Adapted Text

The Fall of the

House of Usher
Based on the short story by Edgar Allan Poe

This adaptation of the short story includes

targeted passages from the text for you to read
on your own.

Background
This story belongs to the horror genre and explores the idea
that the human mind is not always rational. Edgar Allan Poe
(1809–1849) was interested in how imagination provides
an escape from the everyday world. The story uses many
Gothic details. The term Gothic describes a kind of novel
that developed in Germany in the late 1700s and early
1800s. These novels are often set in old buildings, where a
mysterious mood might hint at evil or supernatural events.

Adaptation
For an entire day, I had been traveling on horseback. In the
evening, I found myself close to the House of Usher. As I looked
at the building, I started to feel a sense of gloom. What was it that
made me feel so anxious? I could not understand the odd things
I was imagining. I concluded that certain combinations of very
simple objects have the power to affect us. A slightly different
arrangement of the details of the scene might be enough to
change my impression of the house. I decided to act on this idea
© Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

and stopped next to the tarn, or deep mountain lake, to look at

the scene’s reflection in the water. But even then, the gray grass,
the frightening tree-stems, and the empty eye-like windows of
the house made me shudder.
Nevertheless, I was going to spend the next few weeks in this
mansion of gloom. Its owner, Roderick Usher, had been one of my
best friends in boyhood. In a letter, he had explained that he was
ill, both physically and mentally. He thought that a visit from me
would cheer him up.
The Fall of the House of Usher  1
 Adapted Text

Although we had been boyhood friends, I really knew little

about Usher. He never liked to show his feelings. His family was
known for being odd. They expressed their ideas through art, acts
of charity, and a passion for music. The house seemed to mirror
the character of the family. I wondered if over the centuries the
family had influenced the house or the house had influenced the
people.
My somewhat childish experiment of looking at the house’s
reflection in the lake only deepened my first impression. Thinking
about my superstition made me feel even more superstitious.
This is the confusing thing about emotions that are based in
terror. I started to believe that a strange atmosphere, or air, hung
around the whole mansion and landscape.
I looked at the very old building. The walls were discolored,
and small fungi—like molds or mushrooms—were spread over
the whole building. No part of the stonework had fallen, although
there were crumbling stones. However, a keen observer might
have seen a barely visible crack that extended in a zigzag down
the front of the building.
Noticing these things, I rode over a short road to the house.
I entered the Gothic archway of the hall. A servant took me to
the studio of his master, my friend. The things that I encountered
on the way added to my feelings about the house. While the
objects around me were ordinary, now they gave me odd ideas.
On one of the staircases, I met the family’s doctor. His face wore
an expression of dishonesty and confusion. Finally, the servant
showed me into the presence of his master.
The large room had windows that were narrow and pointed,
and so far from the floor that they couldn’t be reached. There
was light from the windows, but it was hard to see the corners
and ceiling of the room. Dark drapes hung on the walls, and the
furniture was old. Books and musical instruments lay scattered
around but did not make the room any more cheerful.
Upon my entrance, Usher rose from a sofa and greeted me
happily. His manner seemed awkward, but I was convinced that
he was happy to see me. We sat down, and I looked at him with
© Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

a feeling of pity. It was hard for me to recognize my boyhood

friend. His face had always been remarkable and not easily
forgotten. But now there was so much change in these features
that I doubted to whom I spoke. The pale skin and the shining
eyes startled me. His silken hair had been allowed to grow wild.
It floated around his face in a complicated pattern that seemed
unconnected to anything human.

The Fall of the House of Usher  2

 Adapted Text

TARGETED PASSAGE
Read this passage from the story to learn more about what
the narrator thinks of his friend.

9 In the manner of my friend I was at once struck

with an incoherence—an inconsistency; and I soon
found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile
struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy—an
excessive nervous agitation. For something of this
nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his
letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits,
and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar
physical conformation and temperament. His action
was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied
rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the tremulous: timid or fearful.
animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that abeyance: condition of being set
species of energetic concision—that abrupt, weighty, aside or suspended.
enunciation: way of pronouncing
unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation—
or speaking.
that leaden, self-balanced and perfectly modulated
guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost
READING CHECK
drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium, during
Why does the narrator think that
the periods of his most intense excitement.
Usher’s mood and tone of voice
tend to change suddenly?

