The Fall of the House of Usher
The Fall of the House of Usher [1839]
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
ANNOUNCER
2ND ANNOUNCER
NARRATOR
RODERICK USHER
VALET
PHYSICIAN
Radio Adaptation
[Theme MUSIC in and out.]
ANNOUNCER: Are you upset with today's headlines? Worried about the high cost of living? Want to get away from it all?
2ND ANNOUNCER: CBS offers you Escape!
[MUSIC IN: "Night on Bald Mountain" - then, MUSIC UNDER:]
ANNOUNCER: You are the friend of a man living in death. Confidante of a ghoul. Witness to a nameless terror. You are a guest in the House of Usher.
2ND ANNOUNCER: The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Escape -- produced and directed by William N. Robson -- and carefully plotted to free you from the four walls of today for a half-hour of high adventure.
[Theme MUSIC in and under.]
ANNOUNCER: Tonight, we escape to a gloom-shrouded moor and a house where dread holds sway as Edgar Allan Poe recounts it in his famous story, "The Fall of the House of Usher."
[MUSIC UP AND OUT.]
NARRATOR: It is with some regret -- but I believe advisable -- that I identify myself only as a friend of Roderick Usher. Certainly the last and perhaps the only friend of that unhappy man. Having only one sister, he was the last male descendant of the ancient House of Usher. Roderick had been one of my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed now since our last meeting. And so, as I held his letter in my hand, not yet opening it, I reflected with no little sadness upon the devious fates that chart our courses and drive old friends away from one another. But then a sudden feverish and nostalgic curiosity laid hold of me - and, with fingers made clumsy by their eagerness ...
SOUND: [Letter TORN open.]
NARRATOR: ... I tore open the letter and read:
VOICE OF RODERICK: My dear friend: My need of you has so far outgrown my pride, that I'm going to request a favor which I realize full well may involve considerable inconvenience to yourself. For some time past, I have been suffering from an acute bodily illness -- illness intensified by serious mental oppression, if I may so call it. A horror which looms over me, a horror grown so great, I dare no longer face it alone. And so, in all humility, and for the sake of years gone by, I beseech you to come to me at once, here to the family estate in the north. Should events conspire to prevent your coming, then only God may know the consequences. Your friend in desperation, Roderick Usher.
[MUSIC IN AND UNDER]
NARRATOR: And so it happened that at the end of a dull, dark and soundless day in the middle of October, I found myself, as the shades of evening drew on, within view of the grim and melancholy House of Usher.
I confess that the first sight of the house -- the fungus-covered walls of stone thrusting their crumbling ramparts against the darkening sky, rising out of the sullen, sluggish waters of the black tarn at their base, the bleak and vacant windows staring blindly, the bone-white trunks of decaying trees -- these things filled me with a nameless and desolate terror so that I reined in my horse and sat trembling, half-fearing to cross the wooden bridge that led over the waters of the moat and up to the entrance of the House of Usher.
Then, impatiently, I shook off this strange feeling of dread ...
[MUSIC OUT]
SOUND: [IN AGREEMENT WITH FOLLOWING:]
NARRATOR: ... and was, an instant later, clattering over the wooden bridge and on to the courtyard. I dismounted quickly, tossed my reins to the silent lackey who approached, strode across the gravel and up to the massive wooden portal -- the door of the House of Usher.
SOUND: [Repeated KNOCKS on wooden door, door UNLOCKS and SQUEAKS open.]
NARRATOR: Good afternoon. My name is--
VALET: I know. You're the friend of Master Roderick. Please come inside, sir.
NARRATOR: Thank you. But -- May I inquire how it happens you know me?
VALET: You have been expected for some time, sir.
NARRATOR: Yes, true. But, also, I'm a stranger to you and could be some other visitor.
VALET: That you could be anyone other than the friend whom Master Roderick expects, sir, would be impossible. You see, no one else would ever come to this house.
