Poe Decoder

Poe Decoder

An Analysis of Adgar Allan Poe's Psychological Thriller

Outline I. Prelude
II. Brief introduction to Adgar Allan Poe
1. 1. Allan Poe's Life
2. 2. Allan Poe's Works and Literary Achievement
III. Adgar Allan Poe -- A Post-Gothic Writer
1. 1. Gothic Introduction
2. 2. Analysis of Two Horror
1) 1) The Fall of the House of Usher
a) a) Setting
b) b) Characters
c) c) Point of View
2) 2) The Masque of the Red Death
a) a) Setting
b) b) Characters
c) c) Point of View
IV. The Symbolism in Allan Poe's Works 1. Symbolism Introduction 2. Analysis of two horrors
1) 1) The Fall of the House of Usher
a) a) Style and Interpretation
b) b) Theme
2) 2) The Masque of the Red Death
a) a) Style and Interpretation
b) b) Theme
V. Finale

I. Prelude
"During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was --but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit."
-- The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
Within the lines of the opening of The Fall Of The House Of Usher, as a result of Poe's imagery, we are aware of a sense of death and decay. Gothic is the ambience. II. Brief Introduction to Adgar Allan Poe
1. Allan Poe's Life
Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in January 1809, the second son of traveling actors. Edgar, split up from his elder bother and younger sister, was taken into the household of a Virginian tobacco merchant, John Allan, whose name Poe adopted from 1824 onwards. Poe's relationship with his foster father was uneasy at the best of times and after a violent quarrel with his foster father over his choice of career, Poe left Virginia altogether and went to Boston. Poe was always very close to Mrs. Allan and it was her dying wish that her husband and foster son be reconciled. In 1830, living on a small allowance from Allan, Poe entered the military academy at West Point, but deliberately got himself dishonorably discharged in 1831. He lived with his aunt, Mrs. Clemms, in Baltimore, where he began to publish stories in magazines. When MS. Found in a Bottle won a short-story competition one of the judges helped secure him a job as an editor on the Southern Literary Messenger. In 1836 Poe married his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemms. Much of his early work went unnoticed and it took until 1840 before Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque was published in two volumes. This included the famous story The Fall of the House of Usher. Plans for starting his own magazine did not lead too much and he continued to work as a magazine editor for various publications. His Tales and The Raven and Other Poems, published in 1845, did bring him some recognition but unfortunately it was not enough to sustain his family financially. Mrs. Clemms and Poe's wife Virginia nearly starved to death one winter. After his wife's death in 1847 Poe became increasingly unstable and his dependence on tempted suicide in 1848 and tragically died in 1849, five days after being found in a delirious and semi-conscious condition in Baltimore. 2. Allan Poe's Works and Literary Achievement
Edgar Allan Poe was mostly known for his poems and short tales and his literary criticism. His literary achievement was mostly on his short tales. The first short story collection, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, contains 25 short tales includes Ms. Found in a Bottle, Berenice, Ligeia, Morella, The Fall of the House of Usher, William Wilson, etc. Later two short tales collection, The Murders In The Rue Morgue, Tales, contains The Masque of the Red Death, The Pit And The Pendulum, The Black Cat, The Purloined Letter. The tales can be divided into two classes. One is horror, which emphasizes on depicting people's twisted psycho, such as The Fall of the House of Usher, The Masque of the Red Earth, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket; the other is detective, as The Murders In The Rue Morgue. His poems like his fiction, expresses weird, grotesque, morbid images. Such as The Raven expresses a gloomy and depressed mood. He has been given credit for inventing the detective story and his psychological thrillers have been influences for many writers worldwide, such as Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, and propelled Le Symbolisme (Symbolism). III. Adgar Allan Poe -- A Post-Gothic Writer
1. Gothic Introduction
During the last decades of the eighteenth century, England found itself in the midst of a societal unraveling. The philosophies of Shaftsbury, Adam Smith, and David Hume, which for most of the century had provided the intellectual classes with theories of action and motivation that justified their self-interested behavior, began to reveal themselves as insupportable. The contradiction between the English ideology in which "individual desires and collective needs participated in perfect reciprocity" (Poovey, 307) and actual economic and political conditions began to surface. Incidents like the Gordon riots in 1780 (as well as the utterly terrifying reality of complete Revolution just across the Channel) revealed a rupture in what had been thought of as the time and place of "the well-bred gentleman."
