Short storyGothic · 1839Study guide · no full textSteady

The Fall of the House of Usher

Poe makes the building and the family the same organism. Every detail of the setting is a symptom, and the ending is announced in the title.

Horror Gothic Madness Family

Study guide

This work is still in copyright, so there is no full text on the page. What you get instead: the context, the cast, the ideas and the themes — enough to read it well, and to know exactly what to watch for in the first thirty pages.

“I had been passing alone on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country.”

The cast, in the Character Atlas →Literary devices →Where it sits in time →

Go deeper

Madness — how other works handle it →

Now read the first page with all of this in mind.

The notes here are the map; the book is the journey.

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