Negative_Adjcetives_in_the_Fall_of_the_House_of_Usher

Negative Adjectives in The Fall of the House of Usher Lee Abstract: Edgar Allan Poe as the practitioner of short stories argues the preconcieved unity in this kind of literary form should be realized by the way of every detailed desciption, even each word. The Fall of the House of Usher which is intepreted by the previous scholars in the aspects of word repetition, syntatic arrangement, text structure and so on, will be analyzed in this article from the lexical level, mainly from the negative adjectives which emerge frequently in this short story in order to explore their function and reveal the effect of art anticipated and pre-established by the author. Key words：negative adjectives; function; effect 摘要：爱伦坡作为短篇小说的实践者认为在“在这种文学形式里，每一描写细节，甚至一字一句都应收到统一得效果，一个预想的效果”。《厄舍屋的倒塌》一文是其短篇小说中时被用作文学批评频率最高的作品之一，前人多从文中的词语重复、句法安排以及行文结构方面入手，分析其语言特色。本文将从词汇层面，主要是文中频繁使用的否定形容词的角度，具体分析形容词在文中发挥的作用，以及达到的艺术效果。 关键词：否定形容词；作用；效果 Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), as a pioneer of the detective story, a founder of science, a master of horror and mystery (Cao, 2009), has suffered a life of misery and poverty but has the unparalleled talent in the American even the world literature establishment.. Although poverty remained in his physical condition nearly throughout the life span, Poe has managed to contribute the literary works such as short fictions Liguria(1838), William Wilson: A Tale (1839), The Black Cat (1843), The Cask of Amontillado(1846), The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym(1838), The Murders in the Rue Morgue(1843) and the poem The Raven(1845), To Helen(1845), Annabel Lee (1849) and so on. Among these published in 1839 and reprinted in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840) The Fall of the House of Usher is considered ad one of the most representative Gothic short fictions2 (Sheng, 1994) and the most frequently reprinted and most repeatedly analyzed work of short story. And it also could be regarded as a very appropriate example to put his theory about short stories into practice. According to Smith (1909), the great contribution by Poe to the literature comes from his constructiveness and his structural art. After analyzing this short story, Peoples (2004:182) claims that the repeatedly appearance of the “alliterative compound adjectives in the story gives the illusion of depth and keeps readers’ attention on the mirror-like surface of words” and the composing of this short fiction is regarded as the building of one real house which is the manifestation of Poe’ philosophy of architecture. Pahl (1989) equates the stones in the House of Usher to the individual words and their perfect adaption of parts to the syntax of sentences, the careful arrangement of words. The previous scholars and critics have completed fruitful investigation to The Fall of the House of Usher from the aspects such as the repetition of the words, sentence arrangement, and structure of the text and so on. This article will explore it from the lexical lever in order to present how the unity of effect is established by the employment of adjectives, particularly, the negative ones which numerously occur throughout the whole story. 1 The brief introduction of the short story North Carolina Professor C. Alphorns Smith (1909) once described the work habit of Poe as “a patience and persistence worthy of Washington…a husbandry of details that suggest the thriftiness of Franklin… a native insight and inventiveness that proclaim them of the line of Edison.” 1 Although an unusual patriotic favor is easily found in this desciption, critics from the nineteenth to the present century generally have characterized Poe as the image of the engineer who has definite interest in intellectual games and detection (Peoples, 2004). In The Philosophy of Composition (1846), Poe fosters the image of himself as a mechanic who could inspire emotion without really feeling it. Also in the article, Poe emphasizes an intensified effect upon the reader with a unified plot, which could be treated as his manifesto about his understanding of short story. In his opinion, all elements of the every part of the literary artifact including the short stories should match well with the preconceived effect and must contribute to the unifying effect of the whole(1846). According to Horn (1989), the negative adjectives, usually in the structure of im- in- un- and –less, are derived from the general adjectives without prefix and suffix and the former group usually connotes the meaning of negation and passiveness. It is the employment of the negative adjectives that helps to present the atmosphere of sorrow and melancholy prevailing from the very beginning to the ultimate paragraph in this short story. “A childhood companion of Roderick Usher, who has not seen him for many years, is summoned to the gloomy house of Usher to comfort his sick friend. The decayed mansion stands on the edge a tarn, and is fungus-grown and dreary. Roderick and his twin Madeline are the only surviving members of this family, and both suffer serious physical and nervous maladies. Roderick entertains his friend with curious musical and Poetic improvisations, indicating his morbid tastes by his choice of reading. Madeline, in a cataleptic trance, is thought to be dead, and her body is placed in the family vault. During a storm, Roderick is overcome by a severe nervous agitation, and his friend reads aloud from a medieval romance, shows horrifying episodes coincide with strange sounds from outside the room. Finally Madeline appears, enshrouded, and she and brother fall dead together. The friend rushes from the house, and as he looks back in the moonlight, sees the whole house of usher split asunder and sink into the tarn.”