Being twins, both being sick, being tied to the house, there are many connections between the family and the mansion reiterated throughout the progression of the story. The narrator very briefly sees the sister alive and only discovers that they are twins after placing her in the tomb. Both have mental disorders Usher is agoraphobic and Madeline seems to lose control of her limbs. We learn of both siblings’ illnesses, Usher: “the dwelling which he tenanted…he had never ventured forth,” (235) lady Madeline: “cataleptical character,” (236). Usher relates how close he is to his sister by calling her, “his sole companion for long years, his last and only relative,” (236). All of these point to an incredibly tight connection or bond between family and house. The local people have come to call both the people and the house by the same title: The House of Usher. Possibly since the beginning of the Ushers we’re to believe they have all lived in this same house and only ever carried on one direct line of children-which could mean incestuous relationships. We’re given the explanation of the singular bloodline of Usher, “the entire family lay in direct line of descent,” (232) and the connection of the name to the house, “to merge… “The House of Usher”… to include… both the family and the family mansion,” (232) to make the very close connection between the house and the siblings. He spends much of the first three pages describing the outside of the mansion in detail and in relation to the creepiness of the surroundings, including the “black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling” (231).

Before the narrator enters the mansion he sees the reflection of it in the lake and feels all the more bothered. In this ominous beginning we’re aware the story is not a happy one. This immediately relates the building with a sense of evil and foreboding which continues throughout the narrative: “mansion of gloom,” (232), “encrimsoned light,” (234). Their joint death and connection to the house, which leads to the death of the house into the tarn, seems to be echoed using the tarn, throughout the story.Īt first approaching the mansion the narrator says, “insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit,” (231). The reiteration of the tarn and the duplication of the house seems to reflect the relation of the siblings, who are revealed in the end to be twins. In Poe’s The Fall of The House of Usher, Poe describes the mansion throughout the story with shadowy imagery but very often in connection to the tarn, or lake, outside of the house which shows the mansion’s reflection or duplicate. “I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder…the deep and dark tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the “ House of Usher ” (245). “Its reduplication in the still waters of the tarn…the evidence of its sentience…an atmosphere of their own about the waters and the walls…influence which for centuries had moulded the destinies of his family” (239). “An effect which the physique of the gray walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn into which all looked down,” (235). “I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building…until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn” (233). “An atmosphere…reeked up from the decayed trees and the gray wall, and the silent tarn-a pestilent and mystic vapor,” (233).

“A black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling” (231). “Within view of the melancholy House of Usher…with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit,” (231).

House of usher meaning