Part 2, The Fall of the House of Usher
Jan. 28th, 2015 08:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickPart 2 of The Fall of the House of Usher, by Edgar Allan Poe, explicated by Me for the benefit of Poor Bastards Who Just Need To Pass, Damn It, But Are Facing A Fucking Short Story Full Of Impenetrable Fucking Gothic Prose.
Missed Part 1?
Need the Index Of Parts?
5. Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones. 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.
Paragraph5 is not an advancer of the plot, so all you action-minded PoorBastards are probably snoozin’. Reading for meaning, though, we get “The house looks really old. No parts are missing, but the overall impression is like dry-rotted wood that is so fragile it will break as soon as you touch it. Oh, and btw, it’s got a thin little crack that runs from the tippy top of the roof clear on down until it is lost in the water of the pond.”
Meaning, of course, is thing one that we read for. Poe is taking a whole entire paragraph to tell us that the house not only looks old, but also specifically reminds our narrator of something that has rotted from within, a thing that looks solid on the outside, but is hollow, fragile, and ready to shatter, having been destroyed from some interior decay. Also the narrator specifically mentions the crack running down the entirety of the building. It’s not very obvious, only a scrutinizing observer would notice it, but you, Poor Bastard, have a scrutinizing observer narrating for you. Lucky you.
Let’s meditate on the meaning of this barely perceptible fissure in the house. My, I’m talking a hell of a lot about this crack in the building. Do I know something you don’t know? Am I trying to give you a hint about what is to come? Yeah, rabbit, I might be.
It’s called foreshadowing, and it’s what I and also P.5 are doing here. We talked about foreshadowing above, in the discussion of paragraph 4 and How Terror Works. And now I can hear you through the ether, saying unto me in a plaintive tone, “But seriously, how the fuck am I supposed to know that the crack in the building is important, that it’s more important than the part about the fungus and the part about the discolored stones? All that shit sounds about equally important to me! Arrgh!” and I sigh the wearied sigh of the middle-aged and explain unto you how experience is a wonderful thing.
Look, after a while you get a feeling for how stories work and how authors foreshadow stuff. It’s subtle, but typically not so subtle that you miss it because then what would be the point? There is no joy in being clever and nifty and elegant if people can’t see you doing it… so they make it clear enough, usually, for readers to catch on (and readers like that, too, because then they can feel clever and nifty about seeing the foreshadowing).
Practical “Spot The Foreshadowing” Tips
Look for things that are repeated more than once
Look for things that are at the end, mentioned in an “Oh, by the way…” overly casual tone, like how Poe brings up this barely-noticable fissure in the building
Any time there is a prophecy mentioned in the story, it is important, and this is twice as true if (a) there are witches or (b) the prophecy sounds totally impossible
Remember, foreshadowing is like breadcrumbs left for you by the author. They’re in the story for the audience, clever little hints as to where the story is going. S'trewth, the only person who is SUPPOSED to be surprised when Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane is Macbeth. The rest of us are supposed to be there watching the guys march forward covered in shrubbery and chuckling to ourselves with maybe an “Oh ho!” or a “Well done!” tip o’ the hat to our long-dead playwright.
Practice your foreshadowing-spotting skills on television and movies and books. (Yes, all these things use foreshadowing. Finding foreshadowing in storytelling is like finding salt in recipes.) You’ll get better with practice.
6. Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. 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. While the objects around me–while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy–while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this–I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. On one of the staircases, I met the physician of the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a door and ushered me into the presence of his master.
Reading for meaning, Paragraph 6: I enter the house, meet some unimportant servants (they have no details attached to them), see the interior of the house (still creepy), and meet a vaguely-creepy doctor upon the stairs before getting to Roderick’s study.
When you look at the amount of plot advancement going on, it feels like Poe isn’t getting much done with the story. I mean, six paragraphs in and we’ve finally gotten inside the damn house and are about to meet the other main character in the story. That’s not exactly a Git-R-Done approach to storytelling, especially when you’re working in short story format. But, Gothic horror is not about fast-paced action as you’d find in a GI Joe cartoon. It’s about atmosphere.
