The climax of the story is when Roderick Usher and the narrator realize that Lady Madeline has been buried alive.

It has already been demonstrated that Roderick’s decision to hide away Madeline’s body followed his burial of her while she was still alive. Roderick, therefore, buried his sister alive because his hypochondria caused him to fear that her disease might spread to him. This is his motive for the murder.

Ludwig Bemelmans said that the French schoolgirl was inspired by his mother, wife and daughter. “But,” his grandson wrote after his death, “certainly it was also part Bemelmans himself — the smallest in class, the one always in trouble.”

This story describes a little girl who has to have her appendix removed. The themes of the story are: female roles, growing up, immortality, and health.

Madeline Fogg

The first person point of view applied in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall Of The House Of Usher”. The fact that the story is told in the first person, by that narrator, has some important effects on the reader and on the story itself.

One conclusion to be drawn from the final scene is that Roderick dies of fear. Madeline rushes upon him and he falls to the floor a corpse, too terrified to go on living.

On “Mad Trist ,” David Galloway in his Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe comments: ‘” The Mad Trist’ of Sir Launcelot Canning is almost certainly Poe’s own invention” (529). But Poe writes about this romance as if it is a ‘real’ romance, not his invention.

What does the narrator notice about Madeline’s appearance in her coffin? He notices a strong resemblance between Roderick and Madeline (twins). He also notices a faint blush on her chest and face and a lingering smile on her lips.

Brian Stableford