Edgar Allen Poe - The Fall of the House of Usher (extract)

"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1839 in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, then included in the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840. The short story, a work of Gothic fiction, includes themes of madness, family, isolation, and metaphysical identities.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
One evening, having informed me abruptly that Lady Madeline was
no more, he stated his intention of preserving her corpse
for a fortnight previous to its final interment in one
of the numerous vaults within the main walls of the building.
The worldly reason, however, assigned for this singular proceeding, was
one I did not feel at liberty to dispute. The

(00:22):
brother had been led to his resolution by consideration of
the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of
certain eager inquiries on the part of her medical men,
and the remote situation of the burial ground of the family.
When I called to mind the sinister countenance of the
person who I met upon the staircase on the day
of my arrival at the house, I had no desire

(00:43):
to oppose what I regarded at the best but a
harmless and by no means unnatural precaution. At the request
of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements for
the temporary entombment. The body having been encoffined, we too
bore it alone to its rest the vault in which
we placed it, and which had been so long unoccupied

(01:05):
that our torches half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave
us little opportunity for investigation. Was small, damp, and entirely
without means of admission of light. Lying at great depth
immediately beneath that portion of the building in which my
own sleeping apartment was situated. It had been used, apparently
in the remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of

(01:28):
a dungeon, and in later days as a place for
the deposit of gunpowder or some other highly combustible substance.
As a portion of the floor and the whole of
the interior of the long archway through which we reached
it was carefully sheathed the copper. The door was of
massive iron, and so had to be similarly protected. Its
immense weight caused an unusually sharp grating sound as it

(01:51):
moved upon its hinges. Having deposited our mournful burden upon
the trestles within this region of horror, we partially and
aside the yet unscrewed lid of the coffin, and looked
upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude between
the brother and the sister now first arrested my attention,
anusher divining perhaps my thoughts, murmured out some few words,

(02:15):
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
an awed. The disease which had thus entombed the lady
in the maturity of youth, had left as usual all

(02:36):
the maladies of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of
the faint, blush upon the bosom and the face, and
that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip, which is so
terrible in death. We replaced and screwed down the lid,
and having secured the door of iron, made our way
with toil into the scarcely less gloomy apartments of the

(02:58):
upper portion of the house. And now some days of
bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change came over the
features of the mental disorder of my friend. His ordinary
manner had vanished, his ordinary occupations were neglected or forgotten.
He roamed from chamber to chamber with a hurried, unequal

(03:19):
and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed,
if possible, a more ghastly hue, but the luminousness of
his eye had utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness
of his tone was heard no more, and a trembulous quaver,
as if an extreme terror habitually characterized his utterance. There

(03:40):
were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind
was laboring with some oppressive secret to divulge, which he
struggled for the necessary courage. At times again, I was
obliged to resolve all the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness.
For I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours,
in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening

(04:02):
to some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his
condition terrified, that it infected me. I felt it creeping
upon me by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influences
of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions. It was especially
upon retiring to bed late in the night of the

(04:23):
seventh or the eighth day, after the placing of Lady
Madeline within the dungeon, that I experienced the full power
of such feelings. Sleep came not near my couch. While
the hours waned and waned away, I struggled to reason
off the nervousness which had dominion over me. I endeavored
to believe that much, if not all, of what I felt,

(04:43):
was due to the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture
of the room. Of the dark and tattered draperies, which
tortured into motion by the breath of a rising tempest,
swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled
uneasily about the d decorations of the bed. But my
efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame,

(05:10):
and at length I set upon my heart an incupus
of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp
and of struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and,
peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, hearkened.
I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted
me to certain low and indefinite sounds, which came through

(05:31):
the pauses of the storm at long intervals. I knew
not whence overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable
and unendurable. I threw on my clothes with haste, where
I felt I should sleep no more during the night,
and endeavored to arouse myself and the pitiable condition to

(05:52):
which I had fallen By pacing rapidly to and fro
through the apartment. I had taken but a few turns
in this manner when a light step on an adjoining
staircase arrested my attention, I presently recognized it as that
of usher in an instant Afterwards, he rapped with a
gentle touch at my door, and entered bearing a lamp.
His countenance was, as usual cadaverously wane, but moreover, there

(06:16):
was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes, and
evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanor. His air appalled me,
but anything was preferable to the solitude which I had
so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence as
a relief. And you have not seen it, he said abruptly,
after having stared about him for some moments in silence.