SOUND: [Door SQUEAKS shut, FOOTSTEPS.]
NARRATOR: Then I followed his stealthy footsteps through many dark and intricate passages. My earlier foreboding heightened and was made fearful by the somber aspect of the hallways by which we passed, the many unused rooms reaching out with their vast emptiness, like some hideous jungle creeper. But, at length, we stood before the door of the master's studio. And there the servant left me. Departed and left me -- to go in alone.
SOUND: [Doorknob TURNS, door OPENS.]
NARRATOR: The man across the room, half-reclining on the couch, his back turned toward me, did not hear the opening of the door. For the space of several heartbeats, I saw only the deathly pale and ghastly sunken features of a stranger. Then, only with difficulty could I recognize, behind that mask, my boyhood friend. For, surely, under light of Heaven, no man had ever before so terribly altered, in so brief a time, as had Roderick Usher.
SOUND: [Door SHUTS.]
RODERICK: Oh! Oh, my friend, my friend, you've come at last. Thank God you did come.
NARRATOR: Oh, Roderick, did you not know I would? Could you not be sure that no long years would ever dim the friendship we shared in youth?
RODERICK: Hmm. So many things have dimmed. Aha, youth! It seems so long ago. But now you're here and we'll find it, relive it all over again, every glorious moment of it. And all these shadows, all these gibbering phantoms that haunt me -- they'll be driven out. And then the sun will shine again. And we'll be young again and we'll --
NARRATOR: Roderick!
RODERICK: Ah, oh, but forgive me, my friend. My excessive joy at the sight of you after so many years drives me into a frenzy of talk. How many years has it --? Ah ha, no matter. It is enough that you are here. Here and brought with you all the lost, all the happy days of my boyhood.
NARRATOR: But I -- I'd expected from your letter to find you in serious straits indeed. Instead, you seem in the best of spirits.
RODERICK: You have the right to know. But, in all frankness, here in your presence, I find it difficult to credit important are those things which only yesterday filled me with terror. Eh, true, I've been ill. A nervous affliction, something in the nature of a family weakness probably. It has affected me with a morbid acuteness of the senses such that, quite often, the least sounds and odors and colors become irritating beyond endurance. I've eaten but little, as you can see.
NARRATOR: But, surely, you've retained the services of a physician.
RODERICK: A physician? [amused] Oh, yes, of course. He calls almost daily. Though it is more often Madeline that he attends. You remember my twin sister Madeline? For her I fear more greatly than for myself. Even today, she's taken to her bed and I have no doubt -- will never rise from it again.
NARRATOR: Oh, what tragedy. The sympathies of my heart go out to you.
RODERICK: Oh, but - but leave it for the present. Leave it to dream of all those happy days we left so far behind. Everything will be different now that you're here. Do you remember when we were --?
[CHEERY WALTZ MUSIC enters on "those happy days we left" and stays UNDER:]
NARRATOR: But the happy forgetfulness which Roderick found in my coming was short-lived. And, in a few days, he had sunk into a morose torpor ...
[MUSIC DARKENS UNDER]
NARRATOR: ... from which only occasionally, with frantic difficulty, could he reach the joy of our first few hours of meeting. More often, his mental apathy was broken by bursts of vicious temper and violent ill humor. This I could only excuse on the basis of his illness. And that illness began, in my mind, to assume a most mysterious character. Being unable to divine its true nature from Roderick's hesitant offerings, I took the liberty of questioning the physician a few days later when I chanced to encounter him in a hallway.
[MUSIC OUT]
PHYSICIAN: Yes. Yes, she's resting as well as might be expected.
NARRATOR: But she continues to decline? Is that not correct, Doctor?
PHYSICIAN: That would seem to be the case.
NARRATOR: And, uh, the malady -- the illness which has stricken her -- is it the same as that which affects her brother Roderick?
PHYSICIAN: I may venture that it is.
