Fall of the House of Usher

Fall of the House of Usher

Although Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" is a work of gothic horror, it is worth noting that the story's meaning is constructed in part by the use of puns. I do not use the word "pun" to refer to a joking play on words, but rather on the conscious use of a word that plays upon two potential meanings: the effect is rhetorical rather than humorous. The first of these puns is obvious and is contained in the title: E. Arthur Robinson notes the double meaning whereby "the House of the title refers both to Usher's lineage and to his ancestral home" (Robinson 69). In other words, Roderick Usher's death is the end of the "House of Usher" -- his family bloodline -- but it is also marked, terrifyingly, by the literal collapse of an edifice. But I would like to examine more closely a passage from the story in which another seeming pun rather crucially encapsulates the deeper themes of Poe's tale -- this is the lead-up to the story's climax, where Poe's narrator tries to calm Roderick by reading to him from a book, with the uncanny effect that the events being described in the book also seem to be happening in the House of Usher.

The narrator admits that the choice of reading material is not really ideal for Roderick, who was more interested in "lofty and spiritual ideality" (Poe 11) and would presumably have preferred something more intellectual, like the bizarre catalogue of works by Swedenborg and Campanella that is described earlier, all having the "character of phantasm" (8). It is, to judge from the portions quoted, a rather banal adventure story: the hero Ethelred breaks through a door with his "mace" and "gauntleted hand," to find that behind the door is not the hermit he was expecting, but a screaming dragon, guarding an enchanted brass shield which falls on the metal floor with a "mighty great and terrible ringing sound" (11). What is remarkable is that the narrator (who is apparently sane) is startled by precisely similar sounds -- the smashing of a wooden door, the unearthly scream, the metal clanging -- coming from another part of the house. At the story's climax, Roderick confesses what's happening: his sister Madeleine has been buried alive, and "the breaking of the hermit's door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangour of the shield" are "rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault" (13). Roderick is correct, Madeine promptly appears, and they die in each other's arms as the narrator flees and the house collapses.