In the more-than-face-value reading, note that we get details about the doctor. We are told that the doctor has a face of low cunning and perplexity and accosts our narrator with trepidation. Since there are details, the doctor is probably at least slightly important. Since Poe is trapped in mid-1800’s dialect, I’m gonna translate a little for you. Low cunning is probably more likely “shifty” or “sneaky” these days. Perplexity is “confused” and trepidation is “afraid, wary”. The doc, here, is not being described in a way that inspires confidence or trust. Hrm.
Note that the interior of the house is creepy like the exterior of the house. We get a Gothic archway, silence, dark and intricate passages, carvings of the ceilings, sombre tapestries, ebon blackness (redundant, Poe), phantasmagoric armorial trophies. This should look, in your mind, something like where the Addams family lives. That’s the interior of the house, and it’s altogether ooky. Our narrator is being led along by a stealthy valet who doesn’t talk, so that’s not helping any either. And our narrator says “Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken.”
All the stuff he’s seeing is creeping him out and he shares that tidbit so that we know we’re supposed to also be getting creeped out instead of being bored by the lack of progress on the plot front. Remember, Gothic horror is about atmosphere. Because this is a written story, the atmosphere has to be created with words and imagination instead of being done by music and lighting and strange scratching noises within the walls. Do your part, here. Read the creepy words. Imagine the creepy house.
7. The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.
Paragraph 7, RFM: Roderick’s study is big, dark, and gloomy.
This paragraph describes Roderick’s study. Poe’s working it for you because he’s extending his “The House Is The Family and The Family Is The House” metaphor thing. Roderick’s study is dark, gloomy, sorrowful, and cluttered with uncomfortable old furniture. There are books, and musical instruments but they don’t liven things up at all. Come to think of it, the room is actually a pretty good portrait of Roderick, as we will see.
8. Upon my entrance, Usher rose from a sofa on which he had been lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality–of the constrained effort of the ennuye man of the world. A glance, however, at his countenance, convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely-moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.
P8, RFM: Roderick greets me enthusiastically and, I think, genuinely. He looks a lot different now from how I remember him – paler, with overly shiny eyes, dandelion hair – barely looks human.
Poe devotes a fair amount of time to explaining how Roderick Usher looks. We know, already, that Roderick is a gentleman (being interested in art, charity, and music science and lacking any real job and having a big ass creepy manor house that is named after his family that has inhabited it for absolutely generations) and the deets Poe shares here help us flesh out that idea a bit.
We are not told so, but I feel like Poe has probably set this story in England because there is “peasantry” about to refer to The House of Usher. America does not have peasantry; that’s an Old World thing. In America, we are all equals or like to pretend that we are. Our Narrator also tells us that the Ushers have had the house “for centuries” and honey, we just didn’t have “centuries” of white people in manor houses in the Newnited States back in the 1830’s. Also, we Merkins do not have a tradition of inbred aristocratic families collapsing under the weight of their histories into their entirely too shallow gene pools like the one in front of Roderick’s house. That’s an England thing, possibly also a Continental thing. I kid, but only a little.
Anyway, Poe goes on about Roderick – he’s pale with big eyes. He has pretty lips (gay much?) and a weak chin and an elegant nose and very fine wispy hair and a fivehead (like a forehead only bigger). He’s an overbred aristocrat, with a schmear of creepy overtop (ghastly pallor, miraculous lustre, wild gossamer hair) that has changed him greatly since last our narrator saw him.
9. 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. His action was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic concision–that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation–that leaden, self-balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement.
RFM 9: Roderick is a sorta manic-depressive nutjob.
I’m not sure if they had bipolar / manic-depressive in the 1830’s (Nope, was described/characterized in the 1850’s, according to wikipedia) but this is what Roderick is like. He alternates vivacious (lively) and sullen. Roderick does it in the space of minutes, where bipolar people for real take at least several weeks, more usually a couple of months, to cycle through, but that’s what you are looking at here – Roderick swings between two extremes. He’s a nutjob, and decidedly unstable as he’s just been described to us. So, when you’re reading information that we get from Roderick, please put it through your nutjob filter, mm'kay?
10. It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. 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. It displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations. 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. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odours of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.