My friend said he hoped my visit would comfort him. He

explained that he suffered from a family illness, and he was losing
hope of a cure. He described his strange symptoms. His senses
were easily overloaded. He could eat only bland food and could
wear only clothes with a certain texture. He could not stand the
smell of any flower, and light made his eyes hurt. All sounds
except for the ones made by stringed instruments filled him with
horror.
He was possessed by an uncommon terror. “I shall die,” said
he. “I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in
their results. I have no fear of danger, except that it makes me feel
© Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

terrified. I feel that sooner or later I must abandon life and reason
together, because of my struggle with Fear.”
I learned of another unique feature of his mental condition.
He was superstitiously attached to his house and had not left it
for many years. The gray walls, the towers, and the lake into which
they all looked had affected the spirit of his life. He admitted that
his gloominess was tied to the illness of his beloved sister, who
was probably going to die soon. She was his last relative and had

The Fall of the House of Usher  3

 Adapted Text

been his only companion for many years. He said with bitterness
that her death would leave him as the last of the ancient race of
Ushers. While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for so was she called)
passed through the room. Seeing her filled me with astonishment
and dread. When she was gone, I looked quickly at her brother,
but he had buried his face in his hands.
The disease of the lady Madeline had long confused her
doctors. Until now, she hadn’t become bedridden. However, that
evening, her brother told me that she had become worse. The
glimpse I had had of the lady would be the last time I would see
her alive. For several days after, I was busy trying to cheer him up.
We painted and read together, or I listened to him play the guitar.
These activities showed me the uselessness of trying to help him.
I will always remember the many hours I spent alone with
the master of the House of Usher. At the same time, I cannot
describe exactly what we did together. His excited personality
made everything seem fuzzy. His long, improvised musical pieces
will ring forever in my ears. I also remember the paintings that he
painted and obsessed over. If ever a person painted an idea, that
person was Roderick Usher.
I can describe one of my friend’s creations. A small picture
showed the interior of a long vault or tunnel. This place lay deep vault: a room with an arched
below the earth. There was no exit and no source of light; yet a ceiling.
flood of intense rays bathed the whole scene.
The fact that my friend could not stand the sound of music
except for certain stringed instruments may have caused the
fantastic character of his music. I was impressed because I felt
that Usher was expressing his full consciousness and showing his
teetering sanity. One piece described a palace that had been a
place of happiness until evil and sorrow took it all away.
The ballad Usher sang led us into a discussion. Usher revealed
that he believed everything around him was conscious, including
the mold-covered stones of his home and the rotting trees
around it. He thought that this consciousness had shaped him
and the destiny of his family.
Usher’s books supported this belief. I thought of his book
© Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

about mourning rituals when he told me one evening that the

lady Madeline was dead. He said he wanted to keep her corpse
for two weeks in a vault inside the building. Because of his sister’s
unusual disease, the eager questions from her doctors, and the
remote location of the family burial-ground, he was worried that
someone might steal her body. When I remembered the doctor I
had met on the first day of my visit, I had no desire to oppose this
precaution.

The Fall of the House of Usher  4

 Adapted Text

I helped him take the body in its coffin to a windowless

vault. It was beneath that portion of the building that held my
bedroom. It had been used as a dungeon and as a place to store
gunpowder. To protect the place from fire, parts of its floor and
archway were sheathed with copper. The iron door was also
protected, and its weight caused a grating sound as it moved.

TARGETED PASSAGE
Read this passage from the selection to learn what the
narrator experiences and thinks in the vault.

