The Fall of the House of Usher

4)What kind of narrator is used in this piece? Is he reliable? Speculate as to why Poe would use this type of narrator for his work.

The narrator in this novella is the friend who come and visits Mr. Usher. Everything that we have read is through his eyes and also through his imagination and understanding of events. Although we do not get to fully understand what all is wrong with Roderick, we can at least get a feeling that something is not right with him when his friend states, "The now ghastly pallor of the skin...miraculous lustre of the eye...the silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity." Before this statement was made, the narrator went to explain how Usher used to look like which is why he was so astonished to find that Rocerick had some what decayed and things that used to sprakle and shine about him are now dull or even dead. For the story's sake, I believe that the narrator is reliable because it seems that Roderick is slowly but surely going mad and we wouldn't want to read the story from a madman's point of view, might not make any sense. I think Poe wanted the story to be told this way so that then we could get the full feelings from a normal sane person ( at the beginning that is ) and see what the house looked like from the outside, how grim and quiet it is on the inside, and what the characters look like compared to when he first knew him. Not much is said about Madeline, but the story seems to focus more on Roderick anyways. Now later on in the story, the narrator seems to be falling under the same dreary and decayed feeling, or feeling of madness, probably because of hos gloomy and dark and dreary thigns are around him. Might even possibly be a complete shift from what he's used to and he's still trying to make sense of it but just can't. I might even be way off right now ( thank god for class discussions!! ) but that is the way I see it.