The major themes in Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" include mortality, madness, fear, incest, friendship, and burial. Mortality is a central theme as the story involves a woman dying and being buried only to rise from the grave. Madness is explored through the narrator noting inconsistencies in Roderick Usher's speech which blur the line between sanity and insanity. Fear, especially of the unknown and irrational fear, is a motif that seems to terrify Roderick. Incest is implied between Roderick and Madeline who live together in the family home without spouses. Friendship is shown through the narrator visiting his boyhood friend Roderick, though family

1. The fall of the House of Usher
Themes

2. Major themes
• Mortality
• Madness
• Fear
• Incest
• Friendship
• Burial
• The Arts

3. Let’s take a closer look
Mortality:
The plot of Poe's tale
involves a woman who
dies, is buried, and rises
from the grave.
The line between life
and death is a fine one
in Poe's fiction

4. Madness
"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."
The Narrator notes an "incoherence" and
"inconsistency" in his old friend, but he
doesn’t explain it. As a result, the line
between sanity and insanity becomes
blurred.

5. Fear
What seems to terrify Usher is fear itself. Fear
for no apparent reason is an important motif
in Poe's tale, which begins with the Narrator's
description of his own irrational dread:
"I know not how it was--but, with the first
glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable
gloom pervaded my spirit."
Later, Usher identifies fear itself as the thing
that will kill him, suggesting that his own
anxiety is what conjures up the blood-stained
Madeline--or that she is simply a
manifestation of his own deepest neuroses.

6. Incest
What binds Usher to Madeline, and
what makes him terrified of her?
Without spouses, they live together
in the great family home, each of
them wasting away within the
building's dark rooms
The Narrator describes the strange qualities
of the Usher family--that it never has put
forth "any enduring branch," that "the entire
family lay in the direct line of descent." The
implication is that incest is the norm for the
Ushers, and that Roderick's and Madeline's
strange illnesses may stem from their inbred
genes.

7. Friendship The Narrator arrives at the House of Usher
in order to visit a friend, they were boyhood
friends.
Usher writes to the Narrator, urging him to
give him company in his time of distress,
suggests the close bond between the two
men.
Sadly in this case, family trumps friendship
at the end, when Usher and Madeline are
reunited and the Narrator is cast off on his
own into the raging storm.

8. Burial
• There are three images of
"tombs" or "crypts" in "The
Fall of the House of Usher.“
• The house itself is shut off
from the daylight, its
cavernous rooms turned into
spacious vaults, in which
characters who never seem
entirely alive--Madeline and
Usher--waste away.

9. • Second, Usher's painting is of "an immensely
long and rectangular vault or tunnel,"
foreshadowing the third image of a tomb, the
real one of Madeline's temporary burial.

10. • The implication, especially once
the entire House of Usher sinks
into a new grave below the tarn,
is that the world itself is a kind
of crypt.

11. The Arts
Usher is skilled at music and
apparently is quite a painter.
Art might be considered as an
attempt at immortality, and
the death-obsessed Usher, so
certain of his own death,
strives to cling to life by
producing works which can
last beyond him.
Ironically, though, the one
painting of his that the
Narrator describes portrays a
tomb, and everything is
finally destroyed by the
House's collapse. It would
seem that his art fails
Roderick Usher.