The Best of Edgar A. Poe

Name _______________________________________________________ Date ________________________

The Fall of the House of Usher

1. In what point of view is the story written?

2. How does the first paragraph set the tone?

3. Describe the house of Usher.

4. Why was the narrator going to visit Roderick Usher?

5. Describe Roderick Usher.

6. What was the diagnosis of Lady Madeline's disease?

7. What happened to Lady Madeline on the day the narrator arrived?

8. In what way(s) does "The Haunted Place" compare to Usher's house?

9. What did Usher want to do with his twin sister's body?

10. Describe the vault in which Madeline was placed.

11. What happened on the "seventh or eighth day after the placing of the Lady Madeline within the donjon"?

12. For what purpose does Poe include the details about the dark night (with dense clouds pressing upon the turrets) and the
 "unnatural light" which surrounded the house?

13. What happened as the narrator read the story to Roderick Usher?

14. In the third paragraph from the end of this story, Poe uses repetition again to heighten the fantastic effect in
the story. Give some examples.

15. What did the living corpse of Madeline do when it came into the narrator's room?

16. What did the narrator do?

17. What happened to the House of Usher?

18. Considering the setting, characters and subject matter of The Fall of the House of Usher, explain how it is a
 gothic story.

Part I: Using Prior Knowledge and Contextual Clues

Below are the sentences in which the vocabulary words appear in the text. Read the

sentence. Use any clues you can find in the sentence combined with your prior knowledge, and

write what you think the underlined words mean on the lines provided.

1. ...a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene...helps to annihilate its capacity

for sorrowful. impression...

__________________________________________________________________________________________

2. ...I really knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and habitual.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

3. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure,

which...made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction...

__________________________________________________________________________________________

4. ...I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual

trepidance--an excessive nervous agitation.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

5. To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

6. His long improvised dirges will ring forever in my ears.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

7. One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend,...may be shadowed forth, although feebly, in words.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

8. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and at length, there sat upon my very heart an
incubus of utterly causeless alarm.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

9 ...there is little in its uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

10. ... my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Fall of the House of Usher Vocabulary Part II

Part II: Determining the Meaning -- Match the vocabulary words to their definitions.

___ 1. annihilate                      A. A fantastic sequence of haphazardly associated imagery

___ 2. reserve                          B. Into separate parts or pieces

___ 3. fissure                           C. Slow, mournful music compositions         

___ 4. trepidance                    D. To reduce to nonexistence; to nullify or render void; abolish

___ 5. anomalous                    E. Wordiness

___ 6. dirges                           F. Abnormal

___ 7. phantasmagoric            G. An oppressive or nightmarish burden

___ 8. incubus                         H. The keeping of one's feelings, thought, or affairs to oneself

___ 9. prolixity                        I. A state of alarm or dread; apprehension; involuntary trembling or quivering

___ 10. asunder                       J. A crack