It is out of this social climate that the Gothic novel grew: a new and fearful genre for a new and fearful time. The spectre of social revolution is manifest in the supernatural "spectres" of the Gothic: a crumbling way of life emerges as a crumbling and haunted Gothic manor; the loss of English social identity becomes the Gothic hero or heroine's search for identity. 2. Analysis of Two Horrors
1) The Fall of the House of Usher
a. Setting
The story begins on one "...dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year...." From the very beginning, the reader, as a result of Poe's imagery, is aware of a sense of death and decay. Even the narrator, Roderick's childhood companion, describes "a sense of insufferable gloom [which] pervaded [his] spirit" as he approached the House of Usher. The term "House of Usher" refers not only to the crumbling mansion but also to the remaining family members who live within. b. Characters
There are three significant characters in this tale: the narrator, Roderick and Madeline Usher. The narrator is a boyhood friend of Roderick Usher. He has not seen Roderick since they were children; however, because of an urgent letter that he received from Roderick which requested his aid, the nameless narrator decides to make the long journey. ("...[I]t was the apparent heart that went with his request --which allowed me no room for hesitation....")
Roderick and Madeline Usher are the sole, remaining members of the long, time-honored Usher race. When Madeline supposedly "dies" and is placed in her coffin, the narrator notices "a striking similitude between brother and sister...." It is at this point that Roderick informs his friend that he and the Lady Madeline had been twins, and that "sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between them." Due to limited medical knowledge or to suit his purposes here, Poe treats Madeline and Roderick as if they were identical twins (two parts of one personality) instead of fraternal twins. He implies that Roderick and Madeline are so close that they can sense what is happening to each other. This becomes an important aspect in the unity of effect of this particular story.
c. Point of View
Unlike many of Poe's stories, this particular story does not use the typical, first person point of view where the protagonist tells a personal account of a crime that he or she has committed. Instead, the narrator is a character of whom we know very little, who acts like a participant/observer. It is easy for the reader to become "the friend" in Poe's story as both the narrator and the reader invite "madness" as they are drawn into the underworld of the mind where fantasy becomes reality. Twice near the end of the story, Roderick calls the narrator "Madman!" However, the narrator escapes, to watch both the tenants and the house of Usher disappear into the tarn, an underworld which is their true home. 2) The Masque of the Red Death
a. Setting
The story covers a period of approximately six months during the reign of the Red Death. The action takes place in " [the] deep seclusion of one of [Prince Prospero's] castellated abbeys." The "masque" takes place in the imperial suite which consisted of seven, very distinct rooms. b. Characters
This story has no characters in the usual sense which lends credibility to an allegorical interpretation. Only Prince Prospero speaks. His name suggests happiness and good fortune; however, ironically this is not the case. Within the Prince's abbey, he has created a world of his imagination with masked figures that reflect "his own guiding taste." These dancers are so much a product of the Prince's imagination that Poe refers to them as "a multitude of dreams." Even when the "Red Death" enters, the author refers to this character as a "figure" or a "mummer" who "was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask...was made...to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse....But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood-and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror." When the mummer is seized toward the end of the story, all "gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave cerements and corpselike mask...untenanted by any tangible form." c. Point of View
Poe expressed his dislike for allegory - "a tale in prose or verse in which characters, actions or settings represent abstract ideas or moral qualities." Poe argued that allegory was an inferior literary form because it is designed to evoke interest in both the narrative and the abstract ideas for which the narrative stands, which distracts the reader from the singleness of effect that Poe most valued in literature. "Under the best circumstances, it must always interfere with that unity of effect which, to the artist, is worth all the allegory in the world." Yet Poe himself openly used allegory, as in "The Haunted Palace" verses which he inserted into his story, "The Fall of the House of Usher," as well as in "The Masque of the Red Death." IV. The Symbolism in Allan Poe's Works
1. Symbolism
Symbolism, as a literary genre, stems from Romanticism and is a rebellion to the conventional genre. Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud are the pioneer of Symbolism. Adgar Allan Poe's work great propelled the France Le Symbolisme (Symbolism). 2. Analysis of Two Horrors
1) The Fall of the House of Usher
a. Style and Interpretation
"The Fall of the House of Usher" illustrates Poe's critical doctrine that unity of effect depends on unity of tone. Every detail of this story, from the opening description of the dank tarn and the dark rooms of the house to the unearthly storm which accompanies Madeline's return from the tomb, helps to convey the terror that overwhelms and finally destroys the fragile mind of Roderick Usher.
