E dgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, and died on October 7, 1849.

In his stormy forty years,

which included a marriage to his cousin, fights with other writers, and legendary drinking binges, Poe
lived in all the important literary centers of the northeastern United States: Baltimore, Philadelphia,
New York City, and Boston. He was a magazine editor, a poet, a short story writer, a critic, and a
lecturer. He introduced the British horror story, or the Gothic genre, to American literature, along with
the detective story, science fiction, and literary criticism. Poe became a key figure in the nineteenth-
century flourishing of American letters and literature. Famed twentieth--century literary critic F.O.
Matthiessen named this period the American Renaissance. He argued that nineteenth-century American
writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt
Whitman crafted a distinctly American literature that attempts to escape from the long shadow of the
British literary tradition. Matthiessen paid little attention to Edgar Allan Poe. Although he long had a
reputation in Europe as one of America's most original writers, only in the latter half of the -twentieth
century has Poe been viewed as a crucial contributor to the American Renaissance.

The often tragic circumstances of Poe's life haunt his writings. His father disappeared not long after the
child's birth, and, at the age of three, Poe watched his mother die of tuberculosis. Poe then went to live
with John and Frances Allan, wealthy theatergoers who knew his parents, both actors, from the
Richmond, Virginia, stage. Like Poe's mother, Frances Allan was chronically ill, and Poe experienced her
sickness much as he did his mother's. His relationship with John Allan, who was loving but moody,
generous but demanding, was emotionally turbulent. With Allan's financial help, Poe attended school in
England and then enrolled at the University of Virginia in 1826, but he was forced to leave after two
semesters. Although Poe blamed Allan's stinginess, his own gambling debts played a large role in his
fiscal woes. A tendency to cast blame on others, without admitting his own faults, characterized Poe's
relationship with many people, most significantly Allan. Poe struggled with a view of Allan as a false
father, generous enough to take him in at age three, but never dedicated enough to adopt him as a true
son. There are echoes of Poe's upbringing in his works, as sick mothers and guilty fathers appear in
many of his tales.

After leaving the University of Virginia, Poe spent some time in the military before he used his contacts
in Richmond and Baltimore to enter the magazine industry. With little experience, Poe relied on his
characteristic bravado to convince Thomas Willis White, then head of the fledgling Southern Literary
Messenger, to take him on as an editor in 1835. This position gave him a forum for his early tales,
including “Berenice” and “Morella.” The Messenger also established Poe as a leading and controversial
literary critic, who often attacked his New England counterparts—especially poet Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow—in the genteel pages of the magazine. Poe ultimately fell out of favor with White, but his
literary criticism made him a popular speaker on the lecture circuit. Poe never realized his most
ambitious dream—the launch of his own magazine, the Stylus. Until his death, he believed that the New
England literary establishment had stolen his glory and had prevented the Stylus from being published.

His name has since become synonymous with macabre tales like “The Tell-Tale Heart,” but Poe
assumed a variety of literary personas during his career. The Messenger—as well as Burton's
Gentleman's Magazine and Graham's—established Poe as one of America's first popular literary critics.
He advanced his theories in popular essays, including “The Philosophy of Composition” (1846), “The

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Rationale of Verse” (1848), and “The Poetic Principle.” In “The Philosophy of Composition” Poe
explained how he had crafted “The Raven,” the 1845 poem that made him nationally famous. In the
pages of these magazines, Poe also introduced of a new form of short fiction—the detective story—in
tales featuring the Parisian crime solver C. Auguste Dupin. The detective story follows naturally from
Poe's interest in puzzles, word games, and secret codes, which he loved to present and decode in the
pages of the Messenger to dazzle his readers. The word “detective” did not exist in English at the time
that Poe was writing, but the genre has become a fundamental mode of twentieth-century literature
and film. Dupin and his techniques of psychological inquiry have informed countless sleuths, including
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe.

Gothic literature, a genre that rose with Romanticism in Britain in the late eighteenth century, explores
the dark side of human experience—death, alienation, nightmares, ghosts, and haunted landscapes. Poe
brought the Gothic to America. American Gothic literature dramatizes a culture plagued by poverty and
slavery through characters afflicted with various forms of insanity and melancholy. Poe, America's
foremost southern writer before William Faulkner, generated a Gothic ethos from his own experiences
in Virginia and other slaveholding territories, and the black and white imagery in his stories reflects a
growing national anxiety over the issue of slavery.

In the spectrum of American literature, the Gothic remains in the shadow of the dominant genre of the
American Renaissance—the Romance. Popularized by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Romantic literature, like
Gothic literature, relies on haunting and mysterious narratives that blur the boundary between the real
and the fantastic. Poe's embrace of the Gothic with its graphic violence and disturbing scenarios places
him outside the ultimately conservative and traditional resolutions of Romantic novels such as
Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables (1851).

In Romances like the novels of Hawthorne, conflicts occur among characters within the context of
society and are resolved in accordance with society's rules. Poe's Gothic tales are brief flashes of chaos
that flare up within lonely narrators living at the fringes of society. Poe's longest work, the 1838 novel
Arthur Gordon Pym, described in diary form a series of episodes on a journey to Antarctica. A series of
bizarre incidents and exotic discoveries at sea, Pym lacks the cohesive elements of plot or quest that tie
together most novels and epics and is widely considered an artistic failure. Poe's style and concerns
never found their best expression in longer forms, but his short stories are considered masterpieces
worldwide. The Poe's Gothic is a potent brew, best served in small doses.

The fall of house of usher

Summary

An unnamed narrator approaches the house of Usher on a “dull, dark, and soundless day.” This house—
the estate of his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher—is gloomy and mysterious. The narrator observes that
the house seems to have absorbed an evil and diseased atmosphere from the decaying trees and murky
ponds around it. He notes that although the house is decaying in places—individual stones are

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disintegrating, for example—the structure itself is fairly solid. There is only a small crack from the roof to
the ground in the front of the building. He has come to the house because his friend Roderick sent him a
letter earnestly requesting his company. Roderick wrote that he was feeling physically and emotionally
ill, so the narrator is rushing to his assistance. The narrator mentions that the Usher family, though an
ancient clan, has never flourished. Only one member of the Usher family has survived from generation
to generation, thereby forming a direct line of descent without any outside branches. The Usher family
has become so identified with its estate that the peasantry confuses the inhabitants with their home.

The narrator finds the inside of the house just as spooky as the outside. He makes his way through the
long passages to the room where Roderick is waiting. He notes that Roderick is paler and less energetic
than he once was. Roderick tells the narrator that he suffers from nerves and fear and that his senses
are heightened. The narrator also notes that Roderick seems afraid of his own house. Roderick's sister,
Madeline, has taken ill with a mysterious sickness—perhaps catalepsy, the loss of control of one's limbs
—that the doctors cannot reverse. The narrator spends several days trying to cheer up Roderick. He
listens to Roderick play the guitar and make up words for his songs, and he reads him stories, but he
cannot lift Roderick's spirit. Soon, Roderick posits his theory that the house itself is unhealthy, just as the
narrator supposes at the beginning of the story.

Madeline soon dies, and Roderick decides to bury her temporarily in the tombs below the house. He
wants to keep her in the house because he fears that the doctors might dig up her body for scientific
examination, since her disease was so strange to them. The narrator helps Roderick put the body in the
tomb, and he notes that Madeline has rosy cheeks, as some do after death. The narrator also realizes
suddenly that Roderick and Madeline were twins. Over the next few days, Roderick becomes even more
uneasy. One night, the narrator cannot sleep either. Roderick knocks on his door, apparently hysterical.
He leads the narrator to the window, from which they see a bright-looking gas surrounding the house.
The narrator tells Roderick that the gas is a natural phenomenon, not altogether uncommon.

