Isolation in The Fall of the House of Usher

In “The Fall of the House of Usher” Edgar Allan Poe shows that living in isolation can lead to madness in Roderick Usher by the way he’s been described as if on opium, and the way that Usher has locked himself in his home for so long “During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year ” starts the story out appropriately. lt eludes to how Roderick Usher’s senses are overly-acute and how he can only “wear garments of certain texture his eyes were tortured by even a faint light.

” With the story setting being dull and soundless, it adds to the isolation feel to the House of Usher and to how Roderick has kept himself very reclusive to others. Near the stan of the story, the narrator starts by saying how him and Usher have “been even intimate associates” yet the narrator knew hardly anything about Usher. Usher is described as “his reserve has always been excessive and habitual,” saying that, even at a young age, usher has always isolated himself in some ways.

In the form of keeping to himself and not talking about himself much, or his family to others, even to people he’s supposedly ‘close‘ to.  When Usher welcomes the narrator to his home, the usher is somewhat described as talking with a mad delirium “his voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic concision-that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow—sounding enunciation that leaden, self-balanced, and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement.

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” When Usher speaks, his voice changes tone and pace, giving the reader and the narrator an idea of some sort of madness has started infesting it.

lf in the usher’s mind, the usher would isolate himself from reality by attempting to immerse himself into music or reading. When first seeing Roderick, the narrator described the room where the usher waited to greet him with “many books and musical instruments lay scattered about Edgar Allan Poe illustrates isolation and madness in the outer appearance of the home, and of the day, as well as in Roderick Usher himself. “The Fall of the House of Usher” is shown as isolating oneself and its slow descent into madness and eventual death in the form of Roderick Usher and in lady Madeline.