Terror, even this extreme which results in madness and death, is meaningless unless it is able to somehow illustrate a principle of human nature. One approach to understanding the true significance of this story lies in the many connections that Poe establishes for the reader. Roderick and Madeline are not just brother and sister but twins who share "sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature" which connect his mental disintegration to her physical decline. As Madeline's mysterious illness approaches physical paralysis, Roderick's mental agitation takes the form of a "morbid acuteness of the senses" that separates his body from the physical world making all normal sensations painful: "...the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these were from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror."
Besides the fact that Roderick and Madeline are not just twins but represent the mental and physical components of a single being or soul, there is also a connection between the family mansion and the remaining members who live within. Poe uses the phrase "House of Usher" to refer to both the decaying physical structure and the last of the "all time-honored Usher race...." Roderick has developed a theory that the stones of the house have consciousness, and that they embody the fate of the Usher family. "He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence for many years, he had never ventured forth...." Roderick also makes another connection between a house and a person in the poem, "The Haunted Palace." The crack in the Usher mansion which is at first barely discernible by the narrator, symbolically suggests a flaw or fundamental split in the twin personality of Roderick and Madeline, and foretells the final ruin of both family and mansion.
The narrator is connected to the Usher family since he and Roderick were once close boyhood companions. They have not seen each other for many years, and it is only because of their past closeness and the apparent emotion in Roderick's request that convinces the narrator to make the journey. As a result of this, the narrator spends the opening paragraphs reflecting upon the past as well as trying to prepare himself for the imminent reunion; however, nothing prepares him for the "altered" state of his childhood companion: "...a caderousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely molded chin, speaking in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten." (Some of Poe's critics like to say that Poe is describing himself here.)
The narrator tries to comfort and rescue Roderick from an illness in which the exterior self has been lost to the interior world of the imagination. The isolation of Roderick's life from outer reality can be seen in the atmosphere surrounding the mansion which seems to arise from the decayed trees and dank tarn. Roderick's fantasy world is like that of an artist: his music; his literature which deals with extremes of the human imagination; and his art that portrays a vault which is illuminated from no visible source but is "...bathed...in a ghastly...splendor." Roderick, unlike an artist, has lost control of his fantasy world so that it has become all of reality.
In "The Fall of the House of Usher," Poe explores the inner workings of the human imagination but, at the same time, cautions the reader about the destructive dangers within. When fantasy suppresses reality and the physical self, as in Roderick's case, what results is madness and mental death. Madeline's return and actual death reunites the twin natures of their single being, claiming Roderick as a "victim to the terrors that he had anticipated."