The narrator decides to read to Roderick in order to pass the night away. He reads “Mad Trist” by Sir
Launcelot Canning, a medieval romance. As he reads, he hears noises that correspond to the
descriptions in the story. At first, he ignores these sounds as the vagaries of his imagination. Soon,
however, they become more distinct and he can no longer ignore them. He also notices that Roderick
has slumped over in his chair and is muttering to himself. The narrator approaches Roderick and listens
to what he is saying. Roderick reveals that he has been hearing these sounds for days, and believes that
they have buried Madeline alive and that she is trying to escape. He yells that she is standing behind the
door. The wind blows open the door and confirms Roderick's fears: Madeline stands in white robes
bloodied from her struggle. She attacks Roderick as the life drains from her, and he dies of fear. The
narrator flees the house. As he escapes, the entire house cracks along the break in the frame and
crumbles to the ground.

Analysis

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 “The Fall of the House of Usher” possesses the quintessential -features of the Gothic tale: a haunted
house, dreary landscape, mysterious sickness, and doubled personality. For all its easily identifiable
Gothic elements, however, part of the terror of this story is its vagueness. We cannot say for sure where
in the world or exactly when the story takes place. Instead of standard narrative markers of place and
time, Poe uses traditional Gothic elements such as inclement weather and a barren landscape. We are
alone with the narrator in this haunted space, and neither we nor the -narrator know why. Although he
is Roderick's most intimate boyhood friend, the narrator apparently does not know much about him—
like the basic fact that Roderick has a twin sister. Poe asks us to question the reasons both for Roderick's
decision to contact the narrator in this time of need and the bizarre tenacity of narrator's response.
While Poe provides the recognizable building blocks of the Gothic tale, he contrasts this standard form
with a plot that is inexplicable, sudden, and full of unexpected disruptions. The story begins without
complete explanation of the narrator's motives for arriving at the house of Usher, and this ambiguity
sets the tone for a plot that continually blurs the real and the fantastic.

Poe creates a sensation of claustrophobia in this story. The narrator is mysteriously trapped by the lure
of Roderick's attraction, and he cannot escape until the house of Usher collapses completely. Characters
cannot move and act freely in the house because of its structure, so it assumes a monstrous character of
its own—the Gothic mastermind that controls the fate of its inhabitants. Poe, creates confusion
between the living things and inanimate objects by doubling the physical house of Usher with the
genetic family line of the Usher family, which he refers to as the house of Usher. Poe employs the word
“house” metaphorically, but he also describes a real house. Not only does the narrator get trapped
inside the mansion, but we learn also that this confinement describes the biological fate of the Usher
family. The family has no enduring branches, so all genetic transmission has occurred incestuously
within the domain of the house. The peasantry confuses the mansion with the family because the
physical structure has effectively dictated the genetic patterns of the family.

The claustrophobia of the mansion affects the relations among characters. For example, the narrator
realizes late in the game that Roderick and Madeline are twins, and this realization occurs as the two
men prepare to entomb Madeline. The cramped and confined setting of the burial tomb metaphorically
spreads to the features of the characters. Because the twins are so similar, they cannot develop as free
individuals. Madeline is buried before she has actually died because her similarity to Roderick is like a
coffin that holds her identity. Madeline also suffers from problems typical for women in -nineteenth--
century literature. She invests all of her identity in her body, whereas Roderick possesses the powers of
intellect. In spite of this disadvantage, Madeline possesses the power in the story, almost superhuman
at times, as when she breaks out of her tomb. She thus counteracts Roderick's weak, nervous, and
immobile disposition. Some scholars have argued that Madeline does not even exist, reducing her to a
shared figment Roderick's and the narrator's imaginations. But Madeline proves central to the
symmetrical and claustrophobic logic of the tale. Madeline stifles Roderick by preventing him from
seeing himself as essentially different from her. She completes this attack when she kills him at the end
of the story.

Doubling spreads throughout the story. The tale highlights the Gothic feature of the doppelganger, or
character double, and portrays doubling in inanimate structures and literary forms. The narrator, for

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example, first witnesses the mansion as a reflection in the tarn, or shallow pool, that abuts the front of
the house. The mirror image in the tarn doubles the house, but upside down—an inversely symmetrical
relationship that also characterizes the relationship between Roderick and Madeline.

