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The tale highlights the Gothic feature of the doppelganger, or character double, and portrays doubling in inanimate structures and literary forms. The narrator, for example, first witnesses the mansion as a reflection in the tarn, or shallow pool, that abuts the front of the house. The mirror image in the tarn doubles the house, but upside down—an inversely symmetrical relationship that also characterizes the relationship between Roderick and Madeline. An unnamed narrator approaches the house of Usher on a “dull, dark, and soundless day.” This house—the estate of his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher—is gloomy and mysterious.
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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. For example, the narrator realizes late in the game that Roderick and Madeline are twins, and this realization occurs as the two men prepare to entomb Madeline. The cramped and confined setting of the burial tomb metaphorically spreads to the features of the characters. Madeline is buried before she has actually died because her similarity to Roderick is like a coffin that holds her identity.
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Poe thus buries, in the fictitious gravity of a medieval romance, the puns that garnered him popularity in America’s magazines. As Roderick nears the conclusion of his story, which jumps back and forth between his early years working at Fortunato and the events that led up to each of his children's deaths, he finally arrives at the fateful night that changed everything, New Year's Eve of 1979. ‘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.
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'Fall of the House of Usher' Production Designer Reveals on-Set Details - Business Insider
'Fall of the House of Usher' Production Designer Reveals on-Set Details.
Posted: Wed, 08 Nov 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]
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. In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the setting, diction, and imagery combine to create an overall atmosphere of gloom. The story opens on a “dull, dark, and soundless day” in a “singularly dreary tract of country.” As the narrator notes, it is autumn, the time of year when life begins to give way to old age and death. A mere glimpse of the Usher mansion inspires in the narrator “an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart.” Upon entering the house, the reader as the narrator navigates through a series of dark passages lined with carvings, tapestries, and armorial trophies.
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The narrator helps Roderick put the body in the tomb, and he notes that Madeline has rosy cheeks, as some do after death. He leads the narrator to the window, from which they see a bright-looking gas surrounding the house. The narrator tells Roderick that the gas is a natural phenomenon, not altogether uncommon. He makes his way through the long passages to the room where Roderick is waiting.
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This time, Flanagan’s ghoulish crew is entering familial territory, as ruthless siblings Roderick and Madeline Usher have built Fortunato Pharmaceuticals into an empire of wealth, privilege, and power. But past secrets come to light when the heirs to the Usher dynasty start dying at the hands of a mysterious woman from their youth. Late one stormy night, Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood) invites an investigator named C.
However, sorrow attacks the palace, leaving the once luminous eyes red from crying, the ruby red lips now pale. The last three lines of the song (“Through the pale door, | A hideous throng rush out forever, | And laugh — but smile no more”) describe the horrible wailing of the person now that their reason has been overthrown. Although the person described in the song isn’t literally Roderick, the description of physical and emotional deterioration evokes his own, showing self-awareness of his pitiful state. Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood) attends a joint funeral for a number of his adult children, and in a montage of press coverage, we see how a series of “freak accidents” has wiped out his entire bloodline. The Usher patriarch then sits in a dilapidated mansion with Carl Lumbly’s Auguste Dupin (based on Poe’s famous recurring character who is considered the first detective in fiction) and offers him a confession. We then flash back a few weeks to when the Usher clan were on top of the world, having become Sackler-esque billionaires peddling opiates that have inflicted untold misery on the American public, and begin to watch their painful demise.
A “playboy” with a drug for every occasion, Leo welcomes the ability to numb the pain of his reality, but his drug use has started to become a problem for his boyfriend, Julius. In exchange for this protection, both Roderick and Madeline had to consent to the bargain that at the end of Roderick's life, just before he was fated to die anyway, his entire bloodline would die with him. Roderick and Madeline would also have to die at the same time, leaving this world the same way they came into it.
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Some scholars have argued that Madeline does not even exist, reducing her to a shared figment Roderick’s and the narrator’s imaginations. But Madeline proves central to the symmetrical and claustrophobic logic of the tale. Madeline stifles Roderick by preventing him from seeing himself as essentially different from her.
Madeline also suffers from problems typical for women in -nineteenth--century literature. She invests all of her identity in her body, whereas Roderick possesses the powers of intellect. In spite of this disadvantage, Madeline possesses the power in the story, almost superhuman at times, as when she breaks out of her tomb.
Her warmth and trusting nature always helped her to find the best in Roderick… and her trust in her husband might have left her blind to the dangers encroaching her family. The younger version of Auguste was an investigator who sought to find the truth — and the good in people. A former model and actor, Morrie left that life behind her for a loving marriage and motherhood. As the eldest, Frederick Usher is the natural heir to his father’s company, but out of all of his siblings, he’s the least equipped to do so.
The open-air courtyard and garden won the 2019 Landscape Architecture category of the 49th Los Angeles Architectural Awards. During a heated argument with Roderick, Madeline suddenly falls into catalepsy, a condition in which its sufferers appear dead. Roderick knows that she is still alive, but convinces Winthrop that she is dead and rushes to have her entombed in the family crypt beneath the house. As Philip is preparing to leave following the entombment, the butler, Bristol (Harry Ellerbe), lets slip that Madeline suffered from catalepsy. Flanagan has form with making tributes to some of horror’s most beloved oeuvres.
The physical elements of the palace additionally map onto the features of a human face. The “banners yellow, glorious, golden” that “float and flow” on the roof are locks of blond hair. It has two “luminous” windows representing eyes, and the door made of pearls and rubies is a mouth with red lips and pearly white teeth.
An interpretation which has more potential, then, is the idea that the ‘house of Usher’ is a symbol of the mind, and it is this analysis which has probably found the most favour with critics. ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ can also be analysed as a deeply telling autobiographical portrait, in which Roderick Usher represents, or reflects, Poe himself. After all, Roderick Usher is a poet and artist, well-read (witness the assortment of books which he and the narrator read together), sensitive and indeed overly sensitive (to every sound, taste, sight, touch, and so on).
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