The Fall of the House of Usher:

Poe makes use of multiple symbols throughout his works to represent life sciences, and he does so chiefly in his short story The Fall of the House of Usher. Both Roderick Usher and his house parallel each other in their sickliness. Roderick had an "acute bodily illness - of a mental disorder which oppressed him" (Poe 91). Roderick's sister, Madeline, was doing even worse. She was diagnosed as having "a settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical character" (Poe 97).  Roderick's home was in a similar state of decay. The narrator says that "about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity - an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn - a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued" (Poe 92). The building showed that it was alive through the process of its death. The sickliness of the house seems to have a profound effect not only on its usual inhabitants, but on its visitors as well. Even upon approaching the house, the narrator feels the effects of its oppressive atmosphere. He says that "there was an iciness, a sickening of the heart - an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime" (Poe 90). 

---