NARRATOR: Might I inquire the nature of this illness?
PHYSICIAN: As to that, I am unable to say.
NARRATOR: You imply, then, that I have no right to the information?
PHYSICIAN: Not at all. I am confessing to you quite simply, sir, I do not know what afflicts Madeline and Roderick Usher.
[MUSIC IN AND UNDER]
NARRATOR: And so a week passed. A week in which the sullen, leaden skies darkened into deeper oppressiveness - in which Roderick's deathly pallor and creeping mental dissolution grew more apparent. A week in which the monstrous atmosphere of this ancient mausoleum began to crawl insidiously within my own consciousness, stirring into life a formless, unknown dread.
[MUSIC ... A VIOLIN]
NARRATOR: Then, one evening, we were sitting in the vaulted studio while the first shadows of night began to flow together into pools of darkness. Roderick had been unusually troubled during the day and had been trying to find some solace by playing on the violin. Of a sudden, there came a knock upon the door.
SOUND: [KNOCKING at the door.]
[MUSIC OUT]
RODERICK: Stop it! Stop that infernal pounding, do you hear?! Do you wish to drive me completely mad?! Open the door and come in! Come in!
SOUND: [Door OPENS.]
NARRATOR: [narrates] It's the doctor.
RODERICK: Well?! What is it?! What do you want?!
PHYSICIAN: Master Usher, I regret that I must say this but it is my sad duty to inform you that your sister Madeline is no longer living.
RODERICK: Madeline, my sister? Then she's dead?
PHYSICIAN: She breathes no more.
RODERICK: Dead? [laughs hysterically] And, perhaps, my dear doctor, you can tell me what caused her death?
PHYSICIAN: Unfortunately, I can only take refuge in the term "heart failure."
RODERICK: Heart failure? [laughs hysterically, incoherently] Yes, yes! Of course! [instantly calm] Very well, doctor. If you will be kind enough to wait, I'll come down directly and discuss the arrangements.
PHYSICIAN: At your service. I bid you good afternoon, gentlemen.
SOUND: [Door SHUTS.]
NARRATOR: Roderick. I assure you of my deepest sympathy.
RODERICK: You do? Your deepest sympathy? The doctor regrets his sad duty? ARE
YOU FOOLS?! BOTH OF YOU, FOOLS?!
NARRATOR: I -- I don't understand.
RODERICK: Haven't you seen it yet? Can you not feel it about you? The horrid, monstrous, brooding spirit of this accursed house? Can't you hear its evil laughter as it lurks in the hallways and grows fat upon the soul of my dead sister?
NARRATOR: Roderick.
RODERICK: Can't you see that it matters nothing to me that she's dead? That I myself walk but a few steps behind her into the same shadows of hell? Can't you sense those hideous tentacles even now reaching out for me? For me! Oh, now, the last living -- if it be living -- the last living descendant of the accursed House of Usher.
[MUSIC BRIDGE AND UNDER, BELLS TOLL]
NARRATOR: Such was the passing of Madeline Usher -- once living, now dead. And her very death, untimely in its aspects, bore to my trembling soul a portent of events yet more hideous, more horrible - and yet to come.
[MUSIC BRIDGE AND UNDER]
NARRATOR: At a later hour of that same sad night, Roderick came into my chamber to voice an intention so morbidly unnatural that, for the moment, I could only feel that his tottering reason had at last failed him entirely.
[MUSIC OUT]
RODERICK: Then you refuse?
NARRATOR: But -- but, Roderick, this is madness.
RODERICK: I tell you, before this night is over, the coffined body of my sister shall rest in the vault beneath this house and if you will not help me, I shall do it myself!
NARRATOR: But why? Why?
RODERICK: I could not stand to think of her buried out there in the dark graveyard -- alone among the dead.
NARRATOR: Roderick, she too is dead.
RODERICK: It's fantastic how little we know of death or of life. The doctor says she no longer breathes.
