TALES OF MYSTERY

AND IMAGINATION

English literature project

2018
1. THE FALL OF USHER
HOUSE.
The narrator travels to the house of his childhood
friend because of he received a “wildly
importunate letter,” which “gives evidence of
nervous agitation,” when he is arriving to the
house, he saw all the gloomy atmosphere around
the Usher house.
Roderick Usher is
his friend he is
descendant of a
goth family the
narrator confesses
early in the story
that “I really
knew little of my
friend. Indeed, one of these occupants is
Roderick’s twin sister, Madeline Usher, who is
suffering from an unspecified but fatal illness.
One of the symptoms of this illness is catalepsy
(muscular rigidity marked by a lack of response
to external stimulation); significantly, this
symptom is crucial to understanding what
happens in the course of the story.
His sister’