Fall of the House of Usher is a very small short story by Edgar Allan Poe, and Midnight Club is a very short book, as well. Because, as I'm sure you're very well aware, every story that he starts with, the origins, they're actually very small, they're very short. It was really exciting, as it always is with Mike, when you get a new show and a new script, and you go back to the original content to see his inspiration and where he started. Laurin Kelsey: You know what, I studied art history and theater production design in university, so I had a lot of exposure to literature at the time, but I hadn't revisited Poe since then, so it's been a good 20 years. How immersed were you in Poe's works prior to him approaching you to come back for the show? He's very talented, very detailed, and I love his writing, so having something to sink my teeth into like Usher, which has a lot of meat to it, was really, really exciting. I was really honored, and I feel very privileged to have been invited back to work with Mike so many times. Laurin Kelsey: Well, it was a very, very quick reuniting because we literally finished Midnight Club on Friday and then Monday morning started Usher, so literally just a weekend. You worked with Mike on that show, but what was it like when he first approached you to reunite with him for this one? In case my Midnight Club vinyl back there doesn't show, I'm a big Mike Flanagan fan, so this has been on my radar since it was announced. The house (the body which houses the mind?) cannot function without the mind, so it must also be destroyed.Screen Rant: I am super excited to talk about Fall of the House of Usher. Perhaps that is what happens at the end of ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’: Roderick comes face-to-face with his darkest unconscious, and it destroys him.Īnd this explains why both Madeline and Roderick are destroyed: the mind, both conscious and unconscious, is killed at once. If the unconscious did communicate with us clearly and openly, it would overwhelm and destroy us. ![]() (As the theatre critic Kenneth Tynan once quipped, ‘a neurosis is a secret that you don’t know you are keeping’.)ĭreams, for instance, are the way our unconscious mind communicates with our conscious mind, but in such a way which shrouds or veils their message in ambiguous symbolism and messages. Note that such an analysis of ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ complements the uncanny elements in the story: the secret which ought to have remain hidden but has come to light is something deep within the unconscious which has broken out.īut when our unconscious breaks out and communicates with us, it usually does so in ways which are coded: ways which reveal, without revealing, the precise nature of our desires and fears. However, Roderick cannot keep her hidden for long, and she bursts out again in a frenzy – much as Freud would later argue our unconscious drives and desires cannot be wholly repressed and will find some way of making themselves known to us (such as through dreams). Might we then interpret Roderick as a symbol of the conscious mind – struggling to conceal some dark ‘secret’ and make himself presentable to his friend, the narrator – and Madeline as a symbol of the unconscious? Note how Madeline is barely seen for much of the story, and the second time she appears she is literally buried (repressed?) within the vault. The notion that we might have both a ‘conscious’ and an ‘unconscious’ mind, then, was already in circulation when Poe was writing ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’. The term ‘unconscious’ was then introduced into English by the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). Indeed, it was the German Romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854) who distinguished between the conscious and unconscious mind in his early work System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), labelling the latter Unbewusste (i.e. Sigmund Freud would, over half a century after Poe was writing, do more than anyone else to delineate the structure of the conscious and unconscious mind, but he was not the first to suggest that our conscious minds might hide, or even repress, unconscious feelings, fears, neuroses, and desires. ![]() But Virginia did not fall ill until after Poe had written ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’.Īn 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. ![]() ![]() For instance, it has sometimes been suggested that Roderick’s relationship with Madeline echoes Poe’s own relationship with his young wife (who was also his cousin), Virginia, who fell ill, as Madeline has.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |