The Fall of The House of Usher

" I looked at him with a feeling of sad surprise. Surely, no man had ever
before changed as Roderick Usher had! Could this be the friend of my
early years?"

True friends are there for you through thick and thin, and in childhood we often swear to be loyal to the end, but what does loyalty really mean? Rae Wilson shares her observations on Poe's exploration of a friendship put to the test and invites you to question your own definition of loyalty.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Echoes in the Dark, a podcast dedicated to the oral tradition of storytelling. If you're looking to enjoy more classic literature, struggle to find the time to read, hate reading, or just love listening to stories, then this podcast is for you. At the end of each story, I'll share my analysis on the story's deeper meanings. The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe is a short story that was originally published in 1839 in Burton's Gentleman Magazine. Poe had some 70 short stories published. He is heralded by many as the master of Gothic literature, and he has historical credit as the inventor of detective fiction. The entire story for today is told in first-person narration. If you want to follow along, you'd get a copy on my website. And in the early evening, I came within view of the house of Usher. I do not know how it was, but with my first sight of the building, a sense of heavy sadness filled my spirit. I looked at the scene before me, at the house itself, at the ground around it, at the cold stone walls of the building, at its empty eye-like windows, and at a few dead trees. I looked at the scene. I say with complete sadness of soul, which was no healthy earthly feeling. There was a coldness, a sickening of the heart in which I could discover nothing to lighten the weight I felt. What was it I asked myself? What was it that was so fearful, so frightening in my view of the house of Usher? This was a question to which I could find no answer. I stopped my horse beside the building on the edge of a dark and quiet lake. There, I could see reflected in the water a clear picture of the dead trees, and of the house and its empty, eye-like windows. I was now going to spend several weeks in this house of sadness, this house of gloom. Its owner was named Roderick Usher. We had been friends when we were boys, but many years had passed since our last meeting. A letter from him had reached me. A wild letter which demanded that I reply by coming to see him. He wrote of an illness of the body, of a sickness of the mind, and of a desire to see me. His best and indeed his only friend. It was the manner in which all this was said. It was the heart in it, which did not allow me to say no. Although as boys we had been together, I really knew little about my friend. I knew, however, that his family, a very old one, had long been famous for its understanding of all the arts and for many quiet acts of kindness to the poor. I had learned too that the family had never been a large one with many branches. The name had passed always from father to son. And when people spoke of the house of Usher, they included both the family and the family home. I again looked up from the picture of the house reflected in the lake to the house itself. A strange idea grew in my mind. An idea so strange that I tell it only to show the force of the feelings which laid their weight on me. I really believe that around the whole house, the ground around it, the air itself was different. It was not the air of heaven. It rose from the dead, decaying trees from the gray walls and the quiet lake. It was a sickly, unhealthy air that I could see, slow moving, heavy, and gray. Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I looked more carefully at the building itself. The most noticeable thing about it seemed to be its great age. None of the walls had fallen, yet the stones appeared to be in a condition of advanced decay. Perhaps the careful eye would have discovered the beginning of a break in the front of the building, a crack making its way from the top down the wall until it became lost in the dark waters of the lake. I rode over a short bridge to the house. A man who worked in the house, a servant, took my horse and I entered. Another servant, of quiet step, led me without a word through many dark turnings to the room of his master. Much that I met on the way at it, I do not know how, to the strangest of which I had already spoken, while the objects around me, the dark wall coverings, the blackness of the floors, and the things brought home from long forgotten wars, while these things were like the things I had known since I was a baby, while I admitted that all this was only what I expected. I was still surprised at the strange ideas which grew in my mind from these simple things. The room I came into was very large and high. The windows were high and pointed at the top and so far above the black floor that they were quite out of reach. Only a little light, red in color, made its way through the glass, and served to lighten the nearer and larger objects. My eyes, however, tried and failed to see into the far, high corners of the room. Dark coverings hung upon the walls. The many chairs and tables had been used for a long, long time. Books lay around the room, but could give it no sense of life. I felt sadness hanging over everything. No escape from this deep cold gloom seemed possible. As I entered the room, Usher stood up from where he had been lying and met me with a warmth which at first I could not believe was real. A look, however, at his face told me that every word he spoke was true. We sat down and for some moments, while he said nothing, I looked at him with a feeling of sad surprise. Surely