(Hart, 1993:150) 2 The analysis to the negative adjective in this short story The most impressive and unforgettable protagonist in the story is Roderick, the owner of the house. And a narrator created by Poe invites the audience to vines the surface of Roderick Usher who shares the identical name of the house after many years’ separation. This meeting happens in a large and lofty room where all the general furniture is “comfortless” and the “long, narrow and pointed window…is inaccessible from within” (Poe, 1839, cited in Baym, 1995:1388). The words “comfortless” and “inaccessible” here indicate the environment where Roderick lives is not so convenient nor fresh but airless and lightless. The person emerging out from his seat there carries on the cadaverous complexion, the large, liquid and luminous eye, the thin and pallid lips and a Hebrew nose with “unusual formations” (ibid: 1388). All these features exist above the temple with “an inordinate expansion” (ibid: 1388). What is the most impressive is his “unheeded” (ibid: 1388) grown-up silken hair which is floating about the face. The portrait easily arises the readers’ imagination of any patient in poor health and in low mood and makes clear the reason why Roderick is so earnest to require his companion’ personal visit and deadly need the solace and comfort. In the following days together with the owner, the visitor gradually observes that Roderick’s disease is more serious than is anticipated. Because he “could wear only garment sofa certain texture; the most insipid food was alone endurable; the odors there of allay flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror” (ibid: 1389). But the causes for this physical torture are learned by the visitor through some broken and equivocal hints. That is to say, the physical illness may come from the contained superstitious impressions which have shadowed his ancient family and their mansion for a considerably time. One of the most striking characteristics of the family is recognized that the entire family carries on the direct line of descent since a very primitive time, and the stem of the Usher race has little enduring branch in order to pure this family. This lineage inevitably causes the hereditary disease of Roderick. The other explanation for his torment comes from the worry about his sister the lady of Madeline, the last and the only relative in the earth, because she struggles against the unusual disease challenging the ability of her physicians but in vain. On the night of the narrator’s arrival, the decrease of the lady Madeline reaches him from Roderick with his “inexpressible agitation” (ibid: 1390). Her decrease undoubtedly worsens the suffering of Roderick. The object of the narrator’s visit seems to have become more complicated due to the worsening statement of Roderick tortured not only by his own sickness but also by the lament on his dead sister. After the death of the lady, the visitor hesitates to mention her name, but makes the earnest effort to eliminate the melancholy of Roderick. Together with the companion, Roderick has chosen to play guitar and shown his devotion to the intricacies of the music just like his ancient family did. But without the escort of his sister, the life following means nothing but desperation to him. So it is scarcely possible for the narrator involving to his performance to conclude any exact idea or feature from it, and the instrument playing is a useless method to drive the sense of sorrow away. Another way to alleviate his bitter grief is painting. One of the phantasmagoric paintings may be intepreted in words rather feebly in which a vault or tunnel is described with no outlet, no torch, no artificial source of light, but a horrible and “inappropriate splendor” (ibid: 1391) towering the whole frame. The extremely abstract word “inappropriate” extends various imagination: where is this tunnel' Where does the light come from' Why is the light bright' And is the tunnel directing the heaven or the hell' No matter how different the interpretations are, the picture itself brings both the visitor and the readers “an intensity of intolerable awe” (ibid: 1391) full of lifelessness and conflict rather than vigor and harmony. Besides guitar-playing and painting, Roderick concentrates himself on the rhapsody from which the companion reads the suggestion that there exists a sentience of all the things in his “disordered fantasy” (ibid: 1391). The sentience has an unaccountable but gloomy influence on the fate of his family as well as his domain which is built with gray stones, surrounded by the overspreading fungi, the decayed trees, and the cool waters of the tarn in front of the house. However, all the endeavors to alleviate his torment seem too fruitless and futile, because the result is “discoverable” (ibid: 1393). The most dramatic and typical scene in Poe’s fictions, namely the premature burial of the woman character lady Madeline once again appears. During the entombment of the lady, the visitor finds the scarcely intelligible similarities between Roderick and Madeline. After the burial, Roderick