There are some actual cases of people who have had senses that had developed well beyond the ordinary human norm. There is the case of woman in Naples who sense of smell was so over-developed that she could walk amongst a crowd of women and tell which ones were menstruating. There was a Hungarian monk who claimed to be able to determine if a girl was a virgin by smelling her. There are many tales of primitive people who could track people simply by their odor.
There are numerous examples of people who have highly sensitive taste buds, wine experts, ice cream tasters, etc. There are people who find the taste of fluoride in water unbearable, while the bulk of the population is totally unaware of its presence.
It has long been known that dogs can hear frequencies of sound that are imperceptible to most humans but there have been cases of humans with almost equal abilities. I had a high school teacher who was blind. You could jiggle the change in your pocket and he would tell you how much money you had.
As to hyper-sensitivity of touch there are many blind people who have developed this facility, not to mention pick-pockets and card sharps. There can be no doubt that there are indeed varying degrees of sensual perception. But in no case that I have ever heard of was there a heightened degree of awareness in all the senses. But this is what we have in Roderick Usher.
Rather than being a useful thing, it has become a curse to him. To Roderick the world has become too loud, too foul smelling, too distasteful, too ugly, and too coarse to endure. It is possible that Poe often thought that the crude uneducated world in which he lived was more than a man of his intelligence could bear.
Today accomplished musicians recoil at the sound of rap music and people with literary knowledge turn away from sitcoms with canned laugh tracks. It has always been that those who comprehend a thing in great detail must suffer those who lack any understanding of the thing at all. In Roderick Usher we see Poe taken to the nth degree. He is not just a misunderstood genius, he is a man who operates at a level so high above his fellow men that he has become alone, without peers, and he is trapped in a world that has become alien to him.
Roderick comes across as a man of some years and experience, yet Madeline, who is his twin sister, is a lady "in the maturity of her youth". Roderick's aliment has aged him before his time. His sister, while young and beautiful, is none-the-less dying. Madeline's appearance in the story is brief. She merely wanders by as Roderick remarks about the fatality of her future.
Poe also tells us that Roderick and his sister have a type of ESP somewhat akin to the brothers in Alexandre Dumas'The Corsican Brothers. If this is true than it would seem reasonable to assume that Madeline is suffering all the agonies that her brother's hyper-sensitivity induce. As the story proceeds we see that Roderick has characteristics that some have described as feminine, while Madeline has a will to live that transcends the grave. She is definitely the stronger of the two.
We are told that there is a hair-line crack in the house in which these two dwell, a physical defect that may undermine the whole structure. This could also refer to a defect in one of these two people who have been together since they left the womb, a difference that will not only drive them apart but will destroy their entire bloodline.
The crack in the House of Usher runs right through Roderick's head. The ugly secret is that there is madness in the family gene pool. The Ushers have not ventured out of the house in years. It may be that Roderick's malady has made it impossible, but there are other possible explanations as well. Poe seems to be trying to say in a delicate manner that the Usher's engage in incest. He tells us:
"the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain."
This would be seem to indicate that Roderick and Madeline are not only the products of incest, but that they are also carrying on the family tradition. Poe's sentences on some occasions are open to so many interpretations that they actually lose all meaning.
But, assuming the incest theory is right, it would also tie in with the concept that inter-breeding produces a more finely attuned, high-strung animal, a phenomena often observed in thoroughbred horses. All thoroughbreds can trace their linage back to one of three sires; Byerly Turk, or Darley Arabian, or Godolphin Barb.
Another curiously related aspect of this odd behavior deals with the concept that human beings are divided into distinct races or sub-species, which is really a false concept. What we call 'race' is merely a group of people who have lived in an area where they were isolated to such a degree that the gene pool became quite small. People under these conditions develop similar characteristics due to the lack of variety in the genes of potential mates. On Pitcairn Island, where mutineers from the H.M.S. Bounty settled in the late 1700's, every single inhabitant can trace their ancestry back to Fletcher Christian, the leader of the mutiny, and of course the inhabitants are strikingly similar to one another in appearance. They might well be considered to be a distinct race of people.
