Often in literature the author correlates the attributes of a character or things that happen to a character with physical objects or even other people within the story. This gives an indication of how a character is structured and sometimes foreshadows things that have yet to happen in the story. In the short story “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the author, Edgar Allan Poe, establishes two distinct parallels between three characters. Roderick parallels both his twin sister, Madeline, and the house itself. Determining the similarities between these characters can provide an interesting literary exercise. Roderick and Madeline being twin brothers should provide enough similarities to establish a parallel in itself, but there are other indications. Both Usher brothers suffer from debilitating ailments that Poe alludes to several times throughout the story. An example of this is when Poe states of Roderick, “an anomalous species of terror I found him a bound slave” (Poe 235). The author does it again when he writes: “I fear the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I tremble at the thought of any accident, even the most trivial” (Poe 235). Finally, he writes: “He was shackled by certain superstitious impressions regarding the mansion he had rented, and from which, for many years, he had never ventured out…” (Poe 235). The terms “bound slave” and “chained” in these passages suggest that Roderick is unable to move from his fears and is therefore stuck. Madeline is described as suffering from “transient affections of a partially cataleptic character” (Poe 236). This means that while suffering from catatonic seizures he was physically incapable of moving, similar in nature to Roderick's inability to move... center of the paper... the narrator. The use of parallels in literature has long provided readers with a way to delve deeper into the author's vision of a character. Roderick and Madeline Usher were so similar that they died at the same time from comparable health problems. The physical house in which Roderick lived seemed to take on so many of its owner's depressing attributes that it too perished upon his death. Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" is mostly about the desperation that fills the narrator with despair. Despite this desperation, and despite the fact that every character the narrator encounters dies at the end of the story, and despite the fact that during his visit to the House of Usher the narrator also becomes somewhat depressed, one can muster hope that the narrator, and therefore the reader flees from an evidently discouraged situation.