Ketchup Reflection #2 - The Fall of the House of Usher

01.14.14

In a follow-up to Roger's earlier PowerPoint on Gothic literature, we read a short story by Edgar Allen Poe titled The Fall of the House of Usher. A common feature of Gothic stories is darkness and melancholy. Roderick Usher's house is always dark because he has hypersensitivity to light. He also appears sickly and pale, and struggles with depression and an imperceptible number of other mental disorders, as does his sister, who is prone to "cataleptic, deathlike trances" (Wikipedia). In the end, Roderick, mistaking his sister to be dead, accidentally entombs his sister alive, who suddenly emerges from her tomb at the end, throwing herself onto her brother as they both fall dead. Minutes afterward, the entire house cracks in two and crumbles to the ground, symbolizing the demise of their entire family line, much to the horror of their friend, the narrator, who had come by for a visit. Don't worry, the narrator makes it out of the house quite alive, and only injured psychologically from the experience.