Did Usher know that his sis was alive or dead; why or why not?

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2000

Answers

he thought she was dead but after like two days or so he realized she was alive he just did not do anything about because of his fear of what she was going to do to him.

-- Anonymous, December 12, 2000

he thought she was dead, but then he just had a feeling that she was still alive. he and his sister are twins, and he felt he had a certain connection with her.

-- Anonymous, December 12, 2000

Some critics believe that Roderick knew his twin sister was alive--that he entombed her while she was in a catotonic state after he finally succumbed to the malady that had afflicted the Usher race: incest. In fact, critics support that by claiming that the blood on her dress at the end is the blood from her virginity (which Roderick had taken). To understand all of this better, you'll probably need to do some research.

Good luck,

-- Anonymous, December 12, 2000

Madeline was certainly dead. Roderick knew it. When they thought to see her, it was all in their imagination. The setting of the story, its mystery and all the things that involve a family falling apart is what Poe really meant to picture. Roderick wanted her to be alive so bad that he created it in his mind. The guest also saw her because of all the noises, and darkness of the house triggered his imagination, which is what Roderick was loking for.

-- Anonymous, December 13, 2000

Alejandra,

One of the things that I keep in mind when I teach Literature is an excerpt from the movie "Back to School" with Rodney Dangerfield. It's about an older man who goes back to school to show his son that it's fairly easy to do. :-)

At one point in the semester, he realized that there was absolutely no way he was going to pass his college English class without a little "help." So with his rather large fortune and his name, he managed to convince Kurt Vonnegut to write an essay about one of Kurt Vonnegut's books.

Dangerfield collected his paper and was surprised to see that it had received an F. The English professor yelled at him that "That is NOT what Vonnegut meant when he wrote this book!!"

I try to keep this in mind when seeing the rather diverse criticism on a given literary piece (including my students'). While I may interpret a literary piece as being XX, I cannot exclude the possibilities that there is just as much evidence to support a YY interpretation--an interpretation that may completely negate my own interpretation.

So when we are asserting our own intepretations or the critques of others, it helps to qualify it with "it's merely one interpretation" or "some critics believe" or "I think...". To state that "Madeline was certainly dead" and that "Roderick knew it" negates a whole LOT of criticism on "The Fall of the House of Usher" that tends to support that Madeline was merely in a cataleptic (i.e., catotonic) state and that Roderick knew that she was alive. Many diverse interpretations exist--just like there are many different kinds of critical approaches that are used to reach that interpretation: feminist, Jungian, Marxist, historical, psychoanlatyical, etc.

Regards,

-- Anonymous, December 15, 2000

I believe that when they buried Madeline, Usher thought she was dead, because otherwise he wouldn't have buried her. It was after the burial that Usher heard the noises of Madeline and realized she was still alive.

-- Anonymous, December 16, 2000