The Fall Of The House Of Usher Episode 4 The Black Cat Explained- When Pussy Bites Back

Camile’s death has put Victorine’s heart mesh in the spotlight. They have to move swiftly to deliver success before the public asks too many questions. In the meantime, Leo acquires a black cat that he plans on passing off as Pluto. The Fall Of The House Of Usher Episode 4 bears witness to the death of Leo Usher in an especially nasty form. One of Poe’s most mean-spirited stories comes to life. Here’s everything you need to know about The Black Cat, Leo’s name, and that ringing bell.

The Black Cat

Black cats have long been thought of as evil. They are pets of witches or witches in animal form. The spiritual killers rob unsuspecting sleepers of their breath and portend bad luck when their path is crossed. For those that have a black cat, they also make some of the sweetest pets. In Poe’s story, an angry, alcohol-addled man abuses, mutilates, and kills a beloved black cat named Pluto and later his wife. The killer walls his wife’s corpse up in his house, and when the police come to investigate, he arrogantly pounds on the wall with his cane, which results in the cries of a second cat whom he had also walled up. It is another story about guilt and karmic retribution.

In the story, first, the man carves out his cat’s eye, which symbolizes the severing of the man’s soul in half. His good side was separated from his evil side and was free to inflict violence without control. The Black Cat is another example of Poe demonstrating that humans are capable of terrible things and can turn on and off their morality as necessary. When humans lose that ethical integrity, they are unbound by rules of decency and sympathy.

Leo is an egotist. He displays emotion when he finds out about Camile. Just like the man who abuses and kills his cat and wife in The Black Cat, Leo is capable of caring. He can even sometimes make the right decisions. Leo tells Roderick to keep his money and walks away because he isn’t all bad. He just lets his selfish side rule too much of his life.

Verna appears to Leo, this time as an animal shelter worker. He needs a black cat to replace the one he stabbed to death in the previous episode. He plans to lie to Julius about his pet. Leo isn’t so much a terrible person as much as he is a selfish one who has been cut off from his humanity by drugs, alcohol, and money. Verna is already stalking her next victim, too, as she has now started appearing in Tamerlane’s husband’s workout videos.

Which of Poe’s stories does Leo’s name reference?

One of Poe’s lesser-known works is The Spectacles, a rare comedy in his collection of somber stories of guilt, revenge, and horror. Napolean Usher’s name, like that of all the main players in the Netflix story, comes from one of his stories. In Spectacles, a vain man refuses to wear glasses and has a joke played on him as a result. He thinks he is courting and eventually marrying a beautiful young woman when, in fact, it is an 82-year-old woman.

The story ends well as it is revealed the marriage was not real and they were tricking him. He married the younger woman and vowed never to be without his glasses again. The story is a clear reminder not to let vanity get in the way of sense. Just like history’s Napolean Bonaparte, pride almost always cometh before a fall. In Leo’s case, it is the same failing as Napolean’s.

Leo is temperamental, prideful, and foolhardy, just like the man in the story. His long-suffering boyfriend, Julius, is a saint who provides unwavering support and forgives all of his moods. Like the man in The Black Cat, Leo’s moods are mercurial and unpredictable, while his wife is consisting patient and kind.

Like her father before her, Victorine is able to excuse her exploitation of the vulnerable by rationalizing they are lucky enough to get experimental medication and money. Verna poses as a heart patient to Victorine and continues to give each of the children an out. They might still die, but it doesn’t have to be as painful or ugly. For the Ushers, it appears to be a debt that must be paid. We still don’t know what debt she is collecting or why she is so angry, and it may not matter. If Verna is a harbinger of death, then there is no revenge plot, just an inevitability. Death isn’t inherently evil. It simply is. A necessary part of life.

Leo’s new cat he is passing off as Pluto is teasing him in The Fall Of The House Of Usher Episode 4. He leaves dead animals under his pillow and scratches him with no warning. When Frederick asks for cocaine to help him numb the confusion over his wife’s presence at Perry’s orgy, New Pluto delivers a painful scratch to his eye. He calls the shelter to get the cat, and Verna arrives to mete out justice. She plants the seed that the cat is in the wall and turns him loose. Just like the man in the story, Leo pokes one of the cat’s eyes out when he catches it. Leo also has one injured eye parallelling the cat’s.

Dupin and Roderick in The Fall Of The House Of Usher Episode 4

Dupin and Roderick first met when he was a Medicare fraud investigator. He is a crusader and always has been. They met when Dupin uncovered patients who had been duped into trials that resulted in their deaths. Roderick neither confirms nor denies his falsified signature on many of the forms, and Dupin shows off his keen eye for detail just as his namesake in Poe’s stories. He sees things others don’t. That is why he is a good investigator.

The next day, Roderick asks Rufus about the forms, and Rufus tells him nothing was forged and threatens him. Roderick is either with him or against him, and Rufus utters the lines he spews at his children earlier in The Fall Of The House Of Usher Episode 4.

Sublimation and denial are an Usher specialty. Those skills are especially robust in Leo and Roderick. They can both separate the parts of their lives that they don’t want to acknowledge. That denial can also get you killed. Julius comes home to find Leo bashed in the walls, trying to find the cat. Like the story The Fall Of The House Of Usher, Episode 4 is modeled after a dead woman is there instead. In rage ad desperation, he throws himself from the balcony of his apartment building, where Pluto finds him.

In the hospital, Frederick begins self-medicating with cocaine and begins a slide into mania. He uses her finger to try and unlock the second phone without regard for her pain. When that doesn’t work, he removes her oxygen tube and bandages, but the phone doesn’t recognize her face either. Roderick has become consumed by his jealousy, and it overrides any concern he ever had for her.

The remaining members of the Usher clan are doing everything they can to distance the ugly parts of their personalities and lives. Roderick keeps his new wife around because she is a walking billboard for his drug and because men like sex. He doesn’t care about the toll the medication is taking on her. Even when she asks to cut back on the medication, he worries about public perception as opposed to her well-being. Leo cares more about keeping Julius around than being honest with someone he supposedly cares about. Roderick wants to have Morrie not be loved by her.

The Ushers are takers, not makers. They covet and consume until nothing is left but what they allow. Verna might just be the universe making it right by delivering justice in the most natural way possible. You can’t outrun time, and death can never be beaten.

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