The Fall of the House of Usher is one of Edgar Allen Poe's masterful short tales which first appeared in 1840 in the collection ""Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque"". The story follows an unnamed narrator to the house of Roderick Usher, a friend who suffers from some strange malady. It is a family sickness, and its symptoms include acute anxiety, hypochondria, and extreme sensitivity to light and sound. Roderick's twin sister, Madeline, is also ill, and suffers from death-like trances. Soon we are propelled through a horrifying tale of a house which has taken on the sins and sickness of it |