Continuing his tradition of the creepy, weird, and Gothic style, Edgar Allan Poe does not disappoint in this short story about a strange family who finds its end in the most macabre of ways. Likely, the "fall" the title is referring to is both the actual structure of the Usher family’s house, and the fall of the Usher family itself, as both heirs die and end the family name.
Fall of the House of Usher characters - OSCAR characterization
Storyboard Text
RODERICK USHER
“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.”
The narrator mentions that Usher is convinced that his family mansion had obtained a “dint of long sufferance” over his spirit.
“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.”
The way that Usher is described is creepy, and weird. He thinks his house is making him sick, and he seems oddly connected to his sister.
S: Character's Speech
“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!”