RFM 10: Roderick says he’s got an uncurable genetic mental problem, nothing major, and he’s sure it will go away soon. His senses are out of whack – flavors, textures, sounds, smells, light – all of these set him off.
Note that the RFM for Paragraph 10 doesn’t make sense – uncureable genetic mental problems DO NOT just-go-away and they’re totally not “nothing serious”. But, that’s what P. 10 says. It is there to illustrate how unreliable a narrator Roderick is. Remember, he’s a nutjob and anything he says needs to be taken with a grain or six of salt.
Poe, here, is starting to yank the rug out from under us. He’s built up a pretty creepy atmosphere around the house and the person of Roderick – we should by now be up to speed on the feeling that things aren’t quite right around here – and the inconsistency in Roderick’s evaluation of his own issues helps layer uncertainty into our narrative. As you know, Poor Bastard, a big chunk of the terror/horror crossroads is paved with the shifting bricks of uncertainty. (The Monkey’s Paw is a nice example of uncertainty used to heighten the horror/terror in a story.) 'Course, we’ve seen glimpses of uncertainty before – narrator way back in P.1 says “I know not how it was” but when he saw the house it creeped him out. He goes on, “What was it—I paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble.” So, even back in P.1, our narrator is creeped the hell out and yet unable to put his finger on the WHY of the creeping. And the uncertainty about why it’s so creepy serves to increase the creepitude of the creeping. Poe’s paving the terror/horror crossroads, here. He does it in P.6 as well: “Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken.” Our narrator continually gets the willies and he can’t find a solid reason for how or why he feels that way. Hrm. Creepy.
Note also that Roderick says his illness is a constitutional and a family evil. It’s not something he caught, it’s something he inherited, like he inherited the house. (Maybe it’s something he inherited *with* the house? Or *from* the house? Or *because* of the house?) Now, Poe could have said “ailment” or “condition” or “illness” but he says “evil”. That’s on purpose. In describing the ailment, Poe says “morbid, oppressive, tortured, horror” – he’s trying to convey not only illness, but also you should be getting an impression of malignant intent.
11. To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. “I shall perish,” said he, “I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect–in terror. In this unnerved—in this pitiable condition–I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR.”
RFM 11: Because his illness has him so on edge, Roderick is quite sure that he’s going to die of fear if anything even remotely interesting happens.
We talked about foreshadowing for paragraph 5. I’m mentioning that for a reason, here. :) In P. 11, we get a whole paragraph about how Roderick thinks he’s going to die of fear. In that paragraph, Roderick says he is going to die of fear THREE TIMES: (1) I shall perish…I must perish. (2) Thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. (3) I must abandon life and reason … in some struggle with fear. I believe I’ve mentioned that shit the author repeated was important shit and should be remembered, right? Here, Poe repeats the Die Of Fear thing three times in one freaking paragraph, so that should be ringing the bells for Foreshadowing in your brain, Poor Bastard.
Not only does Roderick say that he’s gonna die of fear, he also tells us that he doesn’t think it’s going to take much to tip him over the edge: “I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul.” Even the most trivial incident, eh? Hunh. Well, I suppose we’ll see.
12. I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth–in regard to an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated–an influence which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit—an effect which the physique of the grey walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length, brought about upon the morale of his existence.
RFM 12: Roderick, who hasn’t left his house in years, tells me that he thinks the house is somehow influencing his mental state in a bad way.
This paragraph is kind of handwave-y. We been on about uncertainty, and about Roderick’s not-so-sane mental state, and here our narrator relates what Roderick himself thinks is going on. This is not super-reliable information, though, and it’s relayed to us in a way that makes clear its unreliability. Our narrator learns this stuff “at intervals” “through broken and equivocal hints” – he’s gathering bits and pieces here and there. Narrator says Roderick has “certain superstitious impressions” and that the alleged influence of the house’s “suppositious force” can only be described in “terms too shadowy here to be restated”. All of that is very woo-woo, way too fuzzy for a grand jury indictment. Also, our narrator says a “singular feature of his[Roderick’s] mental condition” is that he believes the house is working hoodoo against him.
