DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY IN: THE FALL
OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
BY: TREVOR SHIELDS
WHAT IS DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER?
-Ever seen the movie Fight Club? Or The Secret Window? Yeah that’s it.
-Basically, an aspect of your life sucks so bad that instead of accepting it, your psyche splits.
SO WHAT DOES D.I.D. HAVE TO DO WITH THE HOUSE OF USHER?
• I propose that there is evidence of two cases of D.I.D. within the text.
• Case #1: Roderick and The Narrator are the same guy.
• Case #2: Roderick, Madeline, The Narrator are the same person
PROVING IT: CASE #1 (RODERICK AND NARRATOR)
• “What was it--I paused to think--what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher?”
• “ It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression”
• Narrator upon first encountering the Usher House
• Rational
• Dissecting
• Provoked
• Need to validate
• Why Possibilities?
PROVING IT: CASE #1 (RODERICK AND NARRATOR)• “I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a
black and lurid tarn […] and gazed down--but with a shudder even more thrilling than before--upon the remodeled and inverted images of the grey sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows”
• “Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our last meeting.”
• “distant part of the country-”
• “Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really knew little of my friend.”
• Image of reflection i.e. two images of 1 subject
• Many years and a country separate the two.
• Intimate at boyhood yet little was known?
PROVING IT: CASE #1 (RODERICK AND NARRATOR)
PROVING IT: CASE #1 (RODERICK AND NARRATOR)• “While the objects around me […] were but
matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy--while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this--I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up.
• “Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher!”
• Interior is strange, but known
• Upon meeting Roderick, the Narrator contradicts himself.
PROVING IT: CASE #1 (RODERICK AND NARRATOR)
• “from sire to son, of the patrimony with the name”
• “the dwelling which he tenanted, and from which, for many years, he had never ventured forth”
• “ancient race”
• “Incestuous and inadmissible passion”
• “a tenderly beloved sister; his sole companion for long years-his last and only relative on earth.”
• “lady Madeline”
• Patrimony
• Solitude
• Pressure to procreate and continue the family name
• Quixotic reference
WAIT WHAT?
• Yeah that’s right, incest! An “inadmissible passion” to sleep with your sister seems a legit reason to want to split identities to me.
• But wait that isn’t even the craziest part….
• ENTER CASE TWO!
PROVING IT: CASE #2 (THE TRIPLE ENTITY THEORY)
• “Her figure, her air, her features-all, in their very minutest development were those […] of the Roderick Usher who sat beside me.”
• “A feeling of stupor oppressed me”
• “he had buried his face in his hands”
• “trickled many passionate tears.”
• “For several day ensuing, her name was unmentioned”
• Exactly Roderick’s duplicate in female form
• Narrator feels oppressed? Why?
• And Rod, why so many tears?
• Wait who is dying?
PROVING IT: CASE #2 (THE TRIPLE ENTITY THEORY)
• “the lady, at least while living, would be seen by me no more.”
• “a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit”
• “our books”
• “the lady Madeline was no more”
• “The exact similitude between brother and sister here again startled and confounded me.”
• Intimacy of spirits btwn Usher and Roderick in absence of Lady M.
• Our?
• Death!
• More similarity
PROVING IT: CASE #2 (THE TRIPLE ENTITY THEORY)• “His ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations
were neglected or forgotten.”
• “The pallor of [Roderick’s] countenance had assumed, […] a more ghastly hue-but the luminescence of his eye had utterly gone out.” vs “gradual wasting away [of Madeline]”
• “I beheld [Roderick] gazing upon vacancy for long hours” vs “[Madeline’s] transient affections of a partially cataleptical character.”
• “I [the Narrator] felt creeping upon me , by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influences of his [Roderick’s] own fantastic yet impressive superstitions.”
• “nervousness [Narrator]” vs “nervous agitation [Rod]”
• “ an instinctive spirit prompted me to certain low-indefinite sounds” vs “acuteness of senses”
• Roderick dilutes
• Begins to look/act like Lady M.
• Narrator begins to adopt Rod’s maladies
• ALL IDENTITIES TO YOUR POSTS! Its assimilation time!
PROVING IT: CASE #2 (THE TRIPLE ENTITY THEORY)
• “Mad Trist”
• “I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin.”
• “Madman!”
• “[Madeline] fell heavily inward on the person of her brother”
• “I fled aghast.”
• “Trist”= OE “Tryst” which means encounter, ergo “Mad Encounter”
• Hollow b/c nobodies in it
• Madman! = Denial: Last ditch effort of conflicting personalities
• Here’s Maddy! Oh and Rod and the Narrator.
• Only the Narrator can leave. Note that “I fled” signals singularity of person.
PROVING IT: CASE #2 (THE TRIPLE ENTITY THEORY)
PROVING IT: CASE #2 (THE TRIPLE ENTITY THEORY)
• “the once barley-descernable fissure […] rapidly widened”
• “there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind”
• the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight--my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder--there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters--and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the "House of Usher".
• Fissure=Seperation of Insanity and Reason: also female/male identities.
• Whirlwind= tumult of confrontation and re-cohesion of multiple identities into one
• Satelite= Reason
• No house, only 1 person/ identity left
• The tarn= the calm of reason and sanity
CONCLUSION AND QUESTIONS
• What are the significances of the three identities?
• If this is in fact a case of D.I.D., who is the real, single, character left standing?
• In contrast, what if the narrator is insane and never left gazing at his reflection in the tarn?