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Poe's House of the Seven Gothics: the Fall of the Narrator in ≥The Fall of the House of Usher≤
Author(s) -
Frank Frederick S.
Publication year - 1979
Publication title -
orbis litterarum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.109
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1600-0730
pISSN - 0105-7510
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0730.1979.tb00550.x
Subject(s) - fall of man , contemplation , trace (psycholinguistics) , literature , power (physics) , theme (computing) , philosophy , aesthetics , history , art , law , epistemology , politics , linguistics , physics , quantum mechanics , political science , computer science , operating system
Viewed from an aesthetic point of view, the significant “fall” in the tale is not the architectural disintegration of the mansion at the climax, but the gradual collapse of the narrator's analytic faculty during his retelling. Assuming that the story is more “about” the narrator and his flawed habits of seeing than it is “about” the Ushers, we can trace Poe's theme of reason humiliated from the contemplative arrival to the Gothic departure of Roderick's rationalistic guest. Because he refuses to accept the reality of the supernatural the narrator contributes directly to the catastrophe which befalls the House. Terrified in the manner of the traditional Gothic victim and failing to use imagination, he cannot see the House as organic. His empirical attitude coupled with his Gothic fears for his own survival cast him in a villain's role. the external fall of the mansion symbolizes the internal collapse of the narrator's reliance upon scientific fact. the real fall, therefore, is the fall of the narrator's confidence in the power of reason.