The story features numerous allusions to other works of literature, including the poems “The Haunted
Palace” and “Mad Trist” by Sir Launcelot Canning. Poe composed them himself and then fictitiously
attributed them to other sources. Both poems parallel and thus predict the plot line of “The Fall of the
House of Usher.” “Mad Trist,” which is about the forceful entrance of Ethelred into the dwelling of a
hermit, mirrors the simultaneous escape of Madeline from her tomb. “Mad Trist” spookily crosses
literary borders, as though Roderick's obsession with these poems ushers their narratives into his own
domain and brings them to life.

The crossing of borders pertains vitally to the Gothic horror of the tale. We know from Poe's experience
in the magazine industry that he was obsessed with codes and word games, and this story amplifies his
obsessive interest in naming. “Usher” refers not only to the mansion and the family, but also to the act
of crossing a -threshold that brings the narrator into the perverse world of Roderick and Madeline.
Roderick's letter ushers the narrator into a world he does not know, and the presence of this outsider
might be the factor that destroys the house. The narrator is the lone exception to the Ushers' fear of
outsiders, a fear that accentuates the claustrophobic nature of the tale. By undermining this fear of the
outside, the narrator unwittingly brings down the whole structure. A similar, though strangely playful
crossing of a boundary transpires both in “Mad Trist” and during the climactic burial escape, when
Madeline breaks out from death to meet her mad brother in a “tryst,” or meeting, of death. Poe thus
buries, in the fictitious gravity of a medieval romance, the puns that garnered him popularity in
America's magazines.

DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung
oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary
tract of country ; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the
melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was - but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of
insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable ; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that
half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest
natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me - upon the mere house,
and the simple landscape features of the domain - upon the bleak walls - upon the vacant eye-like
windows - upon a few rank sedges - and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees - with an utter
depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream
of the reveller upon opium - the bitter lapse into everyday life - the hideous dropping off of the veil.
There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart - an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no
goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it - I paused to think -

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what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher ? It was a mystery all
insoluble ; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was
forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations
of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power
lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different
arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify,
or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression ; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my
horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and
gazed down - but with a shudder even more thrilling than before - upon the remodelled and inverted
images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.

Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of some weeks. Its
proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon companions in boyhood ; but many years had
elapsed since our last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant part of the country -
a letter from him - which, in its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal
reply. The MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness - of a mental
disorder which oppressed him - and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only
personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his
malady. It was the manner in which all this, and much more, was said - it was the apparent heart that
went with his request - which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I accordingly obeyed forthwith
what I still considered a very singular summons.

Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really knew little of my friend. His reserve
had been always excessive and habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been
noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in
many works of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive
charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox
and easily recognisable beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that
the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch ;
in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling
and very temporary variation, so lain. It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought
the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with the accredited character of the people, and
while speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in the long lapse of centuries, might have
exercised upon the other - it was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent
undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so
identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of
the "House of Usher" - an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used
it, both the family and the family mansion.

I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment - that of looking down within the
tarn - had been to deepen the first singular impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of
the rapid increase of my superstition - for why should I not so term it ? - served mainly to accelerate the
increase itself. Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis.

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And it might have been for this reason only, that, when I again uplifted my eyes to the house itself, from
its image in the pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy - a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but
mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me. I had so worked upon my
imagination as really to believe that about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere
peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity - an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of
heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn - a
pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.

Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the
building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had
been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the
eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen ;
and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the
crumbling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious
totality of old wood-work which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance
from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave
little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely
perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall
in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.

Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A servant in waiting took my horse,
and I entered the Gothic archway of the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence,
through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his master. Much that I
encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have
already spoken. While the objects around me - while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries
of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as
I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy - while
I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this - I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were
the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. On one of the staircases, I met the physician of the
family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity. He
accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a door and ushered me into the
presence of his master.