By ascribing Roderick’s belief in the house hoodoo to his “mental condition”, our narrator places the house hoodoo firmly in “Ravings of a Nutjob” territory. Our narrator, at least, is giving no airtime to the notion that Roderick’s mental issues are due to his residence… while still at the same time being totally creeped out about the effing house. Methinks the narrator doth protest too much.
Missed Part 1?
Need the Index Of Parts?
5. Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones. 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.
Paragraph5 is not an advancer of the plot, so all you action-minded PoorBastards are probably snoozin’. Reading for meaning, though, we get “The house looks really old. No parts are missing, but the overall impression is like dry-rotted wood that is so fragile it will break as soon as you touch it. Oh, and btw, it’s got a thin little crack that runs from the tippy top of the roof clear on down until it is lost in the water of the pond.”
Meaning, of course, is thing one that we read for. Poe is taking a whole entire paragraph to tell us that the house not only looks old, but also specifically reminds our narrator of something that has rotted from within, a thing that looks solid on the outside, but is hollow, fragile, and ready to shatter, having been destroyed from some interior decay. Also the narrator specifically mentions the crack running down the entirety of the building. It’s not very obvious, only a scrutinizing observer would notice it, but you, Poor Bastard, have a scrutinizing observer narrating for you. Lucky you.
Let’s meditate on the meaning of this barely perceptible fissure in the house. My, I’m talking a hell of a lot about this crack in the building. Do I know something you don’t know? Am I trying to give you a hint about what is to come? Yeah, rabbit, I might be.
It’s called foreshadowing, and it’s what I and also P.5 are doing here. We talked about foreshadowing above, in the discussion of paragraph 4 and How Terror Works. And now I can hear you through the ether, saying unto me in a plaintive tone, “But seriously, how the fuck am I supposed to know that the crack in the building is important, that it’s more important than the part about the fungus and the part about the discolored stones? All that shit sounds about equally important to me! Arrgh!” and I sigh the wearied sigh of the middle-aged and explain unto you how experience is a wonderful thing.
Look, after a while you get a feeling for how stories work and how authors foreshadow stuff. It’s subtle, but typically not so subtle that you miss it because then what would be the point? There is no joy in being clever and nifty and elegant if people can’t see you doing it… so they make it clear enough, usually, for readers to catch on (and readers like that, too, because then they can feel clever and nifty about seeing the foreshadowing).
Practical “Spot The Foreshadowing” Tips
Look for things that are repeated more than once
Look for things that are at the end, mentioned in an “Oh, by the way…” overly casual tone, like how Poe brings up this barely-noticable fissure in the building
Any time there is a prophecy mentioned in the story, it is important, and this is twice as true if (a) there are witches or (b) the prophecy sounds totally impossible
Remember, foreshadowing is like breadcrumbs left for you by the author. They’re in the story for the audience, clever little hints as to where the story is going. S'trewth, the only person who is SUPPOSED to be surprised when Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane is Macbeth. The rest of us are supposed to be there watching the guys march forward covered in shrubbery and chuckling to ourselves with maybe an “Oh ho!” or a “Well done!” tip o’ the hat to our long-dead playwright.
Practice your foreshadowing-spotting skills on television and movies and books. (Yes, all these things use foreshadowing. Finding foreshadowing in storytelling is like finding salt in recipes.) You’ll get better with practice.
6. Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. 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. While the objects around me–while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy–while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this–I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. On one of the staircases, I met the physician of the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a door and ushered me into the presence of his master.
Reading for meaning, Paragraph 6: I enter the house, meet some unimportant servants (they have no details attached to them), see the interior of the house (still creepy), and meet a vaguely-creepy doctor upon the stairs before getting to Roderick’s study.
When you look at the amount of plot advancement going on, it feels like Poe isn’t getting much done with the story. I mean, six paragraphs in and we’ve finally gotten inside the damn house and are about to meet the other main character in the story. That’s not exactly a Git-R-Done approach to storytelling, especially when you’re working in short story format. But, Gothic horror is not about fast-paced action as you’d find in a GI Joe cartoon. It’s about atmosphere.
In the more-than-face-value reading, note that we get details about the doctor. We are told that the doctor has a face of low cunning and perplexity and accosts our narrator with trepidation. Since there are details, the doctor is probably at least slightly important. Since Poe is trapped in mid-1800’s dialect, I’m gonna translate a little for you. Low cunning is probably more likely “shifty” or “sneaky” these days. Perplexity is “confused” and trepidation is “afraid, wary”. The doc, here, is not being described in a way that inspires confidence or trust. Hrm.
