Friday, July 17, 2009
The Fall of the House of Usher
The narrator of "The Fall of the House of Usher" happens to be an old friend of Richard Usher. The author uses first person narrative in this story. However, the author does not give much information about the narrator at all, not even his name. The only fact that we know is that this narrator was a friend from childhood and they haven’t seen each other till he recently come back to visit. Without giving the reason why the narrator is here leaves everything in a mystery and gives readers space of imagination. This factor also makes the narrator as a perfect outsider that tells every details of the story. However, the fact that he does not know much about Usher after all these years makes him a unreliable narrator. He might describe the things that he could only see through his personal perspective.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Although i can see where you are coming from when considering that the narrator was unreliable, i believe it was done purposefully in a way to symbolize how everyone has internal conflicts that even some of our closest friends cant always see. In this way, Ushers friend could only know what he could see or was told, but could not know about the problems that Usher suffered internally on a mental and subconscious level.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you. Many people think that he is a reliable narrator, but we knoew nothing about him. His references to opium uses are a bit curious and he even states that the house is starting to effect his mental state. It's hard to say if he was a reliable narrator for the final scenes, especially when he runs out of the house. I think Poe purposely made the narrator mysterious so that the audience could make their own judgements about it.
ReplyDelete