The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and
pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from
within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellissed panes, and served to
render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around ; the eye, however, struggled in vain to
reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark
draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered.
Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I
felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over
and pervaded all.

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Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying at full length, and greeted me
with a vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality - of the
constrained effort of the ennuyé ; man of the world. A glance, however, at his countenance, convinced
me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down ; and for some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon him
with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a
period, as had Roderick Usher ! It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the
wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his face had been
at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion ; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond
comparison ; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve ; a nose of a
delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations ; a finely moulded
chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like
softness and tenuity ; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple,
made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the
prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of
change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous
lustre of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to
grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could
not, even with effort, connect its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.

In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence - an inconsistency ; and I soon
found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy - an
excessive nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his
letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar
physical conformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice
varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that
species of energetic concision - that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation - that
leaden, self-balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost
drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement.

It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest desire to see me, and of the solace he
expected me to afford him. He entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of his
malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a
remedy - a mere nervous affection, he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It
displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and
bewildered me ; although, perhaps, the terms, and the general manner of the narration had their
weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses ; the most insipid food was alone
endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture ; the odors of all flowers were oppressive ;
his eyes were tortured by even a faint light ; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from
stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.

To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. "I shall perish," said he, "I must perish in
this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in
themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which

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may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in
its absolute effect - in terror. In this unnerved - in this pitiable condition - I feel that the period will
sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim
phantasm, FEAR."

I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his
mental condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which
he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth - in regard to an influence whose
supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated - an influence which some
peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he
said, obtained over his spirit - an effect which the physique of the gray walls and turrets, and of the dim
tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length, brought about upon the morale of his existence.

He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted
him could be traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin - to the severe and long-continued
illness - indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution - of a tenderly beloved sister - his sole
companion for long years - his last and only relative on earth. "Her decease," he said, with a bitterness
which I can never forget, "would leave him (him the hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race of
the Ushers." While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a remote
portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared. I regarded her with an
utter astonishment not unmingled with dread - and yet I found it impossible to account for such feelings.
A sensation of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed her retreating steps. When a door, at length,
closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and eagerly the countenance of the brother - but he had
buried his face in his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary wanness had
overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled many passionate tears.

The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual
wasting away of the person, and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical
character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne up against the pressure of her
malady, and had not betaken herself finally to bed ; but, on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at
the house, she succumbed (as her brother told me at night with inexpressible agitation) to the
prostrating power of the destroyer ; and I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would
thus probably be the last I should obtain - that the lady, at least while living, would be seen by me no
more.

For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned by either Usher or myself: and during this period I
was busied in earnest endeavors to alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together
; or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and
still closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did I
perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive
quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing radiation of
gloom.

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I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus spent alone with the master of
the House of Usher. Yet I should fail in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the
studies, or of the occupations, in which he involved me, or led me the way. An excited and highly
distempered ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over all. His long improvised dirges will ring forever in
my ears. Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and amplification of
the wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded,
and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered the more thrillingly, because I
shuddered knowing not why ; - from these paintings (vivid as their images now are before me) I would in
vain endeavor to educe more than a small portion which should lie within the compass of merely written
words. By the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If
ever mortal painted an idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher. For me at least - in the circumstances then
surrounding me - there arose out of the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw
upon his canvass, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever yet in the
contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries of Fuseli.

One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so rigidly of the spirit of abstraction,
may be shadowed forth, although feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of an
immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and without interruption
or device. Certain accessory points of the design served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay
at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast
extent, and no torch, or other artificial source of light was discernible ; yet a flood of intense rays rolled
throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate splendor.