abandons his usual devotion to playing and painting, his steps become “unequal and objectless” (ibid: 1394), the once occasional huskiness of his voice exists no more. His “unceasing agitated mind” seems to be occupied with an oppressive secret. All the behaviors are attributed to the “inexpiable madness” (ibid: 1395). “The most forceful insistence upon the power of writing or art to ‘move’ its audience comes at the story’s climax, as the narrator reads to Roderick from ‘The Mad Trist’ of Sir Lancelot Canning” (Peoples, 2004, cited in Hayes, 2005:184) in order to call back his attention from the grotesque natural phenomenon outside if the window on the seventh or eighth day after the entombment of the lady Madeline. Although the book’s “uncouth and unimaginative prolixity” (Poe, 1839, cited in Baym, 1995:1396) is not qualified to match Roderick’s lofty and idealistic reality, it is the only available one at hand. The extremely horribly scene occurs at the return of Madeline from the vault where she has been interred alive and the joint death of the sister and the terribly shocked brother who actually has recognized his inexpressible foreboding. In the desciption of this part, the horry in psychological condition and the beauty in the natural phenomenon are interweave together, the sanity and the insanity of the two characters are inextricably involved with each other; the imagination of the readers is forcedly expanded, and their’ capacity to accept the weird events is overly tested and challenged, and then the author’s anticipated intention is realized. Throughout the entire passage, there are other words in the form of negative adjectives. For example, the oppressive atmosphere which exercises such power over the house of Usher and the family is illustrated with the word as “insufferable” “insoluble” “undeviating” “irredeemable” “unfamiliar” “disordered”, and the unity of these words successfully creates the effect of horry and somber that is immensely influential over the readers. Another noteworthy group of the negative adjectives is employed by the author to modify the psychological state of the two protagonists such as “unrelieved” “unredeemed” “intolerable” “unaccountable” “irrepressible” “unnerved” “indefinite” and ect.3 The combination of these adjectives reinforces the establishment of the impression of the painful and tragic torment not only in the physical but also in the spiritual condition.3 The internal spiritually experience irritated by the intensive organic stimulus has awaken the readers’ understanding of what is constrained and submerged under the pressure of the real life and led to the response to the literary work itself. And in this way, the reader can have the possibility to appreciate and evaluate the charm and the significance of this short story. Conclusion By the close reading of this short story and the careful analysis to the negative adjectives in it, it is possible for the readers to perceive and understand the art effect preconcieved by the author, and then, the author’s ingenious talent in exploring the human being’s psychological state and in the wording and phrasing has been presented to the fullest extend. And this is one of the definite reasons that the value of Poe’s literary creation has been admitted by the public audience and the professional critics from whom Poe once said he could afford a century to wait. Notes 1 This speech was delivered by by Smith in the University of Virginia’s 1909 commemoration of the centenary of Poe’ 100th anniversary. 2 Gothic short stories have characteristics of mystery, magic and chivalry，in which “the readers may usually expect a suit of armor suddenly come to life, while bloody ghosts, clanking chains, charnel houses secret passages and dungeons winding stairways impart an uncanny and stupefying atmosphere. This genre is always associated with the Middle Ages and the medieval castles with strong element of the supernatural and the now traditional haunted house props.” (Holman,1986). 3 All the adjectives in the qutation mark are qutoed from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe. Works Cited Pahl, Dennis. Architects of the Abyss: The Indeterminate Fictions of Poe,Hawthorne, and Meliville. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989. Peeples, Scott. “Poe’s ‘constructiveness’and ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’.” The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe. Ed. Kevin J. Hayes. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2004. Poe, E. Allan. “The Fall of the House of Usher”. The Norton of Anthlogy of American Literature.Ed. Nina Baym.New York and London: WW Norton and Company,1995. Poe, E. Allan. “The Philosophy of Composition”. The Norton of Anthology of American Literature.Ed. Nina Baym.New York and London: WW Norton and Company,1995. Hart, James. D. The Oxford Companion to American Literature, 5th ed.. Beijing: Oxford University Press and Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 1993. Horn, L. A Natural History of Negation. Chicago :University of Chicago Press,1989. Smith, C. Alphonso. “The Americanism of Poe”. The Book of the Poe Centenry: A Record of the Exercises at the University of Virginia January 16-19. Eds. Charles W. Kent and John S. Patton. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1909. 曹明伦。 “孤独的过客，不朽的天才——纪念爱伦。坡200周年诞辰” ，《外语教学》1（2009）79。 盛宁。《二十世纪美国文学理论》。北京：北京大学出版社，1994年。 张冲。《新编美国文学史》。 上海 ：上海外语教育出版社，2001 年。