The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe

Please answer the following questions using paragraphs. Answers should be at least 150 words in length. Each answer must include at least one quote from the story to support your answers. Please include analysis and interpretation to illustrate true understanding of the story. All quotes need to be cited using MLA format.

1. What is the plot line for this story?

2. Irony and Symbolism and Theme. Identify the theme of this short story. Please support your answer with at least one quote and explanation. Explain how the Edgar Allan Poe used irony and symbolism in the story. Explain how the irony and the symbolism supports and enhances the theme of the short story.

3. Analyze the description of the setting provided by the narrator. What kind of atmosphere is created? What are the images the narrator instills in the reader’s mind to solidify the atmosphere?

4. What is the name of the proprietor of the house of Usher? How does this man and the narrator know each other?

5. What kind of illness does the proprietor of the mansion suffer from and why does the narrator go to visit him?

6. How is the proprietor’s bedroom a metaphor of himself? Describe the bedroom and explain with examples or quotes.
7. How are Lady Madeline and the proprietor related? Does the proprietor and Lady Madeline have a close relationship? Support your response with direct evidence from the short story.

8. Read the ballad. Does it relate to the proprietor of the Mansion and his life? How?

9. What does the proprietor ask the narrator to help him with for Lady Madeline? Where do they take Lady Madeline’s body? Describe the proprietor’s reaction to the scenario.

10. Provide three titles of the books that the narrator read to the proprietor. What were some of the themes that are explored in the novels that the narrator chooses to read? How does this relate to the proprietor’s recent mental state and health?

11. What is the final story that Edgar reads to the proprietor? What does he hear as he is reading the story and who appears at the door upon him reading?

12. Who appears at the door and what happens to the proprietor once he sees the figure? What is the reaction of the narrator and what happens to the mansion at the end of the short story?
13. Was the plot and conclusion surprising? Why or why not?