic ideals?
- The gloom is unrelieved by the half-pleasurable feeling that one gets when thinking poetically.

4. What is significant about the narrator’s description of “vacant, eye-like windows”?
- The narrator has stated the House of Usher was very creepy and scary, and using personification to describe the house adds to the creepiness. (General idea from: Weiss, Matt. IM Conversation. 21 Mar. 2007)

6. Why does the narrator journey to the House of Usher?
- His friend (who has a mental disorder) has invited him because the narrator is Roderick’s only friend.

7. For what is the Usher family known?
- The Usher family is known for having a peculiar temperament that resulted in their creating exalted works of art; the Usher family is unobtrusively generous. They are known for their passionate devotion to the musical science.

8. What “remarkable fact” does the narrator recall about the family lineage of Roderick Usher, and what does he suggest has been its inevitable result?
- The entire family is in a direct line of descent. The family and the house had merged in people’s minds, so the original name of the house was forgotten in favor of the “House of Usher.”

11:11 PM  
Blogger Theresa said...

Hey guys-

Do you know what would be great?
We should split up the study question so we can all do less work. Then, Danielle will not turn into a bitter workhorse and the rest of us can have the satisfaction of doing very little, but doing it with honor and positive results.

If we are going to have class quizzes, why shouldn't work be communal? Why don't we all be communists?

Anyway, if people are interested in dividing the work, shoot us a blog. Otherwise, I have a feeling that these study guide questions will not be public affairs for very long.

11:34 PM  
Blogger SPal1989 said...

Hear Hear!!!! Yay class! Umm, can i get the simple ones if we do this cause im not good at analysis or....life.

Love,
Scotty P

4:02 PM  
Blogger SPal1989 said...

Thanks again Theresa, you are outstanding.

I just wanted to know was the house really haunted, or was that Roderick just being his crazed self? I know it is pretty clear in the text that the sister was put in the tomb alive. But, if the house is suppose to be haunted is it possible she might have died and then came back to haunt Roderick?

Please feel free to laugh and cut me down because i'm use to it and kind of enjoy it.

Love,
Scotty P

4:19 PM  
Blogger Bill M said...

Hello, I just had some final thoughts about "The Masque of The Red Death". It mainly has to do with some interpretations of the clock in the last room.

If the clock is to symbolize the end of your life journey, what with death showing up at midnight and it being in the room we have agreed to represent death, then what does each toll of the bell mean?

I take it just as your coming closer to the end of life, with midnight being the end of the day and also representing the last moments of your life.

The party guests all stop and meditate when the bell rings. Why? I think that they are all just thinking about the end. What will happen at midnight, the end of the day, the end of the party, the end of life? Then they all promise each other they won’t think about death again, but they do; and how can you not when each stroke brings you closer to the end.

Perhaps when they all stop, they're subconsciously wishing time could stop. That they can escape death if time doesn’t move on. However time is a constant thing and it can neither be stopped nor hindered (at the current time of this post).

This could relate to the idea discussed in class about no matter where you are or who you are or where you’re from; death is the great equalizer. You can try and hide behind your walls in your gilded palace but death is a blind justice, you cannot escape nor bribe nor control it, and in Poe's time it was more difficult to prolong it than it is today.

5:10 PM  
Blogger Danielle G said...

Bill: I agree pretty much wholeheartedly with your analysis of what the ringing of the bell symbolizes. I would just add that (in my opinion) when the bell rings, the people stop because they are "metaphorically" reminded that they cannot predict when their "last bell" will ring. Nobody knows exactly when they are going to die, but everybody knows that they must die someday.

Scott: I think that the house was haunted because the narrator wasn't made out to be crazy, insane, or mentally ill. Though Roderick was insane and believed that the house had its own area of air and mist surrounding it, I think that Roderick was correct.

The way Poe presented the information to us, the narrator seemed very logical and rational. He mentioned feelings about the house similar to Roderick's feelings, before he even met with Roderick.

I don't think the girl died and came back, but I'm curious as to why Roderick would want to murder her. The girl was emaciated and bloody when she finally freed herself from her coffin-prison, and that indicates that she was alive (and struggling to free herself) the entire time that she was in the coffin.

So, in summary, the house was haunted, the girl was alive the entire time, and the narrator was sane.

9:02 PM  
Blogger rachel said...

I have a question (actually it is more of a concern), exactly how long was Madeline in the coffin and was she REALLY ALIVE, as I got from Dani, or was it just a spiritual manifestation that very closely resembled her physical form at the time of her death?

The whole story just bothers me more than anything else I have read by Poe, including the one with the beating heart.

Also, one last thought, seeing as the other readings were some what losely based on Poe's own personal issues (i.e. his stepfather as Fortunato), are there any found here? Just wondering!

