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He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror. Loosely based on various works by 19th-century author Edgar Allan Poe (most prominently the eponymous 1840 short story), the series adapts otherwise unrelated stories and characters by Poe into a single nonlinear narrative set from 1953 to 2023. It recounts both the rise to power of Roderick Usher, the powerful CEO of a corrupt pharmaceutical company and his sister Madeline Usher, the firm's genius COO, and the events leading to the deaths of all six of Roderick’s children. It stars an ensemble cast led by Carla Gugino as a mysterious woman plaguing the Ushers, Bruce Greenwood as an elderly Roderick and Mary McDonnell as an elderly Madeline.
'The Fall of the House of Usher' Release Date, Trailer, Plot, News - Netflix Tudum
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. Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms, and the general manner of the narration had their weight. I regarded her with an utter astonishment not unmingled with dread — and yet I found it impossible to account for such feelings. When a door, at length, closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and eagerly the countenance of the brother — but he had buried his face in his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled many passionate tears. 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.
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The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene.
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Roderick’s mental inability to differentiate from reality and fantasy correspond to his sister’s physical weakness. These characters are employed by Poe to explore the relationship and philosophical mystery between body and mind. “The Fall of the House of Usher” is a short story published in 1839 in American writer Edgar Allan Poe.
The narrator noticed the diseased atmosphere and absorbed evil in the house from the murky pond and decaying trees around the house. He also observes that even though the house appears to be decaying, its structure is fairly solid. In front of the building, there is no small crack from the roof to the ground. ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ is an 1839 short story by Edgar Allan Poe ( ), a pioneer of the short story and a writer who arguably unleashed the full psychological potential of the Gothic horror genre.
The antique volume which I had taken up was the “Mad Trist” of Sir Launcelot Canning; but I had called it a favourite of Usher's more in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the only book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief (for the history of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even in the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I have judged, indeed, by the wild over-strained air of vivacity with which he hearkened, or apparently hearkened, to the words of the tale, I might well have congratulated myself upon the success of my design.
It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. I say that even their exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving this—yet we had no glimpse of the moon or stars—nor was there any flashing forth of the lightning. But the under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated vapour, as well as all terrestrial objects immediately around us, were glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the mansion.
Let's Talk About the Usher Family Tree in 'Fall of the House of Usher' - Marie Claire
Let's Talk About the Usher Family Tree in 'Fall of the House of Usher'.
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At Roderick’s words, the door bursts open, revealing Madeline all in white with blood on her robes. With a moan, she falls on her brother, and, by the time they hit the floor, both Roderick and Madeline are dead. Outside, he looks back just in time to see the house split in two and collapse.
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His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity. The valet now threw open a door and ushered me into the presence of his master. Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant part of the country—a letter from him—which, in its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply.
“The Fall of the House of Usher” updates the work of Edgar Allan Poe for the era of Big Pharma, turning his most famous tales into a sprawling story of the decline of a wealthy American family. It’s “Succession” meets The Tell-Tale Heart, a story of vengeance, power, betrayal, and bloody parts. The overarching narrative of The Fall of the House of Usher loosely follows Poe's 1839 short story of the same name, with Roderick recounting his decades-spanning tale to Auggie inside his decrepit childhood home. Throughout the evening, Roderick is tortured by visions of his dead children—who appear to him as he relays the gruesome ways in which each of them met their end—while banging sounds that he says are coming from his twin sister, Fortunato COO Madeline Usher (Mary McDonnell), can be heard emanating from the home's basement.
Whatever the narrator is telling is actually happening, and the real happening was even worse than that. The story “The House of Usher is narrated in the first person with the peripheral narrator. The narrator of the story is nameless, suggesting that his only job is to narrate the story. Instead of focusing on the narrator, much of the interest of the readers are drawn towards the strange events that are being narrated. The narrator tells the readers the term “The House of Usher” refers to the house and the family dwelling in the house and the Usher bloodline.
It was first published in Gentleman’s Magazine by Burton and later included in the collection Tales of Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840. The story is a work of Gothic Fiction and deals with the themes of isolation, madness, family, and metaphysical identities. Several days later, Roderick tells the narrator that Madeline has died, and they lay her to rest in a vault. In the days that follow, the narrator starts to feel more uneasy in the house, and attributes his nervousness to the gloomy furniture in the room where he sleeps.
A servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence, through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken.
He witnesses Madeline's reemergence and the subsequent, simultaneous death of the twins. The narrator is the only character to escape the House of Usher, which he views as it cracks and sinks into the mountain lake. As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the potency of a spell—the huge antique panels to which the speaker pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, ponderous and ebony jaws.
Further, Roderick believes that his fate is connected to the family mansion. It is revealed that Roderick's sister, Madeline, is also ill and falls into cataleptic, deathlike trances. Roderick and Madeline are the only remaining members of the Usher family. Hauser & Wirth opened its Los Angeles location in March 2016 in the heart of the burgeoning Downtown Los Angeles Arts District.
We have a mysterious secret afflicting the house and eating away at its owner, the Gothic ‘castle’ (here, refigured as a mansion), premature burial (about which Poe wrote a whole other story), the mad owner of the house, and numerous other trappings of the Gothic novel. Poe condenses these into a short story and plays around with them, locating new psychological depths within these features. Within a few hours of the narrator’s arrival, Roderick begins to share some of his theories about his family.
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