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According to Edward H. Davidson in his book Poe: A Critical Study, "The Fall of the House of Usher" can be interpreted as "a detailed account of the derangement and dissipation of an individual's personality." The house itself becomes the "symbolic embodiment of this individual." The fissure or the crack in the decaying mansion, that is noted by the narrator near the beginning of the story, represents "an irreconcilable fracture in the individual's personality." Roderick represents the mind or the intellect, while the portion of personality that we refer to as the senses (hearing, seeing, touching, tasting and smelling) is represented by Madeline. During the course of the story, the intellect (Roderick) tries to detach itself from its more physically oriented twin (Madeline). This can be seen in Roderick's aversion to his own senses as well as by his premature entombment of his twin sister. Living without Madeline (that is without the senses), Roderick's condition deteriorates. He begins to suffer from an "...intolerable agitation of the soul." At the end of the story, Madeline returns from her premature tomb to claim the maddened Roderick, " a victim to the terrors he had anticipated." As the two are reunited in death (the mind can neither live nor die without its physical counterpart, the senses), the house ( a symbol of a now deranged individual) crumbles into the "deep and dank tarn," as the narrator flees in terror for his own sanity.

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