I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which rendered all music intolerable to
the sufferer, with the exception of certain effects of stringed instruments. It was, perhaps, the narrow
limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar, which gave birth, in great measure, to the
fantastic character of his performances. But the fervid facility of his impromptus could not be so
accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the notes, as well as in the words of his wild fantasias
(for he not unfrequently accompanied himself with rhymed verbal improvisations), the result of that
intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have previously alluded as observable only in
particular moments of the highest artificial excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I have
easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it, because, in the
under or mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full
consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne. The verses,
which were entitled "The Haunted Palace," ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus:

I.

In the greenest of our valleys,

By good angels tenanted,Once a fair and stately palace -

Radiant palace - reared its head.

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In the monarch Thought's dominion –

It stood there !

Never seraph spread a pinion

Over fabric half so fair.

II.

Banners yellow, glorious, golden,

On its roof did float and flow;

(This - all this - was in the olden

Time long ago)

And every gentle air that dallied,

In that sweet day,

Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,

A winged odor went away.

III.

Wanderers in that happy valley

Through two luminous windows saw

Spirits moving musically

To a lute's well-tunéd law,

Round about a throne, where sitting

(Porphyrogene !)

In state his glory well befitting,

The ruler of the realm was seen.

IV.

And all with pearl and ruby glowing

Was the fair palace door,

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Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,

And sparkling evermore,

A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty

Was but to sing,

In voices of surpassing beauty,

The wit and wisdom of their king.

V.

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,

Assailed the monarch's high estate ;

(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow

Shall dawn upon him, desolate !)

And, round about his home, the glory

That blushed and bloomed

Is but a dim-remembered story

Of the old time entombed.

VI.

And travellers now within that valley,

Through the red-litten windows, see

Vast forms that move fantastically

To a discordant melody ;

While, like a rapid ghastly river,

Through the pale door,

A hideous throng rush out forever,

And laugh - but smile no more.

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I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad, led us into a train of thought wherein there
became manifest an opinion of Usher's which I mention not so much on account of its novelty, (for other
men have thought thus,) as on account of the pertinacity with which he maintained it. This opinion, in its
general form, was that of the sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy, the idea had
assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under certain conditions, upon the kingdom of
inorganization. I lack words to express the full extent, or the earnest abandon of his persuasion. The
belief, however, was connected (as I have previously hinted) with the gray stones of the home of his
forefathers. The conditions of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of
collocation of these stones - in the order of their arrangement, as well as in that of the many fungi which
overspread them, and of the decayed trees which stood around - above all, in the long undisturbed
endurance of this arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still waters of the tarn. Its evidence - the
evidence of the sentience - was to be seen, he said, (and I here started as he spoke,) in the gradual yet
certain condensation of an atmosphere of their own about the waters and the walls. The result was
discoverable, he added, in that silent, yet importunate and terrible influence which for centuries had
moulded the destinies of his family, and which made him what I now saw him - what he was. Such
opinions need no comment, and I will make none.

Our books - the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of the mental existence of the
invalid - were, as might be supposed, in strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored
together over such works as the Ververt et Chartreuse of Gresset ; the Belphegor of Machiavelli ; the
Heaven and Hell of Swedenborg ; the Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm by Holberg ; the
Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of Jean D'Indaginé, and of De la Chambre ; the Journey into the Blue
Distance of Tieck ; and the City of the Sun of Campanella. One favorite volume was a small octavo
edition of the Directorium Inquisitorium , by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there were
passages in Pomponius Mela, about the old African Satyrs and Oegipans, over which Usher would sit
dreaming for hours. His chief delight, however, was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and
curious book in quarto Gothic - the manual of a forgotten church - the Vigiliae Mortuorum secundum
Chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae .

I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its probable influence upon the
hypochondriac, when, one evening, having informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more,
he stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight, (previously to its final interment,) in one
of the numerous vaults within the main walls of the building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for
this singular proceeding, was one which I did not feel at liberty to dispute. The brother had been led to
his resolution (so he told me) by consideration of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased,
of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men, and of the remote and exposed
situation of the burial-ground of the family. I will not deny that when I called to mind the sinister
countenance of the person whom I met upon the staircase, on the day of my arrival at the house, I had
no desire to oppose what I regarded as at best but a harmless, and by no means an unnatural,
precaution.

