Write short notes on Relationship of Roderick Usher with the narrator
Answers
Appropriately enough for an Edgar Allan Poe story, the relationship between the narrator and Roderick Usher is somewhat strange. Although they're supposed to have been friends since childhood, it's clear that the narrator doesn't really know Usher all that well. And as the story unfolds, and Usher's psychological condition progressively deteriorates, the narrator comes to look upon him less as a friend and more as an object of scientific curiosity. The narrator is a man of reason, a man of critical intellect, who uses his keen powers of observation to determine the presence of a mental disorder in Usher's feverish, over-heated brain. Yet the narrator's intellect can only really understand Usher as a mental patient rather than as a friend. It's only when he abandons critical methods of thinking to embrace a superstitious mindset that he's able to get into Usher's mind and gain some insight into his motives.
The narrator is a man... Appropriately enough for an Edgar Allan Poe story, the relationship between the narrator and Roderick Usher is somewhat strange. Although they're supposed to have been friends since childhood, it's clear that the narrator doesn't really know Usher all that well.