The fall of the house of Usher door Edgar Allan Poe

Poe's Short Stories: The Fall of the House of Usher: Summary

First published in the September, 1839 edition of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, "The Fall of the House of Usher" is widely acknowledged to be one of Poe's finest and most representative tales. The story begins with first-person narrator riding on horseback toward the ancestral home of his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher. In the opening paragraph, the narrator establishes an overwhelming atmosphere of dread. As he approaches his destination on a "dull, dark, and soundless" day, he notes that the clouds were hanging "oppressively low" in the sky over the "singularly dreary tract" where the "melancholy" House of Usher stood. The sight of the landscape filled him with an "insufferable gloom," while his initial view of the House of Usher itself evoked an "utter depression" in the narrator's soul. Although he was unable to grasp precisely why he is so unnerved by the house, the narrator makes a prominent reference to its "eye-like windows."

A dark mood now hanging over his story, the narrator tells us that he has been summoned through a "wildly importunate" letter from Roderick, in which the writer stated that he had become the victim of an "acute bodily illness---of a mental disorder which oppressed him." Roderick's wrote that the narrator was his only personal friend, and pleaded with him to stay for a time at the House of Usher. The narrator now gives us some background about Roderick and the Usher family. He first admits that he actually knows very little about Roderick, who was shy and reserved as a boy even with his most "intimate" friend. He had not seen Roderick for many years, but recounts that the Usher family was an ancient one, distinguished by its artistic temperament and its many acts of charity. But he then implies that the Usher race is the product of inbreeding, intimating that close intermarriage, if not outright incest, had created a congenital deficiency that may have some part in Roderick's illness. In light of these recollections, the narrator scanned the landscape around him again; he experienced even greater anxiety and gloom.

The narrator reached the house itself and was taken by a servant into Roderick's large and lofty studio. Roderick's apartment was filled with antique furniture, books and musical instruments, but entirely devoid of vitality. The narrator says, "I felt that I had breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all." He was greeted cordially by Roderick, but he was taken aback by the change in his friend's appearance. Although he could still recognize the features of his former schoolmate, he was struck by the "ghastly pallor" of Roderick's skin and by the "miraculous lustre" in his eyes. His host's manner was equally disconcerting: Roderick's mood swung wildly between animated enthusiasm and sullen depression.

Roderick explained to the narrator that he is in the grips of a "constitutional and family evil," one of its symptom being an acute intensification of the senses. Usher then expressed his belief that the house itself was exerting a perverse influence over his spirit. Yet he also admitted that his depression might be related to the severe, prolonged illness that had taken hold of his twin sister, Madeline. As he spoke, the spectral figure of Madeline passed through the studio. She moved silently, without taking notice of her brother or the narrator, and then vanished. Roderick said that disease from which sister suffers has baffled her doctors. He was now convinced, however, that Madeline will soon die and that this was last time that the they would see her alive.

During the next several days, the narrator and Roderick painted and read together. Roderick's paintings were so abstract that the narrator is unable to describe them. Roderick played on a guitar (his hearing had grown so sensitive that he could only tolerate the sound of stringed instruments). Poe now introduces the lyrics that accompanied one of the "rhapsodies" that Roderick played on the guitar in the form of a poem entitled "The Haunted Palace." The first four of the poem's six stanzas portray a radiant mythical palace in a green valley governed by pure Thought and inhabited by spirits who moved musically about in perfect harmony. But in the fifth stanza, "Evil things" assail Thought with sorrow, the movements of the spirits inside the palace become frenzied, and a "hideous throng" rushes out of it toward an inferred doom. Roderick used the poem to put forth his theory that certain inanimate objects, like the House of Usher, can develop a sentience or consciousness. The narrator and Roderick read through various arcane books, including one on the rituals of a "forgotten" religion.

One night, Roderick told the narrator that Madeline had died. Fearing that medical men would disturb her body, Roderick announced that he would temporarily place his sister's corpse in a vault within the gloomy house itself before taking her to the family cemetery. The narrator found this reasonable and agreed to assists him. They took Madeline's body and place it in a tight coffin and then sealed the coffin in a vault guarded by an archway with a massive iron door. As the days passed, Roderick's condition deteriorated still further: his skin displayed an even ghastlier parlor, the shine in his eyes was gone. Roderick wandered the house aimlessly or merely sat and stared.

Seven or eight nights after Madeline's entombment, with a storm raging outside his bedroom, the narrator was struck by an irrepressible tremor. He believed that he could hear "certain low and indefinite" sounds amid the clamor of the storm. Overpowered by horror, the narrator puts on his clothes and encountered Roderick on the staircase with a "species of wild hilarity" in his eye. Roderick asked the narrator "And you have not seen it?" and then added ominously, ""but, stay!, you shall." The narrator glanced at the wild scene outside, as marsh gases rose from a fetid tarn near House. He believed that whatever Roderick may have witnessed it was actually some kind of electrical phenomena caused by the weather. He then tried to distract Roderick by reading from an old book, the "Mad Trist." He turned to an episode of that story in which hero, Ethelred, broke into the dwelling of a malicious hermit. The narrator thought he heard a sound like that of a door being broken open from a remote portion of House of Usher. He continued to read from the "Mad Trist," and when Ethelred slayed a dragon, the narrator heard another dreadful noise akin to a harsh, prolonged screaming or grating sound. As this occurred, Roderick lapsed into a deep, trance-like state, rocking back and forth. The narrator read still further, reaching an episode in which Ethelred found a shield that clanged to the ground. At that very moment, the narrator heard a distinct, metallic clanging within the house.

Roderick continued to rock, but when narrator placed his hand on his friend's shoulder, he experienced a shudder and was horrified by the sickly smile that appeared on his host's lips. Roderick said that he had heard strange sounds in the house for many days, but that he dared not mention them. He realized that they had actually placed a cataleptic Madeline in the tomb alive. Roderick told the narrator that Madeline would "upbraid me for my haste." Without warning, Roderick sprang to his feet and declared "Madman, I tell you that she now stands without the door." Just then, the huge antique panels of the door swung open and "there did stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of lady Madeline," blood splattered on her white robes. Madeline reeled back and forth at the threshold. Then, with a moaning cry, she fell upon 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."

The narrator fled from room and the House altogether. Outside in the storm, he saw lightening bolts in the sky and looked back to see the House of Usher split into two. A whirlwind arose and caused the walls of the house to collapse. The tarn at the narrator's feet then closed over the remaining fragments of the House of Usher.