48 minAudiobook10 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the friend you come to comfort lives in a house that deepens his fear?
On a dark autumn evening, an unnamed narrator rides to a lonely mansion at the request of his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher. The windows look like vacant eyes. A thin crack marks the wall. Inside, Roderick is pale, painfully sensitive to sound and light, and afraid of what fear itself may do to him.
Roderick’s twin sister, Madeline, moves quietly through distant rooms, weakened by an illness her doctors cannot explain. The narrator stays to help, sharing books, painting, and music with his troubled friend. But comfort proves hard to find. In Edgar Allan Poe’s short Gothic tale, the house, the family, and the visitor seem drawn into the same deepening gloom.
What you’ll discover
- A house with a face Vacant windows, hanging fungus, and a black tarn make the mansion itself a source of dread.
- A friend almost unrecognizable Meet Roderick Usher, whose sharpened senses turn ordinary sights and sounds into sources of pain.
- A sister in the shadows Glimpse Madeline through the narrator’s eyes, a silent figure whose illness troubles the house.
- Comfort that cannot settle fear Follow the visitor’s efforts to reach his friend through reading, painting, and music.
- Dread by small steps Feel how Poe builds unease through a gloomy setting and a mind under strain.
Who will love it
For readers who love Gothic atmosphere, mysteries of mood, gloomy mansions and minds under strain, and for anyone new to Poe.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A letter calls the narrator to Usher
- The house seems alive and cracked
- Roderick Usher is a man of raw nerves
- Art and music fail to calm the host
- Madeline's illness brings a strange decision
- A stormy night, a tale read aloud
Who’s who
- The narratorAn unnamed, sensible visitor and boyhood friend of Roderick, who comes to help and finds himself pulled into the gloom of the house.
- Roderick UsherThe last male of an ancient line, pale and nervous, whose senses are painfully sharp and who fears what fear itself may do to him.
- Madeline UsherRoderick's twin sister, a quiet, wasting figure whose strange illness baffles her doctors and whom Roderick loves and fears to lose.
- The House of UsherThe old mansion beside a black tarn, with a thin crack in its wall, so tied to the family that both share one name.
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- Audiobook
- 48 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
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- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
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The Fall of the House of Usher
by Edgar Allan Poe · 1839
A man visits a sick friend in a lonely mansion, where the house itself seems to threaten his trust in his own mind.
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From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1 of 6
A letter calls the narrator to Usher
The story opens on a dull, dark autumn day. The narrator rides alone through a bleak stretch of country as evening comes on. He is heading for the House of Usher, the home of Roderick Usher, a friend from boyhood. Roderick has written to him in a state of obvious distress. The letter speaks of a bodily illness and a disorder of the mind, and it begs for company. The narrator goes because the plea sounds sincere and because Roderick has no one else to ask.
When the house comes into view, the narrator is struck by a sudden gloom he cannot explain. He tries to reason with himself. He tells himself that a few plain objects, a wall, some dead trees, some windows, should not have such power over him. Yet the feeling stays. Poe lets the narrator admit that he cannot account for it, and that honesty makes the unease more believable.
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What is The Fall of the House of Usher about?
A man visits his sick boyhood friend Roderick Usher in a gloomy old mansion. There he meets Roderick's ailing sister and feels the house weigh on his mind, while dread slowly grows around the family.
When was The Fall of the House of Usher written?
Edgar Allan Poe first published it in 1839. It is a work of fiction, not a true story, though it uses real Gothic fashions of its time, such as ruined houses and nervous, doomed families.
What does the crack in the house mean?
The thin crack running down the front wall can be read as a sign of the house's weakness and of the family's decay. Many readers see it as a symbol for the breaking of Roderick's mind.
The author
Edgar Allan Poe
1809–1849 · American poet and fiction writer
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) was an American writer and literary critic. He was born in Boston and lived in Richmond, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. He wrote poems, short stories, and a novel. His poem The Raven appeared in 1845. He died in Baltimore in 1849.
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