Fiche en anglais sur "The fall of the house of Usher", Edgar Allan Poe

Thèmes abordés

Fiche The fall of the house of usher edgar allan poe

Résumé du document

Fiche littéraire détaillée rédigée en anglais sur la nouvelle "The fall of the house of Usher" d'Edgar Allan POE. La fiche fait 5 pages, et présente les différents thèmes expliqués, une analyse et une présentation des personnages, ainsi qu'une courte biographie de l'auteur et de ses techniques de travail littéraire.

Extraits

[...] Roderick Usher He's the main character and the master of the house. He suffers from a depressing malaise, he's seek, paranoiac and depressive. Madeline Usher she's the twin sister of Roderick and they're the only inhabitants of the house. She also suffers from a strange illness. After apparently dying from this illness, she rises from her coffin. A servant, a valet & a physician (who treat Madeline). Themes Typical of the adventure novel, romance or chivalry tale. There are all elements of those genres; the lonely horsemen, usually being sent on a mission and very often lost in the midst of desert expanses. [...]

[...] It point to his ultimate defeat, as he lets fantastic occurrences get the better of him. It could lead us to say that the man of speculation is mocked by the specularity of the place. This tark works like a mirror to reflect the truth of his soul. As the narrator gazes down, we come to understand that this tale can be read as an exploration of the narrator's own subconscious, as in a dream experience. Poe saw dreams as the key of access to beauty & truth. Binary rythms, characteristic of constant revision. [...]

[...] Poe's characters are disconnected from human activity – they're alienated, isolated from the outside world and from their own selves. The absence of details about time draws the reader's attention on sounds, while talking about silence = paradox. In Poe's work, silence is often linked with waters, especially black or opaque waters. Silence & waters = signs of death. Twilight, sunset, dusk time of transition between daylight and darkness, shadowy world. This transition stands for life & death, reason & madness, irrationality. [...]

[...] It would seem that his art fails Roderick Usher. Burial There are three images of would-be "tombs" or "crypts" in "The Fall of the House of Usher." The house itself is shut off from the daylight, its cavernous rooms turned into spacious vaults, in which characters who never seem entirely alive--Madeline and Usher--waste away. Second, Usher's painting is of "an immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel," foreshadowing the third image of a tomb, the real one of Madeline's temporary burial. [...]

[...] The fall of the narrator The glimpse of the house of Usher creates an overwhelming feeling. The scientific approach does not eliminate the phenomenon, it actually makes it worst. Reason seems to work for unreason. The narrator is totally freaking out, and he gets the idea of looking to the water and see what it really is. The use of dashes materializes the split between our rational part & our superstitious part. It prepares the reader for a kind of split personality. [...]