The Fall of the House of Usher

The Fall of the House of Usher

  

1. Choose a few lines from the above passage as the material for your quotations.

“I know not how it was; but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit”

2. Write a sentence or a few sentences integrating a phrase from Poe into a sentence of your own. The easiest way to do this is to make a comment about Poe's story. For example, if I were writing about "The Raven," I could say: At the beginning of Edgar Allan Poe's long poem "The Raven," the narrator tells us that he has stayed up late reading "a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore." It must be a pretty boring old book, because reading it leaves him "weak and weary" and "nearly napping."

        

         In “The Fall of the House of Usher”, Edgar Allan Poe describes his ride to Usher`s house with a dark imagery. The narrator recounts his “first glimpse” of Usher`s house and the irrational fear that ”pervaded” his “ spirit “.

        

3. Introduce a quotation and then explain what the quotation means. For example: In "The Raven," Edgar Allan Poe's narrator tells us that the events of the poem happened "in the bleak December / And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor." The second line refers to the fact that he's sitting by a lit fireplace, and it's just a fancy, spooky way of describing the effect of the firelight as it shines off the floor.

Edgar Allan Poe opens this passage with a sinister description of an overcast day in the autumn ” during the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year”, then he illustrates “ when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens “ he also mentions the physical pressure that the clouds are pushing down on the narrator.  

4. Paraphrase a short passage from Poe. For example: In "The Raven," Poe's narrator tells us that the events of the poem take place in the winter. At the beginning of the poem, he's sitting cozily by the fire, falling asleep over an old book.

       In “the Fall of the House of Usher” Edgar Allan Poe tell us that the events of this story happens in an autumnal evening. At the beginning of the passage, the narrator mentions that the weather was gloomy, while he was riding on horseback at Usher`s house.

        

5. Now here's a tough one: try to summarize the entire passage from "The Fall of the House of Usher" in five short sentences.

       In “The Fall of the House of Usher” Edgar Allan Poe describes his ride to Usher`s house in a cloudy autumnal day. When he first saw Usher`s house, a sense of fear and insecurity surrounds him due to old looking of the house, the old wall and the creepy windows. This elegiac atmosphere affects him, and made him interrogate himself about what made him feel like that about Usher`s house.

6. Now here's a really tough one: reduce your summary to two short sentences!

      

In “The Fall of the House of Usher” Edgar Allan Poe draw a sad picture of his travel to Usher`s house. The narrator had a creepy feeling about the house and what surrounds the house, without finding an accurate explanation to these feeling.