At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements for the temporary entombment.
The body having been encoffined, we two alone bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and

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which had been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave
us little opportunity for investigation) was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for
light ; lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my own
sleeping apartment. It had been used, apparently, in remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a
donjon-keep, and, in later days, as a place of deposit for powder, or some other highly combustible
substance, as a portion of its floor, and the whole interior of a long archway through which we reached
it, were carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of massive iron, had been, also, similarly protected.
Its immense weight caused an unusually sharp grating sound, as it moved upon its hinges.

Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region of horror, we partially turned
aside the yet unscrewed lid of the coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude
between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention ; and Usher, divining, perhaps, my
thoughts, murmured out some few words from which I learned that the deceased and himself had been
twins, and that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between them. Our
glances, however, rested not long upon the dead - for we could not regard her unawed. The disease
which had thus entombed the lady in the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly
cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously
lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed down the lid, and,
having secured the door of iron, made our way, with toil, into the scarcely less gloomy apartments of
the upper portion of the house.

And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change came over the features of the
mental disorder of my friend. His ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were
neglected or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and objectless
step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue - but the luminousness
of his eye had utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no more; and a
tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually characterized his utterance. There were times,
indeed, when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was laboring with some oppressive secret, to
divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At times, again, I was obliged to resolve all into
the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness, for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an
attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his
condition terrified - that it infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild
influences of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions.

It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the seventh or eighth day after the placing of
the lady Madeline within the donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep came not
near my couch - while the hours waned and waned away. I struggled to reason off the nervousness
which had dominion over me. I endeavored to believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to the
bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room - of the dark and tattered draperies, which,
tortured into motion by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and
rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor
gradually pervaded my frame ; and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly
causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and,

14
peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, harkened - I know not why, except that
an instinctive spirit prompted me - to certain low and indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses
of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not whence. Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror,
unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I felt that I should sleep no more
during the night), and endeavored to arouse myself from the pitiable condition into which I had fallen,
by pacing rapidly to and fro through the apartment.

I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an adjoining staircase arrested my
attention. I presently recognised it as that of Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle
touch, at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as usual, cadaverously wan - but,
moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes - an evidently restrained hysteria in his whole
demeanor. His air appalled me - but anything was preferable to the solitude which I had so long
endured, and I even welcomed his presence as a relief.

"And you have not seen it ?" he said abruptly, after having stared about him for some moments in
silence - "you have not then seen it ? - but, stay ! you shall." Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded
his lamp, he hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open to the storm.

The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet. It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet
sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had apparently
collected its force in our vicinity ; for there were frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the
wind ; and the exceeding density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon the turrets of the
house) did not prevent our perceiving the life-like velocity with which they flew careering from all points
against each other, without passing away into the distance. I say that even their exceeding density did
not prevent our perceiving this - yet we had no glimpse of the moon or stars - nor was there any flashing
forth of the lightning. But the under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated vapor, as well as all
terrestrial objects immediately around us, were glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and
distinctly visible gaseous exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the mansion.

"You must not - you shall not behold this !" said I, shudderingly, to Usher, as I led him, with a gentle
violence, from the window to a seat. "These appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical
phenomena not uncommon - or it may be that they have their ghastly origin in the rank miasma of the
tarn. Let us close this casement ; - the air is chilling and dangerous to your frame. Here is one of your
favorite romances. I will read, and you shall listen ; - and so we will pass away this terrible night
together."

The antique volume which I had taken up was the "Mad Trist" of Sir Launcelot Canning ; but I had called
it a favorite of Usher's more in sad jest than in earnest ; for, in truth, there is little in its uncouth and
unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It
was, however, the only book immediately at hand ; and I indulged a vague hope that the excitement
which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief (for the history of mental disorder is full of
similar anomalies) even in the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I have judged, indeed,

15
by the wild overstrained air of vivacity with which he harkened, or apparently harkened, to the words of
the tale, I might well have congratulated myself upon the success of my design.