29 Having deposited our mournful burden upon

tressels within this region of horror, we partially tressels (trestles): horizontal bars
turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the coffin, held up by two sets of v-shaped
legs
and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking
similitude between the brother and sister now first similitude: resemblance; looking
arrested my attention; and Usher, divining, perhaps, alike

my thoughts, murmured out some few words from

which I learned that the deceased and himself
had been twins, and that sympathies of a scarcely
intelligible nature had always existed between them.
Our glances, however, rested not long upon the
dead—for we could not regard her unawed. The
disease which had thus entombed the lady in the
maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies
of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of cataleptical: causing the body to
a faint blush upon the bosom and the face, and that become stiff and unresponsive
suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is
so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed down
READING CHECK
the lid, and, having secured the door of iron, made
our way, with toil, into the scarcely less gloomy Why were the narrator and
his friend “awed” by the way
apartments of the upper portion of the house.
­Madeline’s body looked in the
coffin?

After some days, a change occurred in my friend. He walked

© Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

from room to room, and he spoke with a trembling voice, as if

extremely afraid. There were times when I thought he was hiding
some secret that he was not brave enough to tell anyone. At
other times, I saw him looking into the distance as if listening to
some imaginary sound.
One evening, after we had put the lady Madeline in the vault,
I couldn’t sleep, and I tried to convince myself that the gloomy
room and a rising storm were making me feel this way. But I

The Fall of the House of Usher  5

 Adapted Text

could not stop trembling. I heard low sounds which came at long
intervals. Overcome by horror, I paced around the room.
I had been doing this for a short time when Usher knocked
on my door and entered. There was a wild look in his eyes. This
scared me, but anything was better than being alone. He threw
open a window, and the wind from the storm almost lifted us
from our feet. The clouds, as well as the objects around us, were
glowing in a light that hung about the mansion.
I shuddered and led Usher from the window. “These
appearances are merely electrical and not uncommon. I will read
to you, and we will pass away this terrible night together.”
I opened a book and started to read. The book described
a hero who rips open the door of a hermit’s house, causing
loud noises to reverberate in the surrounding forest. Just after
I read this, there came a sound from some part of the mansion
that seemed to echo what was being described in the book. I
continued the story as the hero slays a dragon and must shield
his ears from the dragon’s piercing scream as it dies.
Here again I paused abruptly—for there could be no doubt
that I heard a screaming or grating sound. It was like what I
imagined the dragon’s unnatural shriek might sound like.
Even though this second coincidence terrified me, I was not
certain that my friend had noticed the sounds; although, during
the last few minutes, he had started acting differently. He had
turned his chair to face the door. I saw that his lips trembled as if
he were whispering. I decided to keep reading. In the story, the
hero gets around the dragon and approaches a castle, only to
have a huge shield fall with a terrible ringing sound.
No sooner had these syllables passed my lips than I became
aware of a metallic, echoing sound. I rushed to the chair in which
Usher sat and heard him speak.
“Not hear it?—yes, I hear it, and have heard it for many
days—yet I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb!
Tonight we have heard the breaking of her coffin, and the grating
of the iron hinges of the door, and her struggles within the vault!
Oh! Where shall I escape? Have I not heard her footstep on the
© Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

stair?”—here he sprang to his feet, and shrieked—“I tell you that

she now stands outside the door!”
The huge doors to which he pointed slowly opened. Outside
those doors, the lady Madeline of Usher did stand. There was
blood on her robes, and the evidence of some huge struggle
upon her thin frame. With a low cry, she fell on her brother. She
pushed him to the floor as she died, and he also died, a victim to
the terrors he had anticipated.

The Fall of the House of Usher  6

 Adapted Text

I fled, horrified, from the mansion. The storm was still raging
as I crossed the old road in front of the house. Suddenly there
was a light, and I turned to see where it came from. The full moon
was shining through the crack in the wall that could hardly be
seen before—the one that went from the roof of the building,
in a zigzag direction, to the base. The crack widened, and I was
shocked as the walls fell apart—and the deep lake closed silently
over the fragments of the “HOUSE OF USHER.”

TURN & TALK

With a partner, discuss how the author uses details to build
suspense and create a sense of mystery and horror.
© Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

The Fall of the House of Usher  7