The Fall of the House of Usher
1839
The Fall of the House of Usher
1839
The most terrifying house in American literature. Poe doesn't just set a story in the Usher mansion : he makes the house a living presence, its stones breathing with decay, its corridors exhaling centuries of accumulated madness. An unnamed narrator arrives at the request of his childhood friend Roderick Usher, only to find both man and mansion in terminal decline. Roderick's twin sister Madeline is dying. The narrator watches as the boundaries between Roderick's crumbling mind and the crumbling mansion begin to blur : until neither he nor we can say which is causing which. The final pages, with Madeline rising from her coffin and the house itself splitting apart, are among the most devastating in horror fiction. This is not a story about ghosts. It's about what happens when the weight of family, of blood, of a place becomes too heavy for sanity to bear.
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“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!””
— Edgar Allan Poe
“His heart is a suspended lute; As soon as you touch it, it resonates.””
— Edgar Allan Poe
“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.””
— Edgar Allan Poe
“I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.””
— Edgar Allan Poe
“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 may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect”
— Edgar Allan Poe
“A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid and very luminous...finely molded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy.””
— Edgar Allan Poe
“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...””
— Edgar Allan Poe
“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.””
— Edgar Allan Poe
“I looked upon the scene before me”
— Edgar Allan Poe
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Poe, Edgar Allan. The Fall of the House of Usher. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-fall-of-the-house-of-usher-e4dceab4-ebee-4ef3-9ae7-a38405bbd535.Poe, E. A. (1839). The Fall of the House of Usher. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-fall-of-the-house-of-usher-e4dceab4-ebee-4ef3-9ae7-a38405bbd535Poe, Edgar Allan. The Fall of the House of Usher. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-fall-of-the-house-of-usher-e4dceab4-ebee-4ef3-9ae7-a38405bbd535.
