Comments on the story from Ann Woodlief

I don't have a lot to add because I have already told you (in the hypertext) the questions and issues raised in my mind by the text, the gaps that need to be filled in somehow, and the passages that seem most significant and puzzling. Part of the reasoning behind the hypertext is for you to be able to see, from the inside as it were, the kinds of questions and issues raised by more experienced readers (and that includes far more astute critics that I claim to be) and consider how you would deal with those puzzling aspects of the text. There are honest and sometimes passionate disagreements on how to interpret these gaps and how the questions might be answered. That's fine, as long as careful attention is being paid to the text (which I hope is what the hypertext comments help to promote: attention to the ambiguities and possibilities of the text).

Re: inbreeding. Our understanding of genetics is quite different from Poe's, and we must be careful not to impose it on this work. Besides, if this is only a story depicting the possible horrors of inbreeding, that's just not enough for me. I'll read a medical/sociological work for the real dirt on that. That does not make literature, nor does it draw me into a work as a reader. And I am engaged by this work. Why?

My theory (at this time) is that I, as a reader, am drawn into the work (and I do find myself responding emotionally to it--and wondering why) because I have done something quite natural for any reason: I have identified with and trusted the narrator to some degree. After all, he tells the story (I try very hard not to identify him with Poe the person, however) and so I must count on him telling me the truth. The fact that his name is not given probably enhances that identification. He seems like a reasonable enough soul, although I am bothered by why he would give up his life and come see a friend he's not seen since he was a child, why he would respond to this "plea from the heart." Ah ha, maybe that's it--the heart! Maybe he's being leading a perfectly normal rational life, or possibly even an abnormally rational life--for him. Perhaps he has neglected matters of the heart to the point that he is hungry to experience them--even if vicariously. Or maybe he's just curious or doing psychological research.

Nevertheless, as he sits on his horse looking at the house--and experiencing some rather horrible, though maybe also deliciously fearful, feelings, he does go on, but what compels him? And what compels him to spend hours and days (or maybe nights) shut up in the library with this neurotic artist, indulging in works that could push anyone over the brink of sanity? Is he, possibly, searching for something crucial for himself, for his identity? Is he searching for his heart, his deepest and most conflicting feelings? He is courting emotional chaos, and seems to know it, having vivid dreams; in fact, he often wonders whether he isn't living in a dream world. Perhaps he is delving deeply into his own subconscious.

Of course he's also delving deeply into Usher's world--and the world of the Ushers. And yes, I think on some level this is a story about an inbred aristocracy collapsing on itself, just as it was doing in the South (and Richmond) at the time. Yet I also think it may be about the narrator's mind collapsing on itself, yet that is possibly more a healing process than a destructive one.

At any rate, as the narrator seems to lose his grasp on reality--and who wouldn't, in this atmosphere, I feel that I am also losing mine. He notes that Madeline (whom he does not know at all, and hardly sees alive) does look alive and that catalepsy is a family disorder, yet he doesn't have any problem joining Usher in putting her in this oxygenless tomb. Perhaps he too is burying something within himself. As the discussion suggests, Usher may also be burying something within himself by burying Madeline.

Now realistically I know there's no way Madeline could be alive days, or even hours, after being interred in this gloomy airtight place. Yet I find myself willing to suspend disbelief and hold the possibility that she could, in fact, not be dead. If that's true, am I, the reader, going mad when I think she may in fact be at that door. Well, in some sense, I may have lost sight of reason, for reasonably she cannot be there; loss of reason may be madness. Certainly the journey I have taking with this narrator, who questions his every perception and feels he is in a nightmare world, one of art and imagination but still one which has little relationship to the "real" world, has led me somewhere I didn't expect to go within myself. If Poe is looking for an emotional effect on the reader, I think he manages to pull it off by pulling the reader into an emotional vortext with the narrator.

What would the next paragraph be to this story? Is the narrator shattered by what he has experienced, both personally and vicariously? Or is he somehow healed of a division between reason and emotion/heart/imagination? I don't know. What I do know is that he is now a story-teller, an artist who can spin out a story (yes, even with long sentences) with great skill and feeling. Does that mean that he's sane? I think so. Does that mean that he has found a way to unite reason and imagination in art? Possibly. The destruction of the Ushers--twins and house--may have been a cathartic and healing experience which releases the artist/writer in him. Perhaps he and the Ushers are doppelgangers, or doubles (actually triplets), and he must incorporate both of them, the male and the female, in himself in order to be whole and to be a writer. OK, it's just a possibility, but it's one that I like to play with. You might see it differently. But whatever final paragraph you would write, it would show how you are reading the story and what questions you are exploring in it.

Notes on Criticism of the story