Note that the interior of the house is creepy like the exterior of the house. We get a Gothic archway, silence, dark and intricate passages, carvings of the ceilings, sombre tapestries, ebon blackness (redundant, Poe), phantasmagoric armorial trophies. This should look, in your mind, something like where the Addams family lives. That’s the interior of the house, and it’s altogether ooky. Our narrator is being led along by a stealthy valet who doesn’t talk, so that’s not helping any either. And our narrator says “Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken.”
All the stuff he’s seeing is creeping him out and he shares that tidbit so that we know we’re supposed to also be getting creeped out instead of being bored by the lack of progress on the plot front. Remember, Gothic horror is about atmosphere. Because this is a written story, the atmosphere has to be created with words and imagination instead of being done by music and lighting and strange scratching noises within the walls. Do your part, here. Read the creepy words. Imagine the creepy house.
7. The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.
Paragraph 7, RFM: Roderick’s study is big, dark, and gloomy.
This paragraph describes Roderick’s study. Poe’s working it for you because he’s extending his “The House Is The Family and The Family Is The House” metaphor thing. Roderick’s study is dark, gloomy, sorrowful, and cluttered with uncomfortable old furniture. There are books, and musical instruments but they don’t liven things up at all. Come to think of it, the room is actually a pretty good portrait of Roderick, as we will see.
8. Upon my entrance, Usher rose from a sofa on which he had been lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality–of the constrained effort of the ennuye man of the world. A glance, however, at his countenance, convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely-moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.
P8, RFM: Roderick greets me enthusiastically and, I think, genuinely. He looks a lot different now from how I remember him – paler, with overly shiny eyes, dandelion hair – barely looks human.
Poe devotes a fair amount of time to explaining how Roderick Usher looks. We know, already, that Roderick is a gentleman (being interested in art, charity, and music science and lacking any real job and having a big ass creepy manor house that is named after his family that has inhabited it for absolutely generations) and the deets Poe shares here help us flesh out that idea a bit.
We are not told so, but I feel like Poe has probably set this story in England because there is “peasantry” about to refer to The House of Usher. America does not have peasantry; that’s an Old World thing. In America, we are all equals or like to pretend that we are. Our Narrator also tells us that the Ushers have had the house “for centuries” and honey, we just didn’t have “centuries” of white people in manor houses in the Newnited States back in the 1830’s. Also, we Merkins do not have a tradition of inbred aristocratic families collapsing under the weight of their histories into their entirely too shallow gene pools like the one in front of Roderick’s house. That’s an England thing, possibly also a Continental thing. I kid, but only a little.
Anyway, Poe goes on about Roderick – he’s pale with big eyes. He has pretty lips (gay much?) and a weak chin and an elegant nose and very fine wispy hair and a fivehead (like a forehead only bigger). He’s an overbred aristocrat, with a schmear of creepy overtop (ghastly pallor, miraculous lustre, wild gossamer hair) that has changed him greatly since last our narrator saw him.
9. 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. His action was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic concision–that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation–that leaden, self-balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement.
RFM 9: Roderick is a sorta manic-depressive nutjob.
I’m not sure if they had bipolar / manic-depressive in the 1830’s (Nope, was described/characterized in the 1850’s, according to wikipedia) but this is what Roderick is like. He alternates vivacious (lively) and sullen. Roderick does it in the space of minutes, where bipolar people for real take at least several weeks, more usually a couple of months, to cycle through, but that’s what you are looking at here – Roderick swings between two extremes. He’s a nutjob, and decidedly unstable as he’s just been described to us. So, when you’re reading information that we get from Roderick, please put it through your nutjob filter, mm'kay?
10. It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. 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. It displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations. 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. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odours of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.
RFM 10: Roderick says he’s got an uncurable genetic mental problem, nothing major, and he’s sure it will go away soon. His senses are out of whack – flavors, textures, sounds, smells, light – all of these set him off.
