Revamping Poe

I'm all for fairy-tale happy endings when it comes to movies or books. Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" ended far from my ideal cheery conclusion or even a pleasant one for that matter. You can imagine that after reading about a man losing his mind and his twin rising from the dead, I wouldn't exactly be experiencing my ideal ending to a story. I'll admit, had the ending been less frightening, it would have taken away some of the drama from the storyline, but I'd like to think if I had been there I could have saved the night from being such a disaster.

Had I been a participant in Poe's story, I would most want to change the book the narrator read to Usher at the end. This may seem like a minute detail that wouldn't have had any affects, but I beg to differ. Reading "Mad Trist" of Sir Lancelot Canning just doesn't strike me as a well thought out book choice to read to someone exhibiting mad behaviors. Although, I do understand the idea to read to Roderick in order to calm him down. Had I been in the story I would have offered two simple solutions to the unfitting book selection. First, I could simply run and grab another book. If time did not allow for this, I would have taken the Sir Lancelot book and instead of reading from it, just pretend I was reading the words on the page and make up my own storyline instead. That's a trick my mom used on me when I was a child. Before I could read she would not read the words on the page, but instead provide her own shorter version of the story in order to get me to bed earlier. Needless to say, Roderick was not a child, but in his mental state it might have been possible to make up a new story that would be more calming and alleviate some of the stress of the night.

I think this simple task of not reading "Mad Trist" of Sir Lancelot Canning would enable the characters to relax. When in a stressful situation many people panic or react in different ways than if they had just taken a moment to relax and reevaluate the situation. Maybe if the story that was correlating with all of the scary noises in the house were different, the scary noises would be perceived in a different way as well. Maybe Madeline would even appear and be intrigued by the story and sit to listen alongside her brother. My hope for a fairy-tale ending may be a stretch, but it seems almost anything is possible in The House of Usher.