NARRATOR: She is dead.
RODERICK: She was so lovely was my sister.
NARRATOR: Roderick...
RODERICK: I must keep Madeline near me.
NARRATOR: Nothing but evil could come of such an act.
RODERICK: [whispers] I can trust no one -- but you. Not even the physician himself. He hates us because he can't discover what it is that kills us. Even he might steal the body of my beloved sister. And he might learn our secret. You understand, don't you, my friend?
NARRATOR: Yes, Roderick. Yes. I understand.
[MUSIC IN AND UNDER]
NARRATOR: And so it came about, near midnight. We two alone made our way to an upper chamber of the house. And, taking up the black coffin between us ...
SOUND: [FOOTSTEPS on stone.]
NARRATOR: ... in the shuddering light of candles, we walked the tortuous passageways, slowly descended the curving stairs of stone, passed beneath the moldy level of the earth ...
SOUND: [Metal door OPENS.]
NARRATOR: ... forced open the massive and aged, rusted door of iron and stood at last with our ghastly burden in a subterranean, dank and musty crypt -- underneath the House of Usher.
[MUSIC OUT]
RODERICK: Over here, my friend, on these trestles. Now, a trifle higher with the head.
SOUND: [Coffin PLACED in position.]
RODERICK: There. Oh, may you sleep in peace and dream, sweet sister, from I who tread the same path soft behind you.
NARRATOR: Come, Roderick. The thing is done.
RODERICK: Oh, wait. Stay a moment. We've not yet to fix the coffin lid. See? I've left it loose so it can be turned back.
NARRATOR: No. I beg you.
RODERICK: I'll ask farewell, no more.
SOUND: [Coffin lid OPENED.]
RODERICK: Look. Is she not beautiful?
NARRATOR: Yes. She was very beautiful.
RODERICK: Was? Yes, yes, of course. The look of her confused me. But do you not see it, too? The warm glow of the cheeks, the eyes shut softly, those lips half-parted. Does it not seem that she may rise up and speak to us at any moment?
NARRATOR: This gruesome place inspires those morbid fancies.
RODERICK: Morbid fancies? But now dead she seems to live and living seems already dead.
NARRATOR: Man, you seek out madness. You court it with your very thoughts.
RODERICK: And if I do, what matters? What value can there be in reason without the hope of life? Dead, you say to me, she is dead. Then what certainty will not with equal reason say instead she lives? And that I -- I, the last of Usher, am the one who is already dead?
[MUSIC IN AND UNDER]
NARRATOR: I prevailed upon my friend at last to leave that mournful place. And so, with grim finality, we secured the open lid, picked up our flickering candles and departed from the crypt -- leaving it alone with its darkness and death. The ponderous portal closed behind us ...
SOUND: [Metal door SHUTS.]
NARRATOR: ... and then my soul, for one brief instant, felt the dread and awful meaning of eternity.
There followed then a week of such dreary gloom and melancholy that my own spirit quavered at the menace of the nameless thing enshadowed in that house. By perceptible degrees, the living soul of Roderick Usher flickered lower. More ghastly grew his pallor, more tremulous the extremity of his terror.
The eighth day following the death of Lady Madeline fell upon the last day of grim and gray October and brought with it, as the curtains of night descended, the fitful breath of a rising tempest. Uneasy gusts of sodden rain and the sound of sullen thunderous rumbles borne of the dim flares of sheet lightning somewhere behind the lowering squall. I retired at a late hour but found sleep impossible. At length, overpowered by some strange presentiment of evil, I found my reposeful inaction no longer endurable and so I arose, threw on my clothes in haste and fell to pacing the floor of my darkened chamber. Then, in one instant, a soft sound ...
[MUSIC OUT]
SOUND: [Door latch OPENS, wind WHISTLES, THUNDER]
NARRATOR: ... from the blackness froze my steps in paralysis of terror. The latch of my chamber door was being lifted from without.
