Usher. During the fall, he died. It shows that the return of Madeline is part of terror of death toward Usher. The characters behavior and the theme in the story
help me to understand clearly about terror as the quintessential-feature that exists in the story. The other intrinsic elements also support the mood of terror in the
story.
4.2.5 Madness
Madness is the next quintessential-features of gothic tale that I found. It also deals with the theme of the story. In the story, Usher and Madeline suffer from mental
illness characterized by anxiety and depression. Their condition is a condition that causes muscle rigidity and temporary loss of consciousness and feeling for several
minutes. The madness caused by the mysterious illness that happened. It is available in the quotation below:
There were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was labouring with some oppressive secret,
to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At times, again, I was obliged to resolve all into the mere
inexplicable vagaries of madness, for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of the
profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his condition terrified-that it
infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influences of hisown fantastic yet
impressive superstitions. Poe, 1839: 10
Poe writes that Usher ―entered, at some length, into what he conceived to
be the nature of his malady
‖ Poe, 1839: 4. What exactly is his malady we never learn.
Even Usher seems uncertain, contradictory in his description: ―It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a
remedy--a mere nervous affection, he immediately added, which would
undoubtedly soon pass off.‖ Poe, 1839: 4. The Narrator notes an inconsistency in his old friend, but he offers little by way of logical explanation of the condition.
As a result, the line between sanity and insanity becomes blurred, which paves the way for the Narrators own descent into madness.
The characters behavior and the theme in the story show this features clearly. From both intrinsic elements I can identify terror as the quintessential-
features of the story easily.
4.2.6 Death
