A Summary and Analysis of Edgar Allan Poes The Fall of the House of Usher
Table Of Content
Napoleon “Leo” Usher is a video game patron and the closest to a socialite the Usher siblings get. A “playboy” with a drug for every occasion, Leo welcomes the ability to numb the pain of his reality, but his drug use has started to become a problem for his boyfriend, Julius. As the eldest, Frederick Usher is the natural heir to his father’s company, but out of all of his siblings, he’s the least equipped to do so. While his neuroses make him an easy target for his siblings, Freddie’s fiery jealousy and compounding insecurity force him down a path that even those closest to Freddie are shocked to see. The Fall of the House of Usher is a haunted house of a show filled with the ghosts of Mike Flanagan’s past casts. You’ll recognize a number of famous faces from projects like The Midnight Club, Midnight Mass, The Haunting of Bly Manor, The Haunting of Hill House, and more in this wicked horror series based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe.
The Fall of the House of Usher Cast & Characters in Mike Flanagan Series - Netflix Tudum
It’s not perfect – the order in which the Poe family meet their fates is a case of diminishing returns, as its most intriguing members are dispatched too quickly. Some of the CGI, particularly one scene involving bodies falling from the sky, is unintentionally funny. Problematically, Flanagan tends to conflate queerness with depravity and sexual fluidity is punished here with an unnerving flourish. But the show remembers to be actually scary, with truly inspired uses of chimps, mirrors and sprinkler systems. There’s no question that The Fall of the House of Usher ranks among Flanagan’s finest works. Presenting vintage Poe stories filtered through Mike Flanagan's deliciously dark lens, The Fall of the House of Usher will get a rise out of horror fans.
What is The Fall of the House of Usher about?
The Martian Chronicles, a 1950 collection of stories by Ray Bradbury, contains a novella called "Usher II," a homage to Poe. Its main character, William Stendahl, builds a house based on the specifications from Poe's story to murder his enemies. Czech director Jan Švankmajer adapted the story into the 1980 short film Zánik domu Usherů, which made use of black and white photography and stop-motion techniques but no actors on screen at any moment. Like Madeline, Roderick is connected to the mansion, the titular House of Usher. He believes the mansion is sentient and responsible, in part, for his deteriorating mental health and melancholy. Despite this admission, Usher remains in the mansion and composes art containing the Usher mansion or similar haunted mansions.
Character descriptions
Late one stormy night, Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood) invites an investigator named C. He offers to lay out the truth about his family’s criminal, violent history. All of these nightmarish visions are attached to the family drama that Usher offers up for Dupin, giving the season a clever episodic structure in that each chapter intertwines a different Poe source into the overall saga of the Ushers. As Roderick finishes his story, an eyeless and bloodied Madeline suddenly bursts out of the basement and attacks Roderick as the house begins to crumble around them. In a final burst of strength, Madeline strangles Roderick to death as Auggie flees collapsing home—a sequence that mirrors the ending of Poe's "House of Usher." The Fall of the House of Usher is an American gothic horror drama television miniseries created by Mike Flanagan.
Pedro Pascal plays Joel and Bella Ramsey plays Tess, who survive a fungal outbreak that reeks havoc on the world. Season 3 of the spin-off anthology series American Horror Stories releases on Oct. 26 on Hulu and FX. Each episode of the series focuses on a different scary story with a twist. Flanagan finishes his Netflix contract on a high, gleefully capturing Poe’s magic, eerie romance and sense of dread. His shows have become the streaming service’s best offerings for spooky season, and it is hard to imagine how that void will be filled.
Poe's Stories
In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the setting, diction, and imagery combine to create an overall atmosphere of gloom. The story opens on a “dull, dark, and soundless day” in a “singularly dreary tract of country.” As the narrator notes, it is autumn, the time of year when life begins to give way to old age and death. A mere glimpse of the Usher mansion inspires in the narrator “an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart.” Upon entering the house, the reader as the narrator navigates through a series of dark passages lined with carvings, tapestries, and armorial trophies. Poe draws heavily on Gothic conventions, using omens and portents, heavy storms, hidden passageways, and shadows to set the reader on edge.
Under the watchful eye of the caretaker, Nurse Thatcher (Beth Grant), Jill appears to be haunted by Maddy's ghost. It turns out that almost every branch of the Usher family tree has been cut by violent horror. ” “No, not before,” he replies in one of the show’s many glimpses of Flanagan’s viciously dark sense of humor.
