The Fall of the House of Usher and Ligeia

The story is very unusual as an unknown narrator is describing the events that are happening in the lives of all the characters. The interesting thing is that the wealthy Roderick Usher calls for his childhood friend who he had never seen after a long time to take of him during his strange illness. We can see the story is full of gothic elements. The narrator tells us that how the Usher's are cursed. Only one person form the Usher's lineage is able to survive through adulthood. The house is very mysterious as it is in a marshy land and surrounded by decaying trees. The house almost seems to represent the condition of the owner and tell the history of how the others might have perished. The house itself is diseased as it has cracks. One can expect the scene to be more bizarre once the narrator goes inside the house of the Usher. Roderick seems to be very sick and it almost felt like his life energy was being sucked by the cursed house. The idea of counterparts and double is well represented in the story. The house is dry while it is on a wet ground and the house is firm at some place while cracked at others. Most interestingly Roderick’s sister Madeline is also stricken with a strange sickness and soon she dies. They decide to rest her body in the house fearing the body snatchers and the scientific experiments. Why would someone keep the dead one in the house? This is a horrific image the author was trying to create. I realized the dead body would come to life as soon as I read what was going on. It was sort of predictable in the writer’s part. Madeline’s body comes to life but we are not sure if she was dead or she was just unconscious due to her strange condition. Roderick Usher could not bear the shock to see her alive and he dies of fright. Narrator flees the scene and as soon as he leaves the house the house crumbles to the ground. It appears that the stability of the house was dependent upon the life and health of the Usher. As the health was deteriorating so was the condition of the house and when the Usher died then the death of the house was eminent. This story was a very good story full of symbolism and gothic elements. Could make a good movie based on this story.

The short story Ligeia also has some similarites with the Fall of the House of Usher. The nattator is unknown and there is that strange illness again that causes a death. In the earlier story there was a reference to a gas that was considered not harmful by the Ushers and we want to think that might be the cause of the conditions of the Ushers. Similarly, we can argue that in this story the narrator is perhaps seeing things due to possible opium induced hallucination. An opium addict narrator loses his credibility and we can say that the narrator is unreliable. Which is not the case in the earlier story that we read. I was suspecting there was no death and the person he married was the same person and was just his hallucination that made him see a blue eyed person that was different from his earlier wife. This story was just weird.