no man had ever before changed as Rodrigue Usher had. Could this be the friend of my early years? It is true that his face had always been unusual. He had grey white skin, eyes large and full of light, lips not bright in color, but a beautiful shape, a well-shaped nose, hair of great softness, a face that was not easy to forget. And now the increase in this strangeness of his face had caused so great a change that I almost did not know him. The horrible white of his skin and the strange light in his eyes surprised me and even made me afraid. His hair had been allowed to grow, and in its softness, it did not fall around his face, but seemed to lie upon the air. I could not, even with an effort, see in my friend the appearance of a simple human being. In his manner, I saw at once. Changes came and went. I had indeed been prepared for something like this partly by his letter and partly by remembering him as a boy. His actions were first too quick and then too quiet. Sometimes his voice, slow and trembling with fear, quickly changed to a strong, heavy, carefully spaced, too, perfectly controlled manner. It was in this manner that he spoke of the purpose of my visit, of his desire to see me, and of the deep delight and strength he expected me to give him. He told me what he believed to be the nature of his illness. It was, he said, a family sickness and one from which he could not hope to grow better. But it was, he added at once, only a nervous illness which would without doubt soon pass away. It showed itself in a number of strange feelings. Some of these, as he told me of them, interested me but were beyond my understanding. Perhaps the way in which he told me of them added to their strangeness. He suffered much from a sickly increase in the feeling of all the senses. He could eat only the most tasteless food. All flowers smelled too strong for his nose, his eyes were hurt by even a little light. And there were few sounds which did not fill him with horror. A certain kind of sick fear was completely his master. I shall die, he said. I shall die. I must not die of this fool's sickness in this way, this way, and no other way. I shall be lost. I fear what will happen in the future, not for what happens, but for the result of what happens. I have indeed no fear of pain, but only a fear of its result. Of terror. I feel that the time will soon arrive when I must lose my life and my mind and my soul together in some last battle with that horrible enemy. Fear. Roderick Usher, whom I had known as a boy, was now ill and had asked me to come to help him. When I arrived I felt something strange and fearful about the great old stone house, about the lake in front of it, and about Usher himself. He appeared not like a human being, but like a spirit that had come back from beyond the grave. It was an illness, he said, from which he would surely die. He called his sickness fear. I have, he said, no fear of pain, but only the fear of it its result of terror. I feel that the time will soon arrive when I must lose my life and my mind and my soul together in some last battle with that horrible enemy, fear. I learned also, but slowly, and through broken words with doubtful meaning, another strange fact about the condition of Usher's mind. He had certain sick fears about the house in which he lived, and he had not stepped out of it for many years. He felt that the house, with its gray walls and the quiet lake around it, had somehow, through the long years, gotten a strong hold on his spirit. He said, however, that much of the gloom which lay so heavily on him was probably caused by something more plainly to be seen, by the long continued illness. Indeed, the coming death of a dearly loved sister, his only companion for many years. Except for himself, she was the last member of his family on earth. When she dies, he said with a sadness which I can never forget, when she dies, I will be the last of the old, old family. The house of Usher. While he spoke, the Lady Madeline, for so she was called, passed slowly through a distant part of the room, and without seeing that I was there, went on. I looked at her with a complete and wondering surprise, with some fear, and yet I found I could not explain to myself such feelings. My eyes followed her. When she came to a door and closed it behind her, my eyes turned to the face of her brother, but he had put his face in his hands. And I could see only the thin fingers through which his tears were flowing were whiter than ever before. The illness of the Lady Madeline had long been beyond the help of her doctors. She seemed to care about nothing. Slowly her body had grown thin and weak, and often for a short period she would fall into a sleep like the sleep of the dead. So far she had not been forced to stay in bed, but by the evening of the day I arrived at the house, the power of her destroyer, as her brother told me that night, was too strong for her. I learned that my one sight of her would probably be the last I would have. That the lady, at least while living, would be seen by me no more. For several days following, her name was not spoken by either Usher or myself. And during this period I was busy with efforts to lift my friend out of his sadness and gloom. We painted and read together, or listened, as if in a dream to the wild music he played. And so, as a warmer and more loving friendship grew between us, I saw more clearly the uselessness of all attempts to bring happiness to a mind from which only darkness came, spreading upon all objects in the world, it's never ending gloom. I shall always remember the hours I spent with the master of the house of Usher. Yet I would fail in any attempt to give an idea of the true character of the things we did together. There was