Critics have noticed in the House of Usher, a disintegrating Gothic-style house in Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” a force of evil that brings decadence and dissipation to the house and those who live in it. Some critics carry out this analysis in terms of psychoanalysis. In this, the dark, mist-wreathed House of Usher is compared to “a kind of dream or psychological journey” (Peeples). Some do so with a positive view of the dim interior of the House of Usher: in this, death and destruction are related to the idea of God’s will of destruction (Drain). In the essay I examine the dark psyche of the protagonist—his suicidal inclinations—structured as a reclusive world of self-destruction. For further discussion on destruction, I read the House of Usher in terms of Eureka and Gnostic philosophy