(06:36):
You have not seen it, then, but stay you shall.
Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded his lamp. He hurried
to one of the casements and threw it freely open
to the storm. The impetuous fury of the entering gusts
nearly lifted us from our feet. It was, indeed, at
an impestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular

(06:58):
in its terror and beauty. The whirlwind had apparently collected
its force in our vicinity, for there were frequent and
violent altercations in the direction of the wind, and the
exceeding density of the clouds, which hung so low as
to press upon the turrets of the house, did not
prevent our perceiving the lifelike velocity with which they flew,
careering from all points against each other, without passing away

(07:22):
into the distance. I say that even their exceeding density
did not prevent our perceiving this. Yet we had no
glimpse of the moon or the stars, nor was there
any flashing forth of the lightning. But under the surfaces
of the huge masses of the agitated vapor, as well
as all terrestrial objects immediately around us, there were glowing

(07:43):
in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly
visible gaseous exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the mansion.
You must not, you shall not behold this, said I
shudderingly to Usher, as I led him with a gentle
violence from the window to a sea. These appearances which
bewilder you are merely electrical phenomena, nothing uncommon, and it

(08:05):
may be that they have their ghastly origin in the
rank my asthma of the Tan. Let us close this casement.
The air is chilling and dangerous to your frame. Here
is one of your favorite romances. I will read, and
you shall listen, and so she will We pass away
this terrible night together. The antique volume which I had
taken up was The Mad Tryst of Sir Launcelot Canning.

(08:28):
But I had called it a favorite of Usher's, more
in sad jest than in earnest, for in truth there
is little in its uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could
have had interest with the lofty and spiritual ideality of
my friend. It was, however, the only book immediately at hand,
and I indulged a vague hope that the excitement which
now agitated the hypochondriac might find relief For the history

(08:50):
of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies. Even in
the extremeness of the folly which I should read, Could
I have judged indeed, by the wild, overstrained air of
vivacity in which he hearkened, or apparently hearkened to the
words of the tale, I might well have congratulated myself
on the success of my design. I had arrived at

(09:12):
that well known portion of the story where ethel read
the hero of the tryst, having sought in vain for
peaceable admission into the dwelling of the hermit, but proceeds
to make good an entrance by force. Here it will
be remembered the words of the narrative run thus an Ethelred,
who was by nature of doughty heart, and who was
now mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the

(09:34):
wine of which he had drunken. We did no longer
to hold parley with the hermit, who in sooth was
of an obstinate and maliceful turn. But feeling the rain
upon his shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest,
uplifted his malice outright, and with blows made quickly room
in the plankings of the door for his gauntleted hand,
and now pulling therewith sturdily, he so cracked and ripped

(09:57):
open and tore all asunder, and a noise of the
dry and the hollow sounding wood alourumed and reverberated through
the forest. A determination of this sentence, I started, and
for a moment paused, for it appeared to me, although
I at once concluded that my excited fancy had deceived me,
it appeared to me that from some very remote portion

(10:18):
of the mansion there came, indistinctly to my ears, what
might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo,
but a stifled and dull one, certainly at the very
crackling and ripping sound of which the launcelot had so
particularly described. It was beyond doubt the coincidence alone which
had arrested my attention, For amid the rattling of the

(10:39):
sashes of the casements and the ordinary commingled noises of
the still increasing storm, the sound in itself had nothing
which should have interested or disturbed me. I continued the
story with the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door,
was sore and enraged and amazed to perceive no signal
of maressful hermit. But in instead thereof a dragon of

(11:01):
scaly and prodigious demeanor, and a fiery tongue, which satan God,
before a palace of gold with a floor of silver,
and upon the wall there hung a shield as shining brass,
with the legend and written, who entereth herein a conqueror
hath been? Who slayeth the dragon? The shield he shall win.

(11:21):
And Ethelred uplifted his mason struck upon the head of
the dragon, which fell before him, and he gave up
his pesty breath with a shriek so horrid and harsh,
and whither all so piercing that Ethelred had feigned to
close his ears with his hands against a dreadful noise
of it, the like whereof was never before heard. Here Again,
I paused abruptly, and now with the feeling of wild amazement.