a strange light over everything. The paintings which he made me tremble, though I know not why. To tell of them is beyond the power of written words. If ever a man painted an idea, that man was Roderick Usher. For me at least, there came out of his pictures a sense of fear and wonder. One of these pictures may be told, although weakly in words, it showed the inside of a room where the dead might be placed. With low walls, white and plain. It seemed to be very deep under the earth. There was no door, no window, and no light or fire burned. Yet a river of light flowed through it, filling it with a horrible ghastly brightness. I have spoken of that sickly condition of the senses which made most music painful for Usher to hear, but the notes he could listen to with pleasure were very few. It was this fact, perhaps, that made the music he played so different from most music. But the wild beauty of his playing could not be explained. The words of one of these songs called The Haunted Palace I have easily remembered. In it I thought I saw, and for the first time, that Usher knew very well that his mind was weakening. This song told of a great house where a king lived, a palace, and a green valley, where all was light and color and beauty and the air was sweet. In the palace were two bright windows through which people in that happy valley could hear music and could see smiling ghosts. Spirits moving around the king. The palace door was of the richest materials and red and white. Through it came other spirits whose only duty was to sing in their beautiful voices about how wise their king was. But a dark change came. The song continued, and now those who enter the valley see through the windows in a red light, shapes that move to broken music, while through the door, now colorless, a ghastly river of ghosts, laughing but no longer smiling, rushes out forever. Our talk of this song led to another strange idea in Usher's mind. He believed that plants could feel and think, and not only plants, but rocks and water as well. He believed that the grey stones of his house and the small plants growing on the stones and the decaying trees had a power over him that made him what he was. Our books, the books which for years had fed the sick man's mind, were, as might be supposed, of the same wild character. Some of these books Usher sat and studied for hours. His chief delight was found in reading one very old book, written for some forgotten church, telling of the watch over the dead. At last, one evening he told me that the lady Madeline was alive no more. He said he was going to keep her body for a time in one of the many vaults inside the walls of the building. The worldly reason he gave for this was one with which I felt I had to agree. He had decided to do this because of the nature of her illness, because of the strange interest in questions of her doctors, and because of the great distance to the graveyard where members of his family were placed in the earth. We too carried her body to its resting place. The vault in which we placed it was small and dark, and in ages past it must have seemed strange and bloody scenes. It lay deep below that part of the building where I myself slept. The thick door was of iron, and because of its great weight made a loud, hard sound when it was opened and closed. As we placed the lady Madeline in this room of horror, I saw for the first time the great likeness between brother and sister. And Usher told me, then, that they were twins. They had been born on the same day. For that reason, the understanding between them had always been great, and the tie that held them together was very strong. We looked down at the dead face one last time, and I was filled with wonder. As she lay there, the Lady Madel looked not dead, but asleep, still soft and warm, though to the touch, cold as the stones around us. Part three I was visiting an old friend of mine, Rodrigue Usher, in his old stone house, his palace where a feeling of death hung on the air. I saw how fear was pressing on his heart and mind. Now his only sister, the Lady Madeline, had died, and we had put her body in its resting place, in a room inside the cold walls of the palace, a damp, dark vault, a fearful place. As we looked down upon her face, I saw that there was a strong likeness between the two. Indeed, said Usher, we were born on the same day, and the tie between us has always been strong. We did not long look down at her, for fear and wonder filled our hearts. There was still a little color in her face, and there seemed to be a smile on her lips. We closed the heavy iron door and returned to the rooms above, which were hardly less gloomy than the vault. And now a change came in the sickness of my friend's mind. He went from room to room with a hurried step. His face was, if possible, whiter and more ghastly than before. And the light In his eyes had gone. The trembling in his voice seemed to show the greatest fear. At times he sat looking at nothing for hours as if listening to some sound I could not hear. I felt his condition slowly but certainly gaining power over me. I felt that his wild ideas were becoming fixed in my own mind. As I was going to bed late in the night on the seventh or eighth day after we placed the Lady Madeline within the vault, I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep did not come. While the hours passed, my mind fought against the nervousness. I tried to believe that much, if not all, of what I felt was due to the gloomy room, to the dark wall coverings, which in a rising wind moved on the walls. But my efforts were useless. A trembling I could not stop filled my body, and fear without reason caught my heart. I sat up looking into the darkness of the room, listening. I do not know