Face of Fear
True dread and terror is different for everyone. Some may shrug off a spider but an average barnyard chicken may scare them into hysterics. Those are personal fears, but from what we have read there are some fears that affect us all. There are terrors that transcend personal phobias and seem to hide in everyone's mind. What makes a place, event, or anything scary goes beyond personal issues. There is a deep feeling of fear that we as humans share in certain conditions which goes beyond cultures.
One of the key elements of fear falls to the time of day, or at least the lighting around. In the beginning of the Fall of the House of Usher it is noted right away. Everything is dark and if it is not dark then it is ghastly and stripped of color. The scrub bushes are like bones protruding through the ground. When a reader notices that everything is dark and it is a dark time of day perhaps it is signaling something to come.
The house is seen through the tarn that Poe mentions a lot in the first few pages. When looking into a body of water we see a reflection of what is there. Everything is reversed. So to the audience, the house is being described from what is being seen in the water. It is like another step of separation. Most people wonder about what is on the other side, or have a fear of the unknown and mirrors or reflections are used to demonstrate that as well. It is exactly what is there, only reversed. Does that mean the others who reside there are opposite to our nature?
There is a lot of notice of things looking human. When looking into the tarn Poe notes that the scene has an underlying feeling of unease and he goes on to say “...but with a shudder even more thrilling than before--upon the remodelled and inverted images of the grey sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.” (p 117) Other times it is mentioned that the house had windows for eyes which implies that there are other body parts to the house. If not body parts then at least a feeling of the house being alive. It is like the subtle anticipation in the air like the one that lets you know you are being watched even when you can't see anyone.
When talking about how the house looked the narrator discusses how the house is at odds with itself. He speaks of the brick work outside and how it looks fine in a general sense, but on an individual level the bricks look like they are falling apart. This idea of seeing something that isn't true or isn't really there is like looking into the tarn. That image is not there really, not to touch anyway. Yet it is real. Again this enforces the split nature of the house. Even the crack is noticed when looking into the tarn. A crack is something houses are not supposed to have. A house is supposed to signify strength and stability and a crack undermines that.
The crack isn't the only thing that is broken in this story. The narrator and Roderick's friendship is not a normal or healthy one. We all pity or look down at sickly people, especially if we know that they are making most of it up. It sounds like the narrator hadn't hung around Roderick because Roderick's personality was not one that was set up for healthy relationships. Maybe we shy away from the sick or sickly in fear of contracting what they have or becoming like them or maybe it is part of us who understands that to become closely attached with them is inviting trouble into our lives. Either way it is like taboo to openly make friends with a dying dying person, or even a person who is sick all the time. It is not a taboo much talked about, but it is there.
Like much of horror writing, some of the fear we get from reading comes from breaking taboos. Just like if Roderick and his sister Madeline were lovers as well as brother and sister. It is possible that was totally acceptable for their family. The narrator says “...the stem of the Usher race, all time-honoured as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain.” (p 119) There are a couple ways to interpret this, but when I read a family tree without a branch it very much makes one think of inbreeding, close inbreeding. This could account for both siblings infirmities as well as their cloistered life away from society.
Part of what makes this story creep is the way that Roderick is separated from the norms of society. Inbreeding and being a hypochondriac aside, he still was a recluse. Recluses are an unknown and that is something which can start to foster tales of bad things happening or rumors about the people doing bad. This comes from the fear of not knowing who they Usher's are and what they stand for in society.
Another huge point of the unknown and fear in the book is the mausoleum under the house. Death is also taboo, not dying itself, but hanging out with corpses is frowned upon. The dead carry disease and no one wants to be sick. The way it is set up is creepy, with its large door and copper lining. It is like a separation from the house itself. When Madeline is buried there it is a crazy. People, at least of the more modern age are not used to being around dead people. Especially having them just a feet away through a floor or wall for weeks or however long. Usually a person is scooped up and taken away quickly and then the area sanitized. To know that he, the narrator, was sleeping right above the body of Madeline must have been a little creepy.
The mausoleum itself is like a separate place to literally store the dead. A place for people to transition to the next place if that is what they do. To have that portal directly underneath you while you are sleeping, at your closest state to death that is not death is a little spooky. It is even more fear inducing because Madeline comes back to life. Perhaps it was the copper lining of the walls that did not allow Madeline's spirit to escape or her connection to whatever is responsible for that crack in the house, either way undead are definitely scary.
Zombies, or people who have returned to life are gross. That is another social taboo, hygiene. It is different for everyone at every-time in history, but we all have to live by some kind of personal grooming standard. To be sitting in a room with no airflow, in a casket, doing what a body does after death for a week would not be cleanly. It would not smell or like nice either. That alone may be enough to scare someone out of the house.
Roderick and Madeline were not the only sick ones in the story, the house was also not well. As mention before, the bricks were decaying and there was a crack in the house. On the inside of the house the narrator says “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. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.” (p 121) That is what was inside the house, it makes it sound as if the house itself was a grumpy old recluse who wanted no one to visit so they made the environment as uninviting as possible. It does not sound like a house that is lived in, where people enjoy their lives. The house sounds like it is ready to die.
The narrator make it sound as if the house itself is what is making Roderick sick. As we find out the house is not a normal house. Perhaps it was what made Roderick sick. Everywhere you go there is a place that people don't go; It may be the old cat food factory where fifteen kids where killed or it may just be some random abandoned house that has stories about it. This, Usher's house, seems to be one of those places. Even though it has servants and occupants, the house does not want anyone but the Usher's.
The narrator, although sympathetic to Roderick, seemed to hold Roderick at a distance when he arrived at the Usher's. Still it is when Roderick loses his normal personality that the narrator really starts to see something going on. The narrator acts as if he is catching the crazy and he may just be, but it is when he is alone and can't sleep that the terror comes. Lack of sleep can do many a crazy things to a human mind, even drive someone insane. In this case the narrator has the right to feel this, but it could be chalked up to be alone at a strangers house by yourself in the middle of the night. All the time you are realizing you should have never came, this house is spooky and boom someone is knocking on your door.
It is another person ready to increase the hysteria you two are feeling. There is a storm outside making a lot of noises you are not used to. Also it is scary to see the natural power that can be brought forth on a moments notice by nature. A force which you do not really comprehend but still have to deal with. Then your friend's dead sister shows up from no where and that is it, it is time to flee. All of this together seems like it would be enough to make anyone scared even if one or two of these fear causing issues don't apply.
Then of course in this case the supernatural is real. This would blow the socks off any societal reason to stay secure. When you a see a dead person rise, then a house take your friend and the dead person away it is too much. There is no normal way to explain to yourself that everything that just happened to you has happened to others.
It doesn't matter where you come from or what background you have. There will some things that cause you and everyone else to be a little scared. We have all experienced it, mostly when we are younger, but sometimes when we are adults too. Especially when the lights are out, you are alone, a storm is raging outside, a dead person is only one floor below you and you just heard someone knock on your door.