(11:44):
But there could be no doubt whatever that in this
instance I did actually hear all loa from what direction
it proceeded, I found it impossible to say. A low
and apparently distant but harsh protracted a most unusual screaming
or grating sound, the exact counterpoint of what my fancy
had already come you up for the dragon's unnatural shriek,
as described in The Romancer. Oppressed. As I certainly was

(12:09):
upon the occurrence of this second and most extraordinary coincidence
by a thousand conflicting sensations in which wonder and extreme
terror were predominant, I still retained sufficient presence of mind
to avoid exciting by any observations the sensitive nervousness of
my companion. I was no means certain that he had

(12:30):
noticed the sounds in question, although assuredly a strange alteration
had during the last few minutes taken place in his demeanor.
From a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought
around his chair so as to sit with his face
to the door of the chamber, and thus I could
but partially perceive his features, although I saw that his
lips trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly, his head

(12:52):
had dropped upon his breast. Yet I knew that he
was not asleep from the wide and rigid opening of
his eye, as I caught a glance of it in
the profile. The motion of his body, too was at
variance with this idea, for he rocked from side to
side with a gentle, yet constant and uniform sway. Having
rapidly taken notice of all this, I resumed the narrative

(13:13):
of Sir Launcelot, which thus proceeded. And now the Champion,
having escaped from the terrible fury of the dragon, bethinking
himself of the brazen shield and of the breaking up
of the enchantment of which was upon it, removed the
carcass from out of the way before him, and approached
valorously over the silver pavement to the castle, to where

(13:34):
the shield was upon the wall, which in sooth tarried
not for his full coming, but fell down at his
feet upon the silver floor with a mighty, great and
terrible ringing sound. No sooner had these syllables passed my
lips than this, If a shield of brass had indeed,
at that very moment fallen heavily upon the floor of silver,

(13:55):
I became aware of the distinct hollow, metallic and clangoras,
yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped on my feet,
but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I
rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes
were bent fixedly before him, and throughout his whole countenance
there ained a stony rigidity. But as I placed my

(14:18):
hand upon his shoulder, there came quiver on his lips,
and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried
and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending
closely over him, I at length drank in the hideous
import of his words. Now hear it, Yes, I hear it,
and have heard it long, long, long, many men, as

(14:39):
many hours, many days have I heard it. Yet I
dared not. All pity me, miserable, wretched I am. I
dared not speak. We have put her living in the tombs.
I said not that my senses were acute. Now I
tell you that I heard her first feeble moments in
a hollow coffin. I heard them many many days ago.
Yet I dared not. I dared not speak. And now
to night ethel read the breaking of the hermit's door,

(15:02):
and the death cry of the dragon, and the clangor
of the shield. Say rather, the rending of her coffin,
and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison,
and her struggles within the coppered archray at the VAULTA
Oh whither shall I fly? Will she not be here? Anon?
Have I not heard a footstep on the stair? Do
I not distinguish at the heavy and horrible beating of

(15:24):
her heart? Madman? Here he sprang furiously to his feet
and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort
he were giving up his soul. Mad Man, I tell
you that she now stands outside the door, as if
in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been
found the potency of a spell. The huge antique panels

(15:45):
to which the speaker pointed through slowly back upon the
instant their ponderous jaws. It was the work of the
rushing gust. But then outside those doors they did stand
the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher.
There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence
of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame.

(16:09):
For a moment she remained trembling or reeling to and
fro upon the threshold. Then, with a low, moaning cry,
fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and
in a violent and now final death, agonies bore him
to the floor. A corpse and a victim of the
terrors that he had anticipated from the chamber, and from
that mansion I fled aghast. Suddenly there was a shot

(16:33):
along the path of wild light, and I turned to
see whence the gleams so unusual could have been issued.
The vast house and its shadows were alone behind me.
The gradience was that of a full blood red moon,
which now shone vividly through that once barely discernible fisure
of which I have spoken as extending from the roof
to the building in a zigzag direction to the base.

(16:56):
While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened, there came a
fierce breath of the whirlwind. The entire orb of the
satellite burst at once, and to my sight my brain
reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder. There
was a long and tumultuous shouting, sound like the voice
of a thousand waters, and the deep and dank tarn

(17:17):
at my feet closed suddenly and silently over the fragments
of the House of Usha.