SOUND: [Door slowly CREAKS open, wind WHISTLES, THUNDER.]
NARRATOR: Who is it? Who is it, I say?
RODERICK: It is I, Roderick.
NARRATOR: Oh. Oh, Roderick. What are you doing up and about at this hour -- in pitch blackness? Wait. Let me light the candles.
RODERICK: No. I am quite used to darkness. I heard your footsteps and knew that you must be awake even as I was. But - [suddenly excited] Can it be that you've not seen it?
NARRATOR: I don't understand you. I've seen nothing.
RODERICK: Then stay. You shall see it! Even as I've seen it for these past two hours! Wait, wait, I'll throw open the casement window!
SOUND: [Window OPENS, wind WHISTLES louder.]
RODERICK: There!
SOUND: [THUNDER]
RODERICK: Look!
[MUSIC IN]
NARRATOR: It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and in its beauty. 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 velocity with which they flew careening from all points against one another. We had no glimpse of the moon or stars but, terrible to behold, the under-surfaces of the huge cloud masses, as well as all terrestrial objects immediately around us, were glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and clearly visible phosphorescence which hung like a shroud about the mansion itself.
SOUND: [THUNDER]
RODERICK: You see, my friend. Tonight, the thing grows bold, gathers strength from the storm and from the dead souls eaten.
NARRATOR: No! No, Roderick, you must not look at this! Here, I shall close this window and pull these curtains.
SOUND: [Window CLOSES, storm NOISES retreat, curtains PULLED, candle is LIT.]
NARRATOR: And now, candlelight. Such darkness is the very mother of evil fear. There. Now, come. Sit here. Suppose I read aloud from some book or another.
RODERICK: [uninterested] Mm, as you wish.
NARRATOR: I presume it matters little which. Ah. Here. Here is a volume of the Mad Trist by Canning. Will it serve?
RODERICK: As you said, it matters little.
NARRATOR: I've always found the scene to be quite entertaining wherein Ethelred dreams of fighting a dragon.
SOUND: [FLIPPING pages of the book.]
NARRATOR: Now, let's see. Oh, yes. Here it is. [reads aloud] "And so Ethelred waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit who mocked him from inside the hut but feeling the rain upon his back and fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted his axe and quickly made a hole in the plankings of the door for his gauntleted hand; and now pulling sturdily, he so cracked and ripped all asunder, that the noise of ..."
SOUND: [Dry wood CRACKING.]
NARRATOR: [hearing the sound, reads uneasily] "... the dry and hollow-sounding wood alarumed and reverberated -- throughout the forest."
RODERICK: Why do you stop?
NARRATOR: Why, er - [clears throat nervously] That's -- that's strange. I fancied I just heard the very sound I read about.
RODERICK: Let us say it was caused by the storm. Pray continue.
NARRATOR: Oh, yes, the storm. Of course. [clears throat, reads aloud] "But -- but Ethelred, upon entering the door, was -- was amazed to perceive no sign of the evil hermit; but, instead, a dragon of prodigious and scaly demeanour, which sat on guard before a shield of shining brass. And Ethelred uplifted his axe, and struck the head of the dragon, which fell before him with a shriek so horrid and harsh ..."
SOUND: [Horrid and harsh SHRIEK.]
NARRATOR: ... like whereof was never before --" Wha - what sound is that?
RODERICK: Sound? The shriek of a dragon, my friend. Read on.
NARRATOR: I, er -- [pause] Very well. [reads aloud] "And now, the champion, bethinking himself of the shield of brass, approached across the silver floor to where the shield hung upon the wall. But the shield, not waiting for his coming, loosed and fell upon the silver floor ..."
SOUND: [Metal CRASHES.]
NARRATOR: "... with a mighty great ..." Roderick, I tell you, something moves within this house! That sound. It reverberated through the very walls. Can you tell me now you did not hear it?
