Often in literature the author correlates a character's attributes or things that happen to a character with physical objects or even other people in the history. This gives an indication of how a character is structured and sometimes foreshadows things that are still going to happen in the story. In the short story “The Fall of the House of Usher,” author Edgar Allan Poe draws two distinct parallels between three characters. Roderick is paralleled both with his twin sister, Madeline, and with the house itself. Determining the similarities between these characters can be an interesting literary exercise. Roderick and Madeline being twin siblings should provide enough similarities to draw a parallel in itself, but there are other indications. Both Usher siblings suffer from debilitating illnesses that Poe alludes to several times throughout the story. An example of this is when Poe states of Roderick: “an abnormal species of terror, I found him a bonded slave” (Poe 235). The author repeats it when writing: “I fear the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their consequences. I shudder at the thought of every incident, even the most insignificant” (Poe 235). Finally, he writes, “he was chained by certain superstitious impressions with regard to the residence which he occupied and from which, for many years, he had never ventured…” (Poe 235). The terms “bound slave” and “chained” in these passages suggest that Roderick is unable to escape his fears and is therefore stuck. Madeline is described as having “transient affections of a partly cataleptic character” (Poe 236). This means that although she was suffering from catatonic seizures, she was physically unable to move, similar in nature to Roderick's inability to move... middle of paper ...... the narrator. The use of parallels in literature has long provided readers with a way to deepen the author's view of a character. Roderick and Madeline Usher were so similar that they died at the same time from comparable health problems. The physical house in which Roderick lived seemed to take on so many of its owner's depressing attributes that it too perished upon his death. “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe deals primarily with the despair that fills the narrator with despair. Despite this despair and despite the fact that all the characters encountered by the narrator die at the end of the story, and even if during his visit to Usher House the narrator himself becomes somewhat depressed, we can hope that the narrator , and therefore the reader, escapes a visibly discouraged situation.