12:05 AM  
Blogger caroline cross said...

I think Madeline really was alive when Usher put her in the tomb. The narrator says that at times he thought Usher "was laboring with some oppressive secret," so it seems that Usher may have been insane when he put his sister in the tomb, but he at least subconsciously knew that he had buried her alive. Also the narrator seems rational, as others have said, and since he too saw Madeline before she was entombed and when she escaped from the tomb it probably wasn't a ghost but actually Madeline. However, the story says that it was on the "seventh or eighth day after the placing of lady Madeline within the donjon" that the narrator and Roderick read "Mad Trist" and Madeline comes out of her grave. Obviously, a person can live no longer than six days without water and would probably sufocate in less than one day in in a coffin. Because there was so much time between when Madeline was placed in the coffin and when she came out, you could assume that she was an apparition either before she was entombed or after she came out of the tomb. However, I think that time isn't that important and the idea is that it really was Madeline (not an apparition) that was entombed but later escaped.

I'm not sure if Madeline can somewhat parallel Poe's cousin and wife Virginia, but it is a possibility. Madeline is Roderick's sister, paralleling Virginia and Poe who were also related. Since the Usher family tree had no branches, it is assumed that Roderick and Madeline would have married one day if they had lived (ewh, incest!), which parallels Poe and Virginia who were married. Also, Madeline's disease seemed more of a burden to Roderick than his own acuteness of the senses, and Poe seemed more burdened by Virginia's tuberculosis than worrying about his own alcoholism. Lastly, Roderick seems to have guilt over burying his sister alive, and perhaps Poe felt guilty in a way that he couldn't save his wife from death and probably didn't have enough monry to at least hinder her tuberculosis.

Also, here are few of my answers to the study questions. If anyone got different answers, please share with me:

1.How does Poe establish the mood in his description of the first paragraph?
-he uses dreary descriptions of the setting to parallel the dreary story to follow: "dark, dull and soundless day," "clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens," "melancholy House of Usher," "white trunks of decayed trees"
-he also talks about the feelings the setting gives him, which are feelings of gloom that will continue later in the story: "insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit," "there was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart--an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime"

2.What is significant about the choice of twilight as the opening setting?
The twilight opens the story with a dark and gloomy setting, foreshadowing that the story will have a dark edge to it (Usher buries his sister alive)

5. What does the narrator see when he looks at the "black and lurid tarn"? How does this vision become more significant later in the story?
He sees "the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows." Later in the story Usher asks the narrator "and you have not seen it?" while he is in front of the window in the narrator's room. The narrator leads him away from the vacant and eye-like window, tells Usher that the origin of these appearances may come from the tarn, and suggests reading "Mad Trist". Thus the window and the tarn have a motif for bringing disturbing images.
--Caroline

8:44 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

I think we might be looking at the story a little too rationally. House of Usher might not be explicitly unrealistic [there aren't martians in the house, Roderick doesn't have superpowers (though if he did, I think he would have laser beams shoot out of his eyes)], but it clearly has some supernatural elements: the "unnatural light" surrounding the house, the sounds from the book matching those emanating from Madeline's tomb, the house collapsing after the twins die, etc. From this, we could assume that in this story's realm of reality, the narrator's sanity and Madeline's being a ghost aren't mutually exclusive. We could also say, however, that because of the story's supernatural aspects Madeline could go on for many days without food and water and still be alive. And in response to Elizabeth, I think that in Poe's world, maybe all ghosts aren't transparent. So, I declare that there are valid arguments both for and against the prospect of Madeline being alive. Great, where has this gotten us?

I'll just add to the debate that the narrator refers to Madeline's last movements and pushing her brother to the ground as her "final death-agonies." Also, the story would be much more shocking and eery if she actually were alive and not a ghost. My general perception of it all is that Poe intended for Madeline to be alive. But hey, it's open to interpretation...

10:58 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

p.s. I still don't understand the significance of twilight. Anyone?

11:09 PM  
Blogger Kaitlyn said...

Will. I don't know if this will help you or not, but i'll try the best I can. Twilight, as I see it, is the last hours of the day. If you look at sunrise in a work, it is always a happy feeling or a new beginning or what not. Twilight is the exact opposite. I took it as the beginning of the end of the last of the Usher's. (if that makes sense) Twilight is the last chance you have to do something before you go to sleep, or in Usher's case, die. Poe used twilight in a clever way to tell his audience that nothing would be getting better for Usher and his sister and of course adds a certain amount of gloom to the whole story.

I hope I explained that ok. If anyone disagrees, then how would you see twilight?

6:46 AM  
Blogger Danielle G said...

