Fissure

I found this really cool article entitled "A Fissure of Mind: The Primal Origins of Poe's Doppelganger as Reflected in Roderick Usher,” by David Grantz. (http://www.poedecoder.com/essays/fissure/)

The essay goes into great detail about the mind of Roderick Usher.  It explains the idea that his mind is sick and deteriorating alongside the house.  Grantz says “Roderick Usher yearns to free himself from his mortality. Every aspect of his gloomy existence transpires in his house from which he never ventures forth. The house encloses him as if it were a burial vault in which he has been laid to rest prematurely. There he resides with his twin sister Madeline. They are the last in a long line of Ushers; the decayed condition of the house corresponds to the decline of the once flourishing family.”

Roderick Usher is a gloomy, sad and depressed man.  The house, personified by Poe in by his description, seems to represent Roderick.  Grantz points out that “At some juncture, and for reasons unclear, the House of Usher, the mind of Roderick was invaded by ‘evil things.’ Described in the poem's final stanzas is the ensuing decay which manifests both in the physical description of the House and in the decline of the palace of Roderick's mind.”  The house has become so intertwined with the physical being of Roderick. 

Grantz goes into further detail of the deep connection between Roderick and his family home.  He says “As long as Roderick's mortal side lives, his palace remains standing because the ‘House of Usher is, in allegorical fact, the physical body of Roderick Usher, and its dim interior is, in fact, Roderick Usher's visionary mind.’ (Wilbur 107) His twin sister Madeline, the only other surviving Usher, is ill, and will soon die. While she lives, Roderick must remain in his mortal shell, for Madeline represents not so much a character in the story as a symbol of the last vestige of electrical, repulsive energy which keeps the body and soul of Roderick and his palace in a differentiated state. Roderick knows that when she dies, he can unburden himself of his body, rejoining a more primitive state, nearer to the Unity for which he rages. Finally, he performs a premature burial of his twin sister, oddly aware that she might not be ‘entirely’ dead.” 

The essay really depicts the essence of Roderick Usher.  Grantz makes the point that the House is in essence the doppelganger to Roderick Usher himself.