I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred, the hero of the Trist, having sought
in vain for peaceable admission into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by
force. Here, it will be remembered, the words of the narrative run thus:

"And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now mighty withal, on account of
the powerfulness of the wine which he had drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit,
who, in sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn, but, feeling the rain upon his shoulders, and
fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted his mace outright, and, with blows, made quickly room in the
plankings of the door for his gauntleted hand ; and now pulling therewith sturdily, he so cracked, and
ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood alarummed and
reverberated throughout the forest."

At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment, paused ; for it appeared to me
(although I at once concluded that my excited fancy had deceived me) - it appeared to me that, from
some very remote portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears, what might have been,
in its exact similarity of character, the echo (but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and
ripping sound which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It was, beyond doubt, the coincidence
alone which had arrested my attention ; for, amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and the
ordinary commingled noises of the still increasing storm, the sound, in itself, had nothing, surely, which
should have interested or disturbed me. I continued the story:

"But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore enraged and amazed to
perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit ; but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious
demeanor, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace of gold, with a floor of silver ; and
upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass with this legend enwritten -

Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin ;

Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win;

And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the dragon, which fell before him, and gave
up his pesty breath, with a shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had fain to
close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of it, the like whereof was never before heard."

Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild amazement - for there could be no doubt
whatever that, in this instance, I did actually hear (although from what direction it proceeded I found it
impossible to say) a low and apparently distant, but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or
grating sound - the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for the dragon's
unnatural shriek as described by the romancer.

Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of this second and most extraordinary coincidence,
by a thousand conflicting sensations, in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still

16
retained sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the sensitive nervousness of
my companion. I was by no means certain that he had noticed the sounds in question ; although,
assuredly, a strange alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his demeanor. From a
position fronting my own, he had gradually brought round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door
of the chamber ; and thus I could but partially perceive his features, although I saw that his lips trembled
as if he were murmuring inaudibly. His head had dropped upon his breast - yet I knew that he was not
asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught a glance of it in profile. The motion of his
body, too, was at variance with this idea - for he rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and
uniform sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all this, I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus
proceeded:

"And now, the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the dragon, bethinking himself of the
brazen shield, and of the breaking up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from
out of the way before him, and approached valorously over the silver pavement of the castle to where
the shield was upon the wall ; which in sooth tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet
upon the silver floor, with a mighty great and terrible ringing sound."

No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than - as if a shield of brass had indeed, at the moment,
fallen heavily upon a floor of silver - I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous, yet
apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to my feet ; but the measured rocking
movement of Usher was undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly
before him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. But, as I placed my
hand upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his whole person ; a sickly smile quivered
about his lips ; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my
presence. Bending closely over him, I at length drank in the hideous import of his words.

"Not hear it ? - yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long - long - long - many minutes, many hours, many
days, have I heard it - yet I dared not - oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am ! - I dared not - I dared
not speak ! We have put her living in the tomb ! Said I not that my senses were acute ? I now tell you
that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them - many, many days ago - yet I
dared not - I dared not speak ! And now - to-night - Ethelred - ha ! ha ! - the breaking of the hermit's
door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of the shield ! - say, rather, the rending of her
coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of
the vault ! Oh whither shall I fly ? Will she not be here anon ? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my
haste ? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair ? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating
of her heart ? Madman !" - here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the
effort he were giving up his soul - " Madman ! I tell you that she now stands without the door ! "

As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the potency of a spell - the huge
antique pannels to which the speaker pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and
ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust - but then without those doors there did stand the lofty
and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the
evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she

17
remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold - then, with a low moaning cry, fell
heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him
to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.

From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I
found myself crossing the old causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned to
see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued ; for the vast house and its shadows were alone
behind me. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly
through that once barely-discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof
of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened - there came
a fierce breath of the whirlwind - the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight - my brain
reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder - there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the
voice of a thousand waters - and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the
fragments of the "House of Usher ."

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