Fall, Orpheum
The “Fall, Orpheum” is written by Adam McOmber. The word, Orpheum, is derived from Orpheus, a great Greek mythological poet and musician whose skills could charm animals, plants, and even rocks (Wikipedia). The title “Fall, Orpheum” suggests the end of a horrible creature or dictatorship. This story is similar to “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe. Both stories are about death in a mysterious way and used the word “fall” to indicate the end of the existence of the structure that was causing death in each story.
Orpheum is a theater that leads to the death of many residents including Kitty Miller, sister of David Miller, and was mashed down into pieces by the residents of the town. Orpheum was dark and guided by May Avalon, who served as the ticket seller to death. She watched her beloved boyfriend swallowed by the theater and knew every detail of what went bad in the theater but didn’t stand against her beloved death trap. When David was searching for the sister after Kitty went back into the back dark room and never returns, May Avalon laughed him off and joked about the mystery David was narrating to her. She mistaken David Miller for her boy friend that reincarnated or lived in a weird reverse order that Avalon was lied about by the boy friend at the time they were dating. At the gate to the dark room, she started romanticizing the young boy and wishing she was young to be his match but David didn’t fall prey to any of her tricks. David continued search for the sister and eventually organized a coup d’état that led to the fall of the Orpheum. During the destruction, May Avalon received her share of the beating as the group of boys and town people stamped and kicked her in the stomach.
David, as the name suggest is a strong and spirited person. The Orpheum is like Goliath but David was able to bring it down. May Avalon acts like the snake in the Garden of Eden that deceived Adam and Eve to eat the fruit from the forbidden tree. Avalon also means apple and apple tree is considered the tree of life which means in the story, May can also be attributed to the tree of life which Adam and Eve were forbidden. If David did not hold fast to his faith but acted stupid and fell to the deceit of Avalon and “eat” her, he would have been swallowed by the Orpheum and this will mean the Orpheum will continue killing the residence forever because no one was able to stand tall and challenged the existence of the old grand grave of a theater except when David started stoning it down. The name Kitty also means a young cat and that could be the reason why Kitty Miller was able to be lured and swallowed by the theater because she is young, naïve, inspirited and needed some attention of her own world, something David never understood.
In the similar story of “The Fall of the House of Usher”, the unnamed protagonist is summoned to the remote mansion of his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher. Filled with a sense of dread by the sight of the house itself, the Narrator reunites with his old companion, who is suffering from a strange mental illness and whose sister Madeline is near death due to a mysterious disease. The Narrator provides company to Usher while he paints and plays guitar, spending all his days inside, avoiding the sunlight and obsessing over the sentience of the non-living. When Madeline dies, Usher decides to bury her temporarily in one of his house’s large vaults. A few days later, however, she emerges from her provisional tomb, killing her brother while the Narrator flees for his life. The House of Usher splits apart and collapses, wiping away the last remnants of the ancient family.
At the end of the “Fall, Orpheum” the resident’s involved in destroying the theater had a dream in which all the dead people were still alive and David saw the sister, Common Woolbrink and all others consumed by the theater. The story can be analyzed as a dream that actually never happened. David Miller might just have a dream in which her beloved sister Kitty Miller who is loved by many people was adapted by an alien which David has to fight to take her back. But the reality of the story became cleared when the story went as far as Chicago and was on national television. The fact that they were imprisoned for their act also indicate people outside the town really do not understand the story of the grand old theater but will only consider them bad and arrogant citizens. In “The Fall of the House of Usher”, the narrator is the outsider who knows nothing about what was going on in the house. He freaked out to see the dead Madeline woke up from her grave and killed the brother. The narrator at this point will judge Madeline as a wicked sister but clearly, Madeline and the brother are destined to die together before the house finally collapsed and vanished in the mud. It can also be construed that Kitty was the last person on the list of people to be swallowed by the Orpheum before it eventually collapsed because at the end of it, their dream signaled the end of the work and all those happy dead people will never return to their family. The two authors used darkness to evoke fear and they both used women to evoke anger for the living. Madeline and Kitty’s death provoked their brothers and they were very angry, frustrated and restless. While Usher called on his friend, the narrator, to help him cope with the fear of his dead sister lying right below the building, David went around finding ways to bring the sister back to life. David has a different approach to life than Usher and he seems to love the sister more than Usher. Kitty’s disappearance has nothing to do with David but Usher has a hand in the sickness that took the sister away. Both stories are full of mystery that lead to death but eventually there was the fall of the cause of the mystery, the house and the theater.