Elizabeth: I didn't intend to say that the house was "haunted." Upon looking back at my comment, I realize that I misspoke (mis-wrote?).

I merely intended to say that the house had a very creepy, supernatural atmosphere. This claim is supported by the story's emphasis on the supernatural elements including the small split in the house and the tie between the Usher family and the house itself. When the last Ushers died, so did the House of Usher. (It was swallowed by a crack in the tarn.)

I doubt that Poe knew the exact number of days for which a person could go without water, so I don't view the "7 or 8 days" as significant in determining whether or not Madeline is a ghost or alive. For all the reasons other people have cited, I believe she was alive until she clawed and fell on her brother. The fall of the House of Usher becomes a lot more dramatic when it falls immediately subsequent to the deaths of the last TWO Ushers.

Caroline: I really enjoyed your analysis/comparison of Madeline Usher to Poe's wife. Is a belief in this relationship (of Usher's characters to members of Poe's life) commonly held?

---Danielle

11:24 PM  
Blogger Theresa said...

I do not think it really matters if Madeline is dead or alive. It is supposed to be unrealistic and creepy. That is why we consider it a gothic horror story.

Which brings me to my next point. This story in particular seems to be overly dramatic. I can tell that Poe is writing to appeal to a mass audience. It is like modern horror movies- the more ludicrous and lurid the plot, the more fans the movie attracts (guilty as charged). Does anyone else feel like Poe is trying to hard? The writing is still outstanding (please don't flame me Poe fans), but I don't think the plot flows. The ending is too abrupt. Agree/disagree anyone?

I do love the first page. The imagery is so vivid and dark. It gives me the willies. Didn't Thelma say that on Scooby-Doo?

10:43 PM  
Blogger Ranna said...

Theresa, i got the same feeling from the stories we have read by Poe so far (horror movie essence). The abruptness of the endings, especially that of "The Fall of the House of Usher," make Poe seem even more distorted as an individual. This is because he is able to present a horrible death scenario and just leave it at that. Maybe it's just me, but I feel as if a more compassionate author would have provided a follow up on the death portrayed since death is a concept that is entailed by grief.

4:53 PM  
Blogger Winnie said...

I think it's interesting that Poe tells this story from a different point of view than his other works. When Poe uses the point of view of a character in the story I have found that most of the time, he tells the story from the point of view of the protagonist who is retelling the story of a crime he has committed. The reader therefore can't really sympathize with the main character but rather gets an inside look into the mind of the insane. In The Fall of the House of Usher, Poe tells the story from the point of view of a mere observer. The reader can identify with the narrators feelings while he is trying to understand what is going on inside Roderick's head and with the Usher family.
I think this is one of the main reasons why readers have so many different interpretations of this story. In this story Poe doesn't invite you into the mind of Roderick but makes you look at the situation through the eyes of a bystander.

7:56 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

In response to Theresa's comment, I don't think I really consider House of Usher as overly dramatic, as I assume his stories to be inherently outlandish and over-the-top. In comparison to Poe's other works, the Cask of Amontillado might be more plausible, but the Masque of Red Death is just as surreal as the House of Usher, if not more so. I liked Adiel's view of Poe's stories as more psychological studies/observations than anything else. With this frame of reference, the Fall of the House of Usher's ending might make more sense, as the bulk of the story delves into Roderick's psyche and examines the characters' behaviors, and an abrupt end is all that's needed. In looking at the work as just a good story, the plot isn't too involved, and its creepiness and effectiveness rely mostly on drawn-out tension. The tension's subsequent climax need only be short and brief.

11:39 PM  
Blogger Kaitlyn said...

I agree with Will in the fact that Poe's stories do not need a lengthy ending, as well as his views of the climax of the stories.
I think that Poe's abrupt endings sets him apart from other authors. If Poe's stories had a more detailed ending, we would not be studying him, we'd probably be studying some other guy. (or girl) It is Poe's uniqueness that sets him apart from other authors. Poe's works are extremely vivid and often grotesque (for lack of better word) and that is what you remember most about him.

7:03 AM  
Blogger Bill M said...

I think that instead of grotesque you could use the words dark or hazy, because we never really know what is going to happen throughout the story.
Anyone could write a grotesque story filled with gore and violence, but Poe always seems to hide some fact about a character, or piece of scenery or whatever from the reader. He then does reveal the fact at the end, and ends the story shortly after that fact. This does make him unique, I agree. Weather it is that the narrator had waited fifty years to tell his story or that death will always find a way in, or even that your sisters not dead, Poe has it all. Poe also uses the fact as an integral part of the story not just as a “surprise” but as a potential conflict or climax to the story.

7:54 PM  

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