Note that the RFM for Paragraph 10 doesn’t make sense – uncureable genetic mental problems DO NOT just-go-away and they’re totally not “nothing serious”. But, that’s what P. 10 says. It is there to illustrate how unreliable a narrator Roderick is. Remember, he’s a nutjob and anything he says needs to be taken with a grain or six of salt.
Poe, here, is starting to yank the rug out from under us. He’s built up a pretty creepy atmosphere around the house and the person of Roderick – we should by now be up to speed on the feeling that things aren’t quite right around here – and the inconsistency in Roderick’s evaluation of his own issues helps layer uncertainty into our narrative. As you know, Poor Bastard, a big chunk of the terror/horror crossroads is paved with the shifting bricks of uncertainty. (The Monkey’s Paw is a nice example of uncertainty used to heighten the horror/terror in a story.) 'Course, we’ve seen glimpses of uncertainty before – narrator way back in P.1 says “I know not how it was” but when he saw the house it creeped him out. He goes on, “What was it—I paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble.” So, even back in P.1, our narrator is creeped the hell out and yet unable to put his finger on the WHY of the creeping. And the uncertainty about why it’s so creepy serves to increase the creepitude of the creeping. Poe’s paving the terror/horror crossroads, here. He does it in P.6 as well: “Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken.” Our narrator continually gets the willies and he can’t find a solid reason for how or why he feels that way. Hrm. Creepy.
Note also that Roderick says his illness is a constitutional and a family evil. It’s not something he caught, it’s something he inherited, like he inherited the house. (Maybe it’s something he inherited *with* the house? Or *from* the house? Or *because* of the house?) Now, Poe could have said “ailment” or “condition” or “illness” but he says “evil”. That’s on purpose. In describing the ailment, Poe says “morbid, oppressive, tortured, horror” – he’s trying to convey not only illness, but also you should be getting an impression of malignant intent.
11. To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. “I shall perish,” said he, “I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect–in terror. In this unnerved—in this pitiable condition–I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR.”
RFM 11: Because his illness has him so on edge, Roderick is quite sure that he’s going to die of fear if anything even remotely interesting happens.
We talked about foreshadowing for paragraph 5. I’m mentioning that for a reason, here. :) In P. 11, we get a whole paragraph about how Roderick thinks he’s going to die of fear. In that paragraph, Roderick says he is going to die of fear THREE TIMES: (1) I shall perish…I must perish. (2) Thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. (3) I must abandon life and reason … in some struggle with fear. I believe I’ve mentioned that shit the author repeated was important shit and should be remembered, right? Here, Poe repeats the Die Of Fear thing three times in one freaking paragraph, so that should be ringing the bells for Foreshadowing in your brain, Poor Bastard.
Not only does Roderick say that he’s gonna die of fear, he also tells us that he doesn’t think it’s going to take much to tip him over the edge: “I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul.” Even the most trivial incident, eh? Hunh. Well, I suppose we’ll see.
12. I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth–in regard to an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated–an influence which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit—an effect which the physique of the grey walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length, brought about upon the morale of his existence.
RFM 12: Roderick, who hasn’t left his house in years, tells me that he thinks the house is somehow influencing his mental state in a bad way.
This paragraph is kind of handwave-y. We been on about uncertainty, and about Roderick’s not-so-sane mental state, and here our narrator relates what Roderick himself thinks is going on. This is not super-reliable information, though, and it’s relayed to us in a way that makes clear its unreliability. Our narrator learns this stuff “at intervals” “through broken and equivocal hints” – he’s gathering bits and pieces here and there. Narrator says Roderick has “certain superstitious impressions” and that the alleged influence of the house’s “suppositious force” can only be described in “terms too shadowy here to be restated”. All of that is very woo-woo, way too fuzzy for a grand jury indictment. Also, our narrator says a “singular feature of his[Roderick’s] mental condition” is that he believes the house is working hoodoo against him.
By ascribing Roderick’s belief in the house hoodoo to his “mental condition”, our narrator places the house hoodoo firmly in “Ravings of a Nutjob” territory. Our narrator, at least, is giving no airtime to the notion that Roderick’s mental issues are due to his residence… while still at the same time being totally creeped out about the effing house. Methinks the narrator doth protest too much.
