2+1 study guide
2024 Honors American Lit – Final Test Study Guide
The Fall of the House of Usher
The home’s exterior looks like vacant eye-like windows, fungi overspread the whole exterior, no portion of the mansion had fallen; but there appeared to be inconsistency between it’s still perfect part and the crumbling condition of the individual stones as well as a barely perceptible fissure (crack) which extended from the roof, down the wall in a zigzag formation and was lost in the sullen waters of the tarn (pond).
The interior of the home was “grand” and eerie at the same time. Black oak floors, Gothic archways, intricate passages, somber tapestries on the walls, trellised panes of glass that let little light through, vaulted and fretted ceilings. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. Furniture was comfortless, antique, and tattered (worn out). There were many books and musical instruments throughout.
This is one of Poe’s most famous horror tales. The story is told by an unnamed narrator, who introduces himself as a childhood friend of Roderick Usher.
The narrator goes to visit Roderick and his sister Madeline in the ancient house where they live as the last descendants of an old aristocratic family. Roderick Usher’s health is deteriorating quickly. He is depressed and agitated. His friend tries to distract him, but he can do nothing to help him.
Roderick’s sister Madeline has a mysterious illness which makes her “cataleptic” (unconscious and unable to move, as if she were dead).
Finally, one evening, Roderick announces that Madeline has died; the two friends place her in a coffin and they put her in the family tomb (Long archway through which it was reached, lined in copper. The door was a massive iron on. Its immense weight caused a sharp grating sound as it moved upon its hinges). The narrator notices that she doesn’t necessarily look completely pallid (pale). This could easily be seen as foreshadowing of what is to come. This tomb is below the narrator’s room.
From the beginning Roderick is somewhat “mad” and he becomes more on edge/uneasy after Madeline “dies” and as a result the narrator appears to start taking on that infection and madness as well. We eventually learn that Roderick has been hearing things and Roderick fears he may have buried Madeline alive and that she is coming back to “haunt” him. To calm his friend during the weird, raging, windstorm (happens about a week after Madeline’s “death”), Roderick grabs a book that he says is a favorite of Roderick’s called the “Mad Trist.” As he’s reading it’s as if the book is coming alive.
As the narrator reads, the two hear a series of strange noises, including a scream. Roderick realizes Madeline is alive and that they buried her alive. She has freed herself and is coming for Roderick.
When Madeline reappears, she is wearing the white dress she was buried in, but they are now bloody and ragged because she has fought to free herself from the tomb, breaking free of the coffin and clawing her way out of the copper encased room with the large iron door.
Upon seeing her brother, Madeline falls/collapses onto Roderick and they both die. As the narrator flees the home, he turns back and sees the fissure (a zigzag crack in the exterior of the home) breaking apart and eventually collapsing and swallowing into the tarn (pond). Nothing and no one are left of the House of Usher.
Other House of Usher facts:
Setting – like many of Poe’s stories, this take place in the fall/autumn because that is when death occurs.
Scene and mood in the opening scene. Dull, dark, and soundless, insufferable gloom.
The Usher family tree has no branches, it’s basically just the trunk and that has always been the case. It is solely them. Roderick and Madeline are twins with a very special bond. The argument could be made that their relationship is incestual.
The symbolism between the home and the Usher family - it’s literally The House of Usher
Comparisons between Roderick Usher and the Haunted Palace poem - the poem could be a metaphor for a description of Roderick Usher. Rubies equal lips, pearls equal teeth, the luminous windows equal eyes.
Phillis Wheatley
The poem “To His Excellency General Washington” was sent to George Washington, the newly appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of North America, in October of 1775, well before American Independence was declared in 1776.
Washington, as busy as he was with organizing the colonies to take on the British, sent a letter back to Wheatley thanking her for the poem and inviting her to visit him if she ever came to Cambridge, Massachusetts. The two did meet in March of 1776, seven years before the war was finished and true independence was declared.
In 1773, two years before this poem was written, Phillis Wheatley, a twenty-year-old slave, published her collection of poems entitled Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, the first book of poetry published by an African American, and only the second book by a woman in what would become the United States.
In April of 1776, the author and political philosopher Thomas Paine published Wheatley’s poem to Washington in The Pennsylvania Magazine.
The central theme of this poem is “freedom’s cause,” the colonies’ struggle for freedom from England, which General Washington was assigned to lead. Like many other residents of Boston, Wheatley’s feelings for the British regime turned from obedient admiration to mild admonition, and finally, to support of the revolution. The poem anticipates the future for the new republic and praises the efforts of its military leader and first president.
The Scarlet Letter
Author – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Hawthorne history:
Born July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts
Hawthorne is a descendant of John Hathorne (as in Salem Witch Trials)
He added the “W” when he became an author to separate himself from his ancestors.
His father died when he was 4 years old, he was raised by his mother and sisters
Attended Bowdoin College in Maine - 1821-1825
While in college he met and befriended Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - famous poet Paul Revere’s Ride) and Franklin Pierce - 14th president of the USA
Within five years of graduating, he had several pieces of his work published, and by 1832 two notable pieces, My Kinsman, Major Molineux and Roger Malvin’s Burial
American author, Herman Melville (Moby Dick) called him the “American Shakespeare.”