So according to Poe's version of the family history the Ushers were on their way to becoming their own race. The differences between them and the outside world had become so great that inter-action with other people was now impossible. They seem to have a certain vanity about their genes and this excessive love of family may only be an outward expression of narcissism. Roderick's affliction may simply be an expression of egomania, not unlike people who pretend to be so sensitive that the smell of cigarette smoke sickens them while in reality they are only vain people seeking an excuse to display their superiority to others.
The royal houses of Europe inter-married to such a degree that it lead to many of the royals being deformed or mad. On the other hand the law in ancient Egypt required brothers and sisters of the royal family to marry each other and they built a great culture.
Roderick's exile from the world seems to be by choice, but Madeline's seems to imposed upon her by devotion to her brother. The un-named, unknown disease that ultimately will take her life is described as a "gradual wasting away of the person." But was Madeline's life wasted away by a disease or by her brother?
Roderick speaks not of his sister during her final days. When he does announce her demise he merely says she "is no more." We have only Roderick's word that his sister is dead and that might not be worth much. Roderick decides to keep his sister's body in the family vault for two weeks. The reasons given are that the burial grounds are too remote and to avoid "the obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men."
The visitor assists Roderick in opening the coffin and while observing the deceased he notices "a faint blush upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lips which is so terrible in death." Our narrator is often so distracted by the gothic atmosphere which surrounds him that he fails to even suspect the ghastly horror which is taking place right under his very nose. He helps Usher to screw the lid on the coffin.
Now, let's review. We don't want the doctors looking at the corpse. The corpse is smiling and has a faint blush. We're going to keep her in the basement for few weeks before we bury her. And we're going to screw the lid of the coffin on. And our narrator thinks this is all quite natural. If I'm ever charged with a crime, I want this guy on the jury.
During the period that follows Roderick seems to descend even further into madness as he wanders through the house hearing sounds that are audible only to him. Eventually, our unsuspecting narrator begins to hear the sounds as well. There is a very violent thunder storm going on outside but none-the-less he hears inexplicable sounds. When the narrator tells Roderick that he now hears the sounds that he formerly assumed to be part of Roderick's over-active imagination, Roderick informs him that they put Madeline into the tomb alive.
In many ways perhaps Roderick buried her long ago, forcing her to live in isolation with him and shun the outside world in which she might have flourished. Her will, her personality, and her love of life were interred in her youth. Roderick has merely sent her body to join them. Roderick, however, plays it off as though he has made an honest mistake in presuming her dead when she was not, yet he says he heard her first movements in the coffin days ago. If this is true why did he not come to her aid? More likely Roderick knew from the get-go that she was alive. With the end of the Ushers would come the end of this history of incest.
The doors of the room are thrown open and there stands the blood-stained Madeline. She falls upon her brother and they die as they lived; in each other's arms. As the narrator flees from the accursed dwelling it begins to crumble about him. The almost undetectable hair-line crack has now become a chasm that all the world can see and the House of Usher 'is no more.'
Perhaps Poe is telling us that isolation from the rest of humanity leads to madness and that there is a basic evil in isolation. Poe certainly felt that he was isolated (in a superior sort of way) from his fellow man. Perhaps he knew that to retreat into a world of his own making, a world where everything was to his liking, was an evil, cowardly step that would lead to his own distruction. When we view good men like Elvis Presley or evil men like Adolf Hitler we find that with both, once they entered a world where no one dared to question their actions their separation from the masses became a separation from reality as well, and lead to their downfalls.
Here we have the beginnings of the modern gothic story. The isolated mansion, the gloomy atmosphere, the thunder storm raging outside the windows, the dark, damp vault, the half-mad characters, and even the beautiful girl in the nightgown - they're all here. Universal Studios, The House of Hammer, and American International used Poe's formula over and over again. In Dracula's Castle, the House on Haunted Hill, and even the Bates Motel you'll find lumber from the House of Usher. So perhaps it was madness. Perhaps it was a history of incest. Perhaps it was something altogether different. But whatever it was there is something evil and fascinating buried in these ruins.
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POE DIRECTORY |
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