Kevin Riley 1 Kevin Riley Mrs.

Villasenoir English III-P, Period 2 8 February, 2012 The House of Usher Incest is defined by the act of having sexual relations with a relative of some sort. It is viewed by many to be unnatural and weird. The reason a family would go through with incest would be to keep their family blood clean and pure without any contamination of genes from another family. In Edgar Allen Poes story The Fall of The House of Usher the Usher family has an incestuous tradition that has been passed down from generation to generation. This incestuous tradition has been passed down from one generation to the next, a disease has been created. This disease is killing Madeline and Roderick Usher which leaves both of them infertile to pass on the family tradition. Madeline and Roderick Usher are the last two descendants of the Ushers, now it is their responsibility now to carry on the family tradition. We can prove that Madeline and Roderick Usher had a mutual incestuous relationship through Poes use of Archetypal, Freudian, and contextual symbolism. The Usher family has passed down a tradition of incest from one generation to the next. Poe uses archetypal and contextual symbolism to show the history of the family tradition. As the narrator looks closely at the Usher house he notices something odd about it. The eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn(2). The zigzag fissure can represent the incest in the family and how it has been passed down from one generation to the next, and each time it is

Kevin Riley 2 passed down it is slowly tearing the Usher family apart. We can come to the conclusion that the house the Ushers lived in was directly attached to the members of the family because as the family becomes ill and weaker the house starts to fall more and more apart. As the narrator continues to describe the house he said an atmosphere which had recked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible and leaden hue. In this quote, Poe is saying that the family tree is becoming weak because of the incest that has been passed down and kept hidden inside the house. The decayed tree represents the Usher family tree, which is very thin and weak because of the family tradition that is passed down. The gray wall represents how the Ushers as a family are hiding their incest from the other people and how they keep their blood line pure and within the family. The tarn is a Freudian symbol that represents the infertility of the last two Ushers. The tarn, or pond, is a sign of life or birth, but the tarn described in the quote is dull and sluggish which means that there is infertility in the Usher family. Throughout the story, Poe uses contextual symbolism to describe Madeline and Rodericks relationship. In the beginning of the story when the narrator first arrives at the Usher household he describes the property, he said I looked upon the scene before meupon the bleak walls - upon the vacant eye-like windows upon a few rank sedges and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees (Poe 474) Poe uses the symbol of bleak walls to resemble how the Ushers keep their blood line within their family and how they confine themselves in their house. The act of confining themselves in their house will eventually lead to, after generations of incest, to disease and infertility. The decaying tree stumps are a Freudian symbol for the infertile end of the Usher family. The tree stumps represent the male anatomy, and since the tree stumps are decayed and white we can infer that Roderick Usher is sterile and infertile.

Kevin Riley 3 As the narrator sees the house he begins to describe how it seems to be falling apart but it is not. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones.(Poe 477) Poe uses this contextual symbol to resemble how the family is becoming weaker over time because of the incest. The crumbling condition of the stones represents Madeline and Roderick becoming weaker because of the disease they have acquired through incest. They are the individual stones that have been left or abandoned by the ancestors because they cannot carry on the family tradition. The disease cause by the incestuous family tradition has affected the two remaining Ushers to be unable to carry out their ancestors wish of a successful incestuous relationship. Usher and Madeline try to carry on an incestuous relationship. Poe uses Archetypal and contextual symbolism to show that Madeline Usher might have gotten pregnant but that then lead to a miscarriage because of the disease. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame.(Poe 493) This quote contains contextual evidence that provides evidence that Madeline had a miscarriage. The bitter struggle that she could have had would be a miscarriage that left her body ravaged and weak. The blood upon her white robes resemble purity, cleanliness and a fresh beginning, but we know that Madeline was not pure because of the disease she had obtained. The blood on the white robes could mean that a fresh beginning for the Usher family, a new generation, had failed and was not successful and resulted in a miscarriage. At the end of the story the narrator describes seeing the moon through the house. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that once barely discernible fissure, of which I have spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base.(Poe 494)

Kevin Riley 4 A moon is an archetypal symbol that represents the female as a mother. Since the moon is blood-red is represents a barren womb of the mother, Madeline. Before the narrator sees the blood-red moon through the crack in the house which symbolizes how the infertility and miscarriage have torn apart Madeline and Roderick Usher and how the incest and the disease tore apart the Usher family. The Usher house itself is directly connected to the Ushers as a family. Poe uses the house as an archetype to show this. Patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the quant and equivocal appellate ion of the original title of the estate.(Poe 476) In this quote the house is being used to show that the Ushers are directly connected to their house because they have lived there for so long. The people that know the Ushers or the house have directly associated the two together and they will always be related, almost as if the house and the Ushers have merged together. We can conclude at the end of the story that the house was joined so strongly to the Usher family that when the last two remaining Ushers die, Madeline and Roderick, the house crumbles too. There came a fierce breath of the whirlwindthe entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sightmy brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder.(Poe 494) In this quote the narrator describes how the house comes crumbling down after the Usher family has been lost. The house resembles the Usher family and how the disease that the incest had created ravaged the bodies and minds of the generations as it eventually got worst and resulted in death. Once the Ushers were gone so was any evidence of their existence because the house was the only thing they had. Throughout the story The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allen Poe uses archetypal, contextual, and Freudian symbolism to prove that Madeline and Roderick Usher did in fact have a mutual incestuous relationship. The Usher family had a tradition that was passed down from

Kevin Riley 5 one generation to the next, and that tradition was to have an incestuous relationship to keep the families blood line clean. The last two remain Ushers, Madeline and Roderick, did indeed have an incestuous relationship but because of the disease they obtained they became infertile and unable to carry on the tradition their ancestors had started. Also Madeline might have gotten pregnant but had a miscarriage because of the disease. One critic stated that the Ushers have interrupted the chain of obligations that binds men among themselves and transgressed the rule that defines them as human and, incidentally, guarantees their survival.(eapoe.org 13) The Ushers had broken the rules with nature and committed the incestuous crime of incest that eventually lead to the decay and death of the Usher family. They say that you should keep your family close, but the Ushers took that saying a little too seriously.