Poe's Stories brief biography of edgar allan poe
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Short Story By Flannery OConnor
| the sounds of the house that he seems oblivious now to the narrator’s presence. He is experiencing something in his mind that has come to possess him and now he is fixed in this posture of madness. Ashe describes his sister’s movements through the house, he is so intent on the door that his nerves and the mood of the house seem to be acting as one. Usher describes Madeleine coming up the stairs, the sound of her heart, and then, in an absolute frenzy of terror, he cries that she is standing outside the door. As if his energy had made the idea come true, they seethe massive door of the room start to open and the lady standing in the threshold, enshrouded and bloody. Fora moment, she stands, trembling, and then with a terrible moan falls into her brother’s arms. Usher falls down dead. In a terrible progression of Madeleine coming closer and closer and Usher getting more and more frantic and the storm raging, the Usher nightmare finally concludes and it becomes clear that the genetic connection really was fatal – Madeleine literally dragged Usher down to his rightful place with her, in death. Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com ©2017 LitCharts LLC www.LitCharts.com Page 27 The narrator of "House of Usher" flees from the house, and through the storm. He sees a flash of light and turns back around. It is the blood-red moon shining through the crack in the wall, which now begins to widen and rip, and with the force of a whirlwind and a thunderous sound, the house collapses into the earth, and the still waters of the tarn are all that’s left. The spiritual connection between the Usher lineage and the House of Usher is complete – the building physically cannot stand now that the last of the Usher breed has died. WILLIAM WILSON The narrator introduces himself to the reader, asking us to use the name William Wilson instead of his real name, which cannot be uttered because it's too heinous. The man connected with this name is an outcast from the world. The narrator asks whether there will always be such a dark cloud barring him from heaven. He says that it is the latter years of his life that turned to disaster. Most men turn rotten gradually, but for him it happened all at once. The event that provoked such a fall is about to be related to us, he assures, because he is approaching death. In typical form, Poe begins his tale by showing us a tantalizing glimpse of the man that the narrator will turn into over the course of the story. Here, we know from the outset that the narrator will end up in this tragic, wasted state and this image looms over our reading of what follows. He also starts this story about a doubled identity more complicated by explaining that the name he is giving is not his real name, making it unclear who he really is. William wishes that people would pity him. If no man has ever been tempted so awfully, and fallen so far, then surely no man has suffered as much as he has. He is surely dying within a nightmare. He goes back to the beginning, to his antecedents, who all had a tendency for imaginative and extraordinary lives. William declares himself typical of this family. Ashe grew, the willful temper became more established in him. He showed evil tendencies that his parents, being of the same breed, could do little to quash, and William soon becomes the master of his household. William opens up about his temperament and his family origins, which should invoke our sympathies but it has an opposite effect. His appeal for sympathy sounds a lot like bargaining. And his confession that he has inherited an imaginative, active temper warns us to be weary of his story. The fact that William can Download 0.58 Mb. Share with your friends:
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