RODERICK: Hear it now? Oh, yes, I hear it and have heard it long moments, hours, many days have I heard it. Yet I dared not speak.
NARRATOR: But why?
RODERICK: Do you not know we put her living in the tomb? I tell you now, I heard her first feeble movements in the coffin many, many days ago. And I felt that it mattered little but now she comes to upbraid me for my haste! And that last dread sound -- yes, I heard it! -- the opening of the metal door to the crypt beneath the house. Now -- she comes here! Have I not heard her footsteps on the stair? Do I not distinguish the heavy and horrible beating of her heart -- madman that I am? I tell you that she now stands without that door.
SOUND: [Door OPENS.]
RODERICK: But even now she opens it!
[MUSIC IN]
NARRATOR: There, in the flickering light of candles, in the gloom-encurtained doorway stood the shrouded body of Lady Madeline. For one shuddering instant, she swayed there. Then as Roderick uttered a single piteous cry, she fell upon him in violent and now final death-agonies -- and bore him to the floor -- a corpse.
From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast, out the massive portal, over the causeway, into the night. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light. Then I looked back in heightened terror for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me.
The baleful gleam came from the setting, full and blood-red moon which now shone vividly through a widening crack in the walls of the house itself. And even as I gazed, this fissure opened rapidly! There came a fierce breath of the tempest! The entire lunar orb burst at once upon my sight! My brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder! There came a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters!
And -- and the dark, deep tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently forever over the pitiful ruins of the ancient House of Usher.
[MUSIC UP AND OUT]
2ND ANNOUNCER: Escape is produced and directed by William N. Robson and tonight brought you "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe, adapted for radio by Les Crutchfield with Paul Frees as the Narrator, Ramsey Hill as Roderick Usher, and Sheridan Hall as the Physician. The special musical score was conceived and conducted by Cy Feur.
[Theme MUSIC in and out.]
2ND ANNOUNCER: Next week...
ANNOUNCER: You are the victim of a Porroh Man, pursued from the west coast of Africa to the West End of London by a dead man's head -- which grins at you upside down.
[MUSIC IN: "Night on Bald Mountain" and OUT.]
2ND ANNOUNCER: Next week, Escape with H. G. Wells' gripping story "Pollock and the Porroh Man." Good night, then, until this same time next week when CBS again offers you, Escape.
[MUSIC IN AND UNDER]
2ND ANNOUNCER: This is CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System.
[MUSIC OUT]
==================================================
Broadcast date: 22 October 1947
Questions for Discussion
1. How do Usher and the Narrator know one another?
A) They are brothers.
B) They have never met.
C) They met during the war.
D) They were boyhood friends.
2. Why does the Narrator visit Roderick Usher?
A) They were old schoolmates. Usher wanted his friend's company while he recuperated from an illness.
B) They were long-lost brothers, who had just been reunited. They wanted to take some time to get to know each other.
C) The Narrator was a student who was going to rent rooms from Usher while he studied.
D) The Narrator was a doctor. He had offered to treat Usher for free if Usher would agree to use a new technique the doctor had developed.
3. The Narrator visits the House of Usher on _____.
A) a beautiful summer day
B) a grey autumn day
C) a cold winter night
D) a sunny spring afternoon
4. What geographical feature forms the front yard of the Usher mansion?
A) a flower garden
B) high grass
C) a mud pit
D) a tarn
5. When he sees the House of Usher the Narrator feels _____.
A) happy
B) sad
C) ill
D) terror
6. What is the name of the one woman in the story?
A) Madeline
B) Nancy
C) Caroline
D) Ligeia
7. What is the woman's relation to Roderick?
A) They are cousins.
B) They are siblings.
C) No relation.
D) They are married.
8. What most affects Roderick?
A) his lack of reading material
B) his limp
C) his sister's illness
D) the Narrator's absence
9. Roderick’s main preoccupation is
A) the condition of his home.