In a final fit of rage, she attacks her brother, scaring him to death as she herself expires. The narrator then runs from the house, and, as he does, he notices a flash of moonlight behind him. He turns back in time to see the Moon shining through the suddenly widened crack in the house. As he watches, the House of Usher splits in two and the fragments sink away into the lake. As the narrator reads of the knight's forcible entry into the dwelling, he and Roderick hear cracking and ripping sounds from somewhere in the house.
The narrator and Roderick place her in a tomb despite her flushed, lively appearance. In the tale's conclusion, Madeline escapes from the tomb and returns to Roderick, scaring him to death. Roderick and Madeline’s trauma begins when their devout mother, Eliza (Annabeth Gish), dies at home, and the twins bury her in a homemade coffin in the backyard. Eliza claws her way out and exacts vengeance on William Longfellow (Robert Longstreet) — her married boss, CEO of Fortunato Pharmaceuticals, and Madeline and Roderick’s neglectful father.
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Loosely based on various works by 19th-century author Edgar Allan Poe (most prominently the eponymous 1840 short story), the series adapts otherwise unrelated stories and characters by Poe into a single nonlinear narrative set from 1953 to 2023. It recounts both the rise to power of Roderick Usher, the powerful CEO of a corrupt pharmaceutical company and his sister Madeline Usher, the firm's genius COO, and the events leading to the deaths of all six of Roderick’s children. It stars an ensemble cast led by Carla Gugino as a mysterious woman plaguing the Ushers, Bruce Greenwood as an elderly Roderick and Mary McDonnell as an elderly Madeline. Coming to Netflix on Oct 12, The Fall House of Usher is an adaptation of the 19th-century short story by Edgar Allen Poe. In this mini-series, siblings Roderick and Madeline Usher, owners of a wealthy pharmaceutical company, begin to unravel the secrets of their family's history after the successors of the Usher family begin to perish. “The Fall of the House of Usher” updates the work of Edgar Allan Poe for the era of Big Pharma, turning his most famous tales into a sprawling story of the decline of a wealthy American family.
Other scholars pointed to the work as an embodiment of Poe’s doctrine of l’art pour l’art (“art for art’s sake”), which held that art needs no moral, political, or didactic justification. The eldest of the Usher “bastards,” Victorine has made helping people her life’s work, but like her siblings, the true source of her ambition is her desire for her father’s approval and affection. After Roderick shows interest in Victorine’s revolutionary new heart technology — still in its testing phase — Victorine bends the rules of clinical trials to start testing on human subjects. Roderick Usher is the patriarch of the Usher family and CEO of Fortunato Pharmaceuticals. After acquiring Fortunato with the help of his twin sister, Madeline, the Usher family has found success and wealth at the cost of the greater good. An ambitious and driven man, Roderick expects the most out of his six children, giving them access to every resource imaginable — except his fatherly affection.
The younger version of Auguste was an investigator who sought to find the truth — and the good in people. A dedicated, kind, and thoughtful husband to Tamerlane, Bill (or BillT as his fitness followers call him) is more than happy to team up with his wife on their newest wellness venture. With only love for Tammy, Bill is always willing to do what will make her happy, even if it goes against his own desires.
The secret that is buried and then comes to light (represented by Madeline) is never revealed. The symbol which represents the secret – Madeline herself – is hidden away by Roderick, but that symbol returns, coming to light at the end of the story and (in good Gothic fashion) destroying the family for good. Several days later, Roderick tells the narrator that Madeline has died, and they lay her to rest in a vault. In the days that follow, the narrator starts to feel more uneasy in the house, and attributes his nervousness to the gloomy furniture in the room where he sleeps. The narrator begins to suspect that Roderick is harbouring some dark secret. When Poe began writing short stories, the short story was not generally regarded as serious literature.
But Virginia did not fall ill until after Poe had written ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’. In a shocking development, Madeline breaks out of her coffin and enters the room, and Roderick confesses that he buried her alive. Madeline attacks her brother and kills both him and herself in the struggle, and the narrator flees the house. It is a stormy night, and as he leaves he sees the house fall down, collapsing into the lake which reflects the house’s image. Roderick Usher is a gifted poet and artist, whose talents the narrator praises before sharing a poem Usher wrote, titled ‘The Haunted Palace’. The ballad concerns a royal palace which was once filled with joy and song, until ‘evil things’ attacked the king’s palace and made it a desolate shadow of what it once was.
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