This relates to literature class

The Fall of the House of Usher displays subtle hints and situations suggesting that the narrator has gone mad just like Roderick. At some points, it also suggests that maybe the narrator is Poe and that Madeline and Roderick are how he sees himself. That maybe Roderick is his physical side that is broken and Madeline is a character portraying the mental state that he is in. The narrator of the story suggests that Madeline and Roderick are twins and this could mean that the narrator’s physical and mental state are equally disturbed. Madeline is silent and incoherent. ““Her decease,” he said, with a bitterness which I can never forget, “would leave him (him the hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race of the Ushers.” While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared." I think, going with the theory that Madeline and Roderick represent the narrators state, that Madeline is the mental side. This passage suggests that the narrators state of mind is shut off and silent. She was hopeless and so is his mental state. Roderick is sort of extra sensitive to everything. He has the same traits as a modern day schizophrenic but back then it was undiscovered. It had no name. Therefore he looked insane. “Yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely molded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin and the now miraculous luster of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity." This very long quote shows those schizophrenic characteristics. The awareness he faces. Every move he makes, everything he says, he says with caution. He is like a cadaver. He is a deadly looking creature, but he sure is aware. I think that the narrator is trying to say that he is physically aware and mentally unaware. His mind and body are in very different states, but they both add to the madness within him.