B) his sister’s situation.
C) his library.
D) his enemies.
10. Roderick Usher was the _____ in his family.
A) only one with children
B) richest man
C) last living man
D) poorest man
11. What instrument does Usher play?
A) a piano
B) a guitar
C) a violin
D) a lute
12. When the Narrator and Usher turn aside the cover of Madeline's coffin, what does he notice?
A) how decayed Madeline is
B) how much Roderick looks like his sister
C) Madeline's glowing cheeks
D) a sickly, green face on Madeline
13. What is the Narrator's first impression of the House of Usher?
A) He sees the house as melancholy, and it gives him a sense of gloom.
B) He questions the house's safety.
C) He views the house as exceptionally large and threatening.
D) He is impressed with the house's upkeep.
14. When the Narrator initially sees Usher, what does he first notice about his behavior?
A) his friendly behavior
B) his extreme fatigue
C) his inconsistent behavior
D) his hatefulness
15. What noises does the Narrator hear in the middle of reading?
A) clanging, cracking, and shrieking
B) singing, whistling, and ringing
C) crying, snoring, and laughing
D) knocking, ringing, and clanging
16. According to Usher, what is "the nature of his malady"?
A) a nervous agitation
B) a deplorable happiness
C) a confused, excited nature
D) a physical handicap
17. How is the house's initial description important?
A) It is symbolic of the relationship between Madeline and the narrator.
B) It foreshadows the relationship of the narrator and Roderick.
C) It foreshadows the ultimate ending of the story.
D) It is symbolic of the narrator's emotional state.
18. What startles the narrator most about Usher's appearance when he first sees him?
A) his filthy appearance
B) his significant weight loss
C) his youthful appearance
D) his extreme change in appearance
19. Identify the speaker: "Suppose I read aloud from some book or another."
A) Roderick Usher
B) Lady Madeleine
C) the writer
D) the Narrator
20. Following the death of Madeline, with what does the narrator assist Usher?
A) He helps Usher take his sister's body to the funeral home.
B) He helps Usher cremate his sister's body.
C) He helps Usher take his sister's body to the vault beneath the house.
D) He helps Usher bury his sister in the yard.
21. What is the name of the book the Narrator reads to Usher?
A) The Haunted House
B) The Folly of Eldorado
C) The Haunted Palace
D) The Mad Trist
22. Roderick Usher is killed by _____.
A) the writer
B) the crumbling house
C) his illness
D) his sister
23. Which of these is NOT used to set the mood at the beginning of the story?
A) Words like "dark," "dull," "gloomy," and "dreary" give a sense of evil.
B) The narrator alludes to his own madness.
C) The Narrator is alone, which makes us think of how we would feel if we were alone in such a place.
D) The Narrator describes the house in mysterious terms.
24. What happens to Lady Madeline on the day the narrator arrived?
A) She died.
B) She was miraculously cured.
C) She retired to her room and never came out again.
D) She fell in love with him.
25. For what purpose does Poe include the details about the dark night and the unnatural light?
A) He wants to mislead the reader so he/she won't suspect the ending.
B) He wants to distract the reader from focusing on the death.
C) He wants to add to the atmosphere of terror and suspense.
D) He wants to impress the reader with his skills at writing details.
26. What did the narrator do?
A) He tried to pull the corpse off of Usher.
B) He fled.
C) He barricaded himself in his bedroom.
D) He set the ghost on fire.
27. What happened to the House of Usher?
A) It burned to the ground.
B) It cracked and fell into pieces into the tarn.
C) It exploded.
D) The wind blew the roof off, and the inside was destroyed by water.
28. The Fall of the House of Usher is set in an old house. It is dark inside with tombs within. There is an eccentric hero and a living corpse. How is this type of story classified?
A) It is science fiction.
B) It is a medieval legend.
C) It is a gothic story.
D) It is a Renaissance adventure tale.