Pita Andreea Elisabeta Elena

3 year, Russian Major-English

University of Bucharest
Minor

English Literature

The grotesque, the disfigured and the uncanny: The Architect of the
abyss

The XIX century American Literature exploits various themes such as religion puritanism, the society with all its flaws, morality and most of the writers promote
transcendentalism which is the belief in ultimate goodness of the human kind. There was an
opposite tradition outside American Renaissance (the Romance)

marked by writers who

disregarded this belief and who were called anti-transcendentalists and who wrote under the
subgenre of dark romanticism and gothic.
Edgar Allan Poe is one of those writers and poets and he became popular after
introducing the grotesque and inventing the detective story. He explored for the first time in the
American literature not only different and original themes, but he also spoke about writing,
comprehended as art, solely based on form and aesthetics and claimed that a superficial text
would diminish its significance. He develops gothic-romantic

themes like death as in an

unknown concept analyzing not only the physical signs that conduct the human body and mind
to decay but also the psychical ones, untimely burial and the reviving of the dead and also
mourning or regret. He deals with these themes in a mysterious style, approaching the grotesque,
the disfigured and the uncanny which shape the text. The Fall of the House of Usher is among
the stories in which Poe becomes the architect of the abyss and its essence can be found in the
following quote: He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become
a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you."(Nietzsche,
Beyond Good and Evil", Aphorism, 146).
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Firstly, the abyss can be defined as a dull, dark, and soundless dimension in which one
can find himself or fall. It is an unearthly space of unknown which carries chaos and disorder.
In this story the abyss is portrayed as being the house of Usher, and those who fall its inhabitants
Roderick and Madeline . Under the guidance of the narrator we are introduced into such a
world where we cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy as everything seems to be dreary,
melancholic and bleak. Poe constructs the abyss through the eyes of the narrator as in the
beginning he is the one who introduces the readers into the dark scenery.
The setting, namely the house of Usher in which the following strange events take place,
are queer as well but somehow they become the hint to what is going to occur. The darkness
abounds and the mystery seems to wrap around the house: It was all misty, all insoluble; nor
could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. The bleak
surroundings and the house mirrored on the water recall of the doppelganger, which is a major
motif, as the house and its reflection are inversely symmetrical which leads us to think of the
relationships between the characters, namely the twins Roderick and Madelaine. The narrator
whose identity is unknown seems to be struck by this vision. He also makes a remark in which
he states that the house looks untouched by time despite its dreadful appearance and depicts the
looks of Roderick Usher, the householder and his friend who summoned him there as changed
and pale. This can be explained by looking at the fact that the Usher family has no other siblings
and that it has been isolating itself in this doomed house from the beginning of their existence:
Roderick is portrayed as being a sick man, incapable of escaping from his fate, like all the other
members of his family. The purpose of the visit is not well explained as the narrator is
summoned by the master of the Usher house on the pretense that he could cheer up his days and
he cannot refuse. Another strange aspect of the story-line is that he does not know of his friends
twin sister which raises a question mark upon their friendship and marks the unfamiliarity trait of
the text. As the story goes on, we find out that Rodericks sickness is based on neurosis and high
sensibility of senses. His sickness becomes thus one of the above mentioned themes in Poes
writing the decay of the being. The side-effects of his illness allows us to think of
claustrophobia as he fears everything and is disturbed by light and sound everything that comes
from an outside world and also makes us think of the disfigured. The house is a metaphor for a
boundary between the outside world and a twisted world in which they find themselves and from
which they cannot escape. Despite of the narrators struggle to cheer up Roderick, his condition
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worsens. So does his sisters who is also suffering from an unknown disease and who eventually
dies. The death of Madeline Usher leads the story to a key point her burial in which the
narrator is asked to help Roderick bury her in the tombs below the house as he fears that doctors
could dig her up for scientific research. The turn point of the story begins with the slight doubt of
the narrator that Roderick is hiding something from him and culminates with the night on which
both men cant rest and meet in the narrators room where the climax of the story will take place.
The downfall of the characters, is depicted in the scene where Roderick admits he had known
that they had buried Lady Madeline alive and now she is escaping the tombstone and climbs up
from the dark and hollow grave below the house. The most important thing in this scene is
shown by the fact that her brother dies regretting what he did and because he is scared of her as
she now is an entity from the abyss. Also, her dying right after Roderick can hold the meaning
that they were part of each other and as soon as one died, the other one died as well. We can
conclude that the fall of the house right after their death and after the narrator leaves can be
explained in terms that the house was connected to its other side, namely the basement right as
the twins were connected to each other. Once the both Ushers vanished, their house wrecked too
because it was the reflection of their Fallen selves.
Secondly, the grotesque, the disfigured and the uncanny are very well portrayed in the
text and these concepts are wrapped around almost word and phrase in the text. The grotesque
and the disfigured can be defined as something that invokes strangeness as well as pity. It
endows the text with the feeling of creepiness and contributes to the downfall because it depicts
the vicious traits of the house and of the events that take place. Also, the narrator often feels
surrounded by an unpleasant environment he lives in. The most powerful scene in which the
grotesque is depicted is: There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter
struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained trembling and
reeling to and fro upon the threshold - then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the
person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a
corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated. This passage shows how the narrator is
horrified at the sight of Madeline because he was not expecting her to live and show up, but at
the same time he may be implying pity because he also describes her as she is agonizing.

The concept of the uncanny in E.A Poes story arises under the meaning Freud explains in
his essay The Uncanny who claimed that the things we find the most terrifying appear that way
because they once seemed familiar. This notion can be easily applied on the excerpts of the
story. Among the scenes in which it appears, we find: Oh whither shall I fly ? Will she not be
here anon ? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste ? Have I not heard her footstep on the
stair ? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart ?. Roderick is
flabbergasted by the thought that his twin sister is alive, therefore she becomes the uncanny
because he knows her and now shes changed. In Freuds theory, there are several experiences
that would produce the feeling of the uncanny, many of which can be easily connected with the
genre of horror. These subjects include mans attitude towards death, female sexuality, and a
concept known as doubling.
Moreover, Poe uses the mise-en-abyse in the passage when they read Sir Lancelots
Mad Trist the frame-story - the deconstruction technique, more often used in art, which
foretells the upcoming events that will develop further in the text.
At last, The Fall of The House of Usher is an amalgam of symbols and motifs which draws
the dreary atmosphere on the canvas of romantic themes and underworld images. Edgar Allan
Poe uses these tools to depict the horror, the fantastic and the mysterious and becomes an
architect of the abyss.

Bibliography:

http://www.online-literature.com/poe/31/
http://students.english.ilstu.edu/rrjohns/hypertext/repurposing/uncanny.html