Contagious Friendship in Edgar Allan Poe’s the Fall of the House of Usher

In this study, I aim to trace the narrator’s transformation from someone whose purpose is to alleviate the desperate mood of his friend Roderick Usher, with his positive energy, to becoming a psychological host for Roderick Usher’s emotional instability. I argue that the narrator’s immediate and prolonged exposure to Roderick’s anxiety, combined with the dreadful atmosphere of the mansion and his own empathetic nature, lead to erosion of the boundaries between their opposite emotional states. This dissolution is reflected in the narrator’s inability to maintain rational detachment or to establish a stabilizing anchor capable of preserving either his own psychological coherence or the symbolic integrity of the house. While this study refers to popular literary interpretations of The Fall of the House of Usher, it also approaches the text through a psychological framework. By applying contemporary research on emotional regulation and stress transmission, the paper moves beyond symbolic or aesthetic readings that analyze the interpersonal dynamics that lead to the narrator’s mental deterioration.