why. To certain low sounds which came when the storm was quiet. A feeling of horror lay upon me like a heavy weight. I put on my clothes and began walking nervously around the room. I had been walking for a very short time when I heard a slight step coming toward my door. I knew it was Usher. In a moment I saw him at my door. As usual, very white. But there was a wild laugh in his eyes. Even so, I was glad to have his company. And have you not seen it? he said. He hurried to one of the windows and opened it to the storm. The force of the entering wind nearly lifted us from our feet. It was indeed a stormy but beautiful night, and wildly strange. The heavy, low hanging clouds which seemed to press down upon the house, flew from all directions against each other, always returning and never passing away in the distance. With their great thickness, they cut off all light from the moon and the stars. But we could see them because they were lighted from below by the air itself, which we could see rising from the dark lake and from the stones of the house itself. You must not you you shall not look out at this, I said to Usher as I led him from the window to a seat. This appearance which surprises you so has been seen in other places too. Perhaps the lake is the clause. Let us close this window. The air is cold. Here is one of the stories you like best. I will read and you shall listen, and thus we will live through this fearful night together. The old book which I had picked up was one written by a fool for fools to read, and it was not, in truth, one that Usher liked. It was, however, the only one within easy reach. He seemed to listen quietly. Then I came to a part of the story in which a man, a strong man full of wine, begins to break down a door, and the sound of the dry wood as it breaks can be heard through all the forest around him. Here I stopped, for it seemed to me that from some very distant part of the house, sounds came to my ears like those of which I had been reading. It must have been this likeness that had made me notice them, for the sounds themselves, with the storm still increasing, were nothing to stop or interest me. I continued the story and read how the man now entering through the broken door discovers a strange and terrible animal of the kind so often found in these old stories. He strikes it and it falls, with such a cry that he has to close his ears with his hands. Here again I stopped. There could be no doubt. This time I did hear a distant sound very much like the cry of the animal in the story. I tried to control myself so that my friend would see nothing of what I felt. I was not certain that he had heard the sound, although he had clearly changed in some way. He had slowly moved his chair so that I could not see him well. I did see that his lips were moving as if he were speaking to himself. His head had dropped forward, but I knew he was not asleep for his eyes were open and he was moving his body from side to side. I began reading again and quickly came to part of the story where a heavy piece of iron falls on a stone floor with a ringing sound. These words had just passed my lips when I heard clearly but from far away a loud ringing sound, as if something of iron had indeed fallen heavily upon a stone floor or as if an iron door had closed. I lost control of myself completely and jumped up from my chair. Usher still sat, moving a little from side to side. His eyes were turned to the floor. I rushed to his chair. As I placed my hand on his shoulder, I felt that his whole body was trembling. A sickly smile touched his lips. He spoke in a low, quick and nervous voice as if he did not know I was there. Yes, he said. I heard it. Many minutes, many hours, many days have I heard it, but I did not dare to speak. We have put her living in the vault. Did I not say that my senses were too strong? I heard her first movements many days ago, yet I did not dare to speak. And now that story. But the sounds were hers. Oh where shall I run? She is coming, coming to ask why I put her there too soon. I hear her footsteps on the stairs. I hear the heavy beating of her heart. Here he jumped up and cried as if he were giving up his soul. I tell you, she now stands at the door. The great door to which he was pointing now slowly opened. It was the work of the rushing wind, perhaps. But no. Outside that door a shape did stare. The tall figure in its grave clothes of Lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white dress. And the signs of her terrible effort to escape were upon every part of her thin before. For a moment, she remained trembling at the door. Then with a low cry, she fell heavily in upon her brother in her pain as she died at last. She carried him down with her. Down to the floor. He too was dead. Killed by his own fear. I rushed from the room. I rushed from the house. I ran. The storm was around me in all its strength. I crossed the bridge. Suddenly, a wild light moved along the ground at my feet, and I turned to see where it could have come from. For only the great house and its darkness were behind me. The light was that of the full moon? Of a blood-red moon, which was now shining through that break in the front wall. That crack which I thought I had seen when I first saw the palace. Then, only a little crack. It now widened as I watched. A strong wind came rushing over me. The whole face of the moon appeared. I saw the great walls falling apart. There was a long and stormy shouting sound, and the deep black lake closed darkly over all that remained of the house of Usher. That was The House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe. And one thing about this story is that it really is one of the most perfect examples of Gothic literature. Everything is very