The true focus of this story is the narrator's reaction to and understanding of these strange events. Even to look into the dark imagination where fantasy becomes reality is to evoke madness. That is why Roderick twice refers to the narrator as "Madman" in the final scene. The narrator has made a journey into the underworld of the mind and is nearly destroyed by it; however, he manages to escape and turns to watch as the "House of Usher" crumbles into "...the deep and dank tarn." b. Theme
According to Edward H. Davidson in his book Poe: A Critical Study, "The Fall of the House of Usher" can be interpreted as "a detailed account of the derangement and dissipation of an individual's personality." The house itself becomes the "symbolic embodiment of this individual." The fissure or the crack in the decaying mansion, that is noted by the narrator near the beginning of the story, represents "an irreconcilable fracture in the individual's personality." Roderick represents the mind or the intellect, while the portion of personality that we refer to as the senses (hearing, seeing, touching, tasting and smelling) is represented by Madeline. During the course of the story, the intellect (Roderick) tries to detach itself from its more physically oriented twin (Madeline). This can be seen in Roderick's aversion to his own senses as well as by his premature entombment of his twin sister. Living without Madeline (that is without the senses), Roderick's condition deteriorates. He begins to suffer from an "...intolerable agitation of the soul." At the end of the story, Madeline returns from her premature tomb to claim the maddened Roderick, " a victim to the terrors he had anticipated." As the two are reunited in death (the mind can neither live nor die without its physical counterpart, the senses), the house (a symbol of a now deranged individual) crumbles into the "deep and dank tarn," as the narrator flees in terror for his own sanity. 2) The Masque of the Red Death
a. Style and Interpretation
Poe's story takes place in seven connected but carefully separated rooms. This reminds the reader of the past significance of the number seven. (The history of the world was thought to consist of seven ages, just as an individual's life had seven stages. The ancient world had seven wonders; universities divided learning into seven subjects; there were seven deadly sins with seven corresponding cardinal virtues, and the number seven is important in mysticism.) Therefore, an allegorical reading of this story suggests that the seven rooms represent the seven stages of one's life, from birth to death, through which the prince pursues a figure masked as a victim of the Red Death, only to die himself in the final chamber of eternal night. The prince's name suggests happiness and good fortune, and the prince, just like all beings uses happiness to wall out the threat of death. Prince Prospero's masked ball or dance reminds us of the "dance of death" portrayed in old paintings as a skeleton leading a throng of people to the grave, just as the prince leads his guests to the Red Death.
The significance of time in this story is seen in the symbol of the "gigantic clock of ebony" which is draped in black velvet and located in the final room. Although the clock is an object, it quickly takes on human aspects as the author describes it as having a face and lungs from which comes a sound that is "exceedingly musical" but "so peculiar" that the "dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand," in a momentary rigor mortis that anticipates the final one.
The relationship between the Red Death and time is a key to understanding the symbolic meaning of the story. The seven rooms are laid out from east to west, reminding us of the course of the sun which measures our earthly time. These rooms are lighted from without, and it is only in the seventh room where the color of the windows does not correspond with the color of the room, but instead is "a deep blood color" through which light illuminates the westernmost chamber of black, with an ebony clock on its western wall. In creating this room, Poe links the colors red and black with death and time.
"[S]carlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim" indicate the presence of the Red Death. Blood, the very substance of life, becomes the mark of death as it bursts through the pores. Death, then, is not an outside antagonist, to be feared and walled out as Prince Prospero attempts to do; but instead it is a part of each of us. Its presence is felt in our imaginations as we become aware of the control that time has over our lives. We hear the echoes of the "ebony clocks" that we carry within. Prince Prospero tries to escape death by walling it out, and by so doing, creates a prison out of his sanctuary. However, the Prince learns that no one can escape death. Death holds "illimitable dominion over all." b. Theme
No one escapes death. Human happiness (as represented by Prince Prospero) seeks to wall out the threat of death; however, the Biblical reference at the end of the story reminds us that death comes "like a thief in the night," and even those who seek "peace and safety...shall not escape." V. Finale
"And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all."
-- The Masque of the Red Death by Adgar Allan Poe
After his wife's death in 1847 Poe became increasingly unstable and his dependence on tempted suicide in 1848 and tragically died in 1849, five days after being found in a delirious and semi-conscious condition in Baltimore.

Appendix
Resources
l l The Literary Gothic http://www.siue.edu/~jvoller/gothic.html l l Poe Decoder http://www.poedecoder.com/ l l Edgar Allan Poe - "The Fall of the House of Usher" http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~mmaynard/Poe/poe.html l l "Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English" The Commercial Press l l ¡¶Íâ¹úÏÖ´úÅÉÎÄѧ´Çµä¡· ÉϺ£ÎÄÒÕ³ö°æÉç l l ¡¶½ðɽ´Ê°Ô¡· ½ðɽ¶àýÌåÓÐÏÞ¹«Ë¾