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The Fall

of the

House

of

Usher

By

Edgar

Allan

Poe

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Roderick Usher, who’s ancestors were famous for their artistic and musical abilities, was visited by his friend one dark autumn evening. As he approached the house, known as the “House of Usher,” it looked like a melancholy-looking building. The walls looked gray and bleak, covered by a string-like web of moss and other clinging plants. There were decaying trees that stood in the damp, swampy ground. A mystic fog seemed to be rising from the decaying trees and a nearby swamp wrapping the house in a strange vaporous cloud. He had noticed a sliver of a crack that ran from the roof down to the foundation ending under the damp, swampy earth.

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When his friend enters the house, he notices that the house contains an atmosphere of great sorrow. Roderick Usher’s face was ghostly and thin with his hair floating mildly around his face. Usher begins to tell his friend about his illness that ran in his family. His body was extremely sensitive to touch, flower odors and all sound, except for gentle stringed instruments. He was also plagued by strange terrors and fear. His gloomy spirit was affected by some strange superstitions about the mansion. He was also burdened by the severe and incurable illness of his beloved sister, Madeline. His sister passed through the room not even noticing his friend. Usher explained that she was bedridden with exhaustion and with the deterioration and emaciation caused by her disease. She was slowly dying.

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Over the next few days, Usher strummed his guitar and painted many canvases in succession. One of the pictures stayed in Usher’s head. It was a picture which looked very bright but was not lit by a torch. Then Usher announced his sister Madeline was not more. Usher wanted to preserve her body for two weeks before her final burial. The physicians would want to check her to see what happened to her. But the burial grounds were too far away and they placed Madeline’s body in a coffin and took her to a temporary tomb, which was a vault in the foundation walls of the mansion. The vault was directly under the room where Usher’s friend was staying.