clearly and plainly written. We don't have a lot of big fancy words. So I'm under the impression that it was uh printed over like three three weeks because the original story does say part one, part two, part three, and at the beginning of each new part, the author has explained what's already happened. So when I was reading this, I was like, mm-hmm, like with the gray woman that is broken into three portions, but there's no new explanation or explanation at the top of each portion. There's no summary recap in case you missed it. Um and as the narrator, I add a quick little in case you missed it, but in terms of what the writer provides, the writer doesn't provide that. But for this piece, Poe provides, and it just reminds me of um like modern day soap operas, or oh gosh, I haven't seen a soap in years. So I'm going to say TV shows and soaps from the 80s and 90s, where uh you would have this kind of last week, last week on such a such, uh, Becky was trapped in a well and Joseph was running through the forest trying to find his dog. I don't know, right? I know soaps are far more entertaining than what I just described, but you would always have these kind of recaps. Um, and not just soaps, it would also be on TV shows where they would have like a to-be-continued or whatever. Anyway, so I thought that was really cool to see that Poe had written that, and I just found myself going, Were a lot of authors doing that before him? Um, but I certainly could not read this story without reading those recaps. So if you're just like, she just talked about that. Why is she why is she summarizing what we just talked about in this story? Because that's how the author wrote it, people. And I like to stay as true as possible to the author's original words. Actually, for none of the stories that I've read for this podcast, I haven't changed a single word. Whatever's written, that's what I'm reading. And if it's a naughty word, I'm reading that too. Only the one that had one story with a word that could be considered naughty. So there you have it. There you have it. With all of that being said, Wowzers, what a fun, fun ride. So this story was um published in 1839 originally, and this is long before Poe writes The Raven, and then uh some of the other pieces that we've heard on this podcast, like The Black Cat and The Telltale Heart. So in this story, you our narrator is someone who has good intentions, and he maintains these good intentions throughout. He is not the perpetrator of evil and bad things. That's his homie Usher. That's his friend Usher, and um even Usher didn't really mean to bury his sister early. He was just, you know, hmm, let's see, a little crazy. He had a mental condition. Maybe he was schizophrenic or something. Um because he had a mental disorder. Not it was beyond just nervousness, people. Let's be honest. He's his senses are extremely heightened, he's hearing things, he's imagining things, and um, these are all kind of associated with levels of um schizophrenia. So yeah, he is feeling, seeing, hearing things, and he just kind of misinterprets his sister's dead-like sleep for actually being dead. And isn't it interesting? He's like, No, we're not gonna get the doctors. Those doctors couldn't fix her to begin with, they're not gonna understand. So you can kind of see, you can kind of see how such a mistake could happen. So, on the one hand, you do well, I kind of wonder, did he just not like his sister? Was he just waiting for the day for her to die? Okay, so we have this guy's fixation on the fact that it's just the two of them, and someday he's going to be alone. That in and of itself is just a clear fixation and an obsession. But one could look at it in a little bit of a little bit of a mischievous way and say maybe he became so fixated on the fact that he would be alone someday that he just started to like resent his sister and you know, the first sign of death. Whoop, let's just go ahead and bury her. Okay, that could be a possibility, but it it probably is just more that he himself was not well. He was just so fixated on the idea that someday he's going to be alone. I mean, you have to imagine that before it was just him and his sister, the parents were around, and the parents died, and then they're like, okay, well, it's just us and these servants. That's a long time to not be with other people. Um, and you know, the sister was at that age where she should have been married, but she's not. She's not married, she's not courting any suitors, and so these two are pretty much reclusives, and well, you know, so obsessed with this idea of being alone that he just jumps the gun. And looking at the idiom, jumping the gun, let's also just take this a step further and say, like the Olympic athlete who accidentally started running before the gun was fired, before the sound was made, and then was disqualified. That's what happens here. Roderick Usher literally was so consumed of with the idea of her going, right? So fixated on it that at the first he just kind of builds it up so much in his mind that he goes a little too soon. All right. Now yes, we do see lovely, lovely, lovely um staples of gothic literature here. We have the dark shadows, the creepy old palace house. We have uh ghostly figures that move move through the home, the sister herself, but Roderick is also barely alive. Um we have descriptions of blood red moon and you know, eerie sound. So yeah, all this stuff is just absolutely wonderful. It it's what you want in your gothic literature. So this is a textbook classic gothic literature. With that being said, um, you know, we don't have any like monsters or anything like that. The sister isn't really dead, she manages to get out of this vault and comes back and she's like, uh, hey guys, gee, think you made a mistake. I like that she is like has enough life in her to come and uh take her twin out. Just be like, you're coming with me, guy, because you screwed up. Um, and so they both die, dun, dun, dun, and then the whole house collapsed. All right. So, yes, beautiful textbook elements of gothic literature. We have the warning of um, we have a couple of warnings here. So we have the warning of careful what you wish for. So it's not that he wished he would someday um no longer have his sister in his life. He doesn't say that. He just says, someday my sister will be here and I'll be the only one. And he was just so fixated on and consumed on that. And if you're into that whole uh manifestation lifestyle, you could say he manifested um her passing. And so whether it's he wished for it, manifested it, um, it just came true. It came true that she wound up passing first, and he put himself in a situation where he then had to face what his big fear was was what am I gonna do without my sister? And I'm the only one. Well, to be honest, he didn't have to live very long without his sister. It was merely a matter of seconds, perhaps. I wonder who was born first. Like, they're twins. So who came out first? Her or him? I'm just curious. I'm just curious. And then I mean, you could also say maybe he felt he could not live without her. Isn't that interesting? Right? Um, we've always been together. We're twins. I can't live without my twin. That's interesting. I mean, Poe does make some interesting comments on twins. They're having a not just a physical resemblance, but a bond that is unseen by others. They can kind of be in tune with what each other is feeling and thinking. Though, you know, the guy, uh, Roderick does say that he heard some sounds early and he felt some things, but he dared not speak. Isn't that interesting? So he knew that she wasn't really dead. But why is it that he did not speak? Is it because he was so afraid that he had made the wrong call by saying that she was dead? Was he ashamed that he had mistakenly claimed her to be dead? Was he afraid that um she was dead, but he was just doubting himself? And so, you know, the idea of going back and having to look at her just be like confirmed, yep, she really is dead, she's decaying, um, was that something that was on his mind? Or was he really just like, oh man, I messed up. I made this huge mistake, and um don't want to tell anybody about that. She'll eventually die. Hmm, hmm, why did he dare not speak? There's a lot of reasons why we dare not speak things that we are questioning, doubtful of, right? Um maybe you accidentally uh I don't know, you've accidentally did something. I was gonna say like ran over your neighbor's dog. And I'm like, no, that's horrible. Why would I say that? So you you did something, and then you later you question yourself wait, did was did I do the right thing? Think of the person who testifies in a case or goes on jury duty. And then afterwards, you're like, wait. I mean, I in the time, in the moment, I was swore I did the right thing. But now that I see and hear all this other evidence that everyone on social media has had access to, did I make the right call? Did I do the right thing? I didn't have all this information. So anyway, there's that. Um, we also have this big question of what do we owe our friends? Okay, so our narrator had not seen Roderick Usher for years, hadn't seen them since they were boys. That's a long time. That's a long time. You haven't seen him in a while, and you're being called upon. And he goes partly because it's a friend saying he's ill, and partly because he knows he's this guy's only friend. And that in and of itself is a reason to have pause when someone says, Hey, friend, I know we haven't spoken in years. You're my only friend. What have you been doing in all those years? Clearly, you haven't been taking that time to make new friends. So what is wrong with you? What is what is so unlikable about you that no one wants to be your friend? Or what do you not like about everyone else where you're not out there trying to make friends? Now, this is really interesting because we are at the time of this recording in 2026, this is a time when a lot of people want to stay indoors and um don't want to make friendships with people outside of people they already know. And in some cases, if you are someone who is not attending a school with strangers, like a public school, um, and you are just doing the homeschool life and you're not uh involved in extracurriculars outside of your um family, then the people you know is a very, very small circle. And then if you find yourself only connecting with others through social media, I only like my online friends, or perhaps you find social media to be scary and mean, and so I only like my chat GPT friend. Um, you know, there are stories of people having relationships, romantic relationships with AI characters and creating these characters to respond to them the way that they want the character to respond to them. Yeah, all that stuff is happening, people. And so, um, Roderick, well ahead of his time, in the sense that he only really had his immediate family. There was no reason for him to go out to to the world into university or anything like that because his family had money, and maybe the trust is set up where, you know, once he's declared sick, he does not have to work. Maybe he never had to work. He, you know, the the family business ran on its own, or the family trust is in the hands of legal eagles who just make sure that the various financial things are taken care of. We don't really know, right? But what do we owe our friends? Would you have gone to your friend's bedside if your friend who you had not spoken to in like a decade or more was saying, Hey, I'm sick, come be with me, come help me, even though you can't really help me. Interesting. Also, our narrator, he looks at this girl. He's like, Well, she actually does not look dead, but I touched her and she's cold. So she's probably dead. Like the narrator never says, Maybe we should I know you don't want the doctors involved, but I mean we are talking about whether she's alive or dead, so we should really call a doctor. We should do that. Come on, guy. You know, yeah, and that's the thing is when you are surrounded by people who think a certain way, and after a few days of being around people who think a certain way, you can start to question your own um morals and sense of reality. And so, yeah, I can see it. I I certainly remember questioning uh what I knew to be true when uh spending time with people who have uh mental conditions that have them believing other things, and you you want to be supportive and kind and helpful, um, but it's a fine, fine line that you'll be walking, fine tightrope line. Okay. Um, what's up with the servants? The servants they they take the horse and uh they show him where Roderick uh is in the home, and do they just all hide away? We never see or hear from these servants again. So that is one issue with this story. I would have really liked if Poe had said, you know, due to the storm or due to my visit, the servants all were all given the the week off. Something, you know, just get them out of the picture. Because otherwise, you've got these servants who know this lady has died. And I mean, on one hand, I can see a servant being like, well, don't question my master, but does it've been a week that her body's been down there. So does no one go into town and be like, yes, I'm here to pick up the groceries for the home. And by the way, did you know that the lady died? Like, something. People just think something. I don't know. Whatever. So what do we owe our friends? At what point do you do you have to say, hmm, you know what, friends? I disagree with you, or I think you need help. Um, just because Roderick Usser says, I think you can be here and provide some good for me, some aid. Doesn't doesn't mean you never doesn't mean that you don't have to say, hey, we've done things your way. And I know you said the doctors weren't very helpful and there's no medicine that really helps this. It's just like having a friendship got you on that. But let's get out of the house. Let's get out of the house, friends. Let's go take a walk on the grounds. Let's let's do something not in these gloomy walls. Let's go into town. Um, and yeah, yeah, yeah. The last the last day we get this horrible storm. I don't know how many days it was raining, but yeah, what do we owe our friends? Okay, and do we trust ourselves? So we reach a point where the narrator's like, gosh, I don't even know if I trust my own mind. I feel like the sickness that has um taken over him is starting to take over me too, because I feel like my senses are heightened and everything is just seems weird. I'm a little on edge, and now I can't sleep, and now I'm pacing rooms. And you can see how this spreads. And so this is an actual comment on society that Poe makes, which is that hey, if you spend your time in company of people who are always doom and gloom, it's going to affect you. It's going to affect you in the same way that if you spend all your time with crazy conspiracy theorists or all your time with people who are just really in denial about everything that's going on in the world and ridiculously happy all the time and just focused on, you know, whatever, their religion, or looking on the bright side all the time. You might start to think, well, I guess the world isn't that bad. And yeah, maybe, maybe I too can manifest the early death of my loved ones. So then that way I can experience what it will be like once they're gone, and I can also reaffirm for myself that someday they will leave me. Isn't that interesting? How people can spend so much time thinking something that it becomes true. For example, the spouse that is so fixated on the fact that someday their partner is going to leave them. Oh, I know I know they're gonna leave me. I know they're gonna leave me. They don't love me anymore. And so they start checking the phone messages and following them. And where are you doing? Where are you going? And so it becomes smothering until the other person is like, oh my goodness, this is too much. I wasn't going to leave you, I wasn't cheating, but now I feel like I might as well get on out of here because you are suffocating me and you're making me feel like my just being present isn't enough. And so I feel like, gosh, I gotta go. Yeah, anyway, there's that, there's that. So so much to learn from this story, but uh just a strong example of what tropes are in gothic literature, as well as really understandable characters and a soft introduction to where Poe will eventually go. So in his later stories, we always have the surprise ending. This one was pretty straightforward. Um, but in his later stories, it's the big reveal. I, the narrator, have done something truly wicked. And ha ha ha, this is what it is. But you should have known that from the beginning, because in the beginning I told you I hinted that I did something wicked. So we we do have some foreshadowing this. We absolutely do have some foreshadowing in the sense that we are told very early on that she would have these fits where she would go to sleep in a dead-like state, but she was just asleep. And then, dun dun dun dun dun, of course, where do we end things? Speaking of anything, we're gonna have to end my analysis of this story. So I really hoped you like it. I hope you enjoyed this story and do come back for another Gothic tale.