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Edgar Allan PoeA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
The unnamed first-person narrator is the story’s protagonist. He is a young man, probably in his late teens or early twenties, and the only detail the reader knows about him is that he and Usher were boyhood friends. The narrator is assumed to be from a wealthy background, as he does not have any obligations or responsibilities that would prevent him from staying with Usher for several weeks.
The narrator’s defining trait is sensitivity. He is keenly attuned to his emotions, his environment, and the people around him. He is also depicted as clearly rational. He conveys the overwhelming emotions and moods he experiences, as well as his fears and superstitions, accurately and without judgment. His narrative style is akin to reportage. Only rarely does he offer his opinion about the feelings and events he experiences. Rather, he presents the information in a factual manner. This establishes him as a reliable narrator, which is critical in a supernatural story, where the reliability of events is already suspect.
In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the narrator manages to escape and witness the house’s destruction. The narrator gives no indication of how events affected him afterward, even though readers know he is telling the story from a future point in time.
By Edgar Allan Poe
A Dream Within a Dream
Edgar Allan Poe
Annabel Lee
Edgar Allan Poe
Berenice
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Hop-Frog
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Ligeia
Edgar Allan Poe
Tamerlane
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The Black Cat
Edgar Allan Poe
The Cask of Amontillado
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The Conqueror Worm
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The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
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The Gold Bug
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The Haunted Palace
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The Imp of the Perverse
Edgar Allan Poe
The Lake
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The Man of the Crowd
Edgar Allan Poe
The Masque of the Red Death
Edgar Allan Poe
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
Edgar Allan Poe
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
Edgar Allan Poe
The Oval Portrait
Edgar Allan Poe
The Philosophy of Composition
Edgar Allan Poe