The Fall of the House of Usher Madness Quotes Page 1
Citations follow this format: (Paragraph)
| Quote #1 During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year […] (1) |
This is an appropriate setting given Usher’s overly-acute senses; he can’t handle bright lights or sounds, and so the story’s setting is dull and soundless.
| Quote #2 …. with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium--the bitter lapse into everyday life--the hideous dropping off of the veil. (1) |
The Usher estate is made to seem as though it is its own isolated world, different and separate from normal reality.
| Quote #3 His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic concision--that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation--that leaden, self- balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement. (9) |
This is the second time the narrator has used the simile of an opium addict to describe Usher or the mood the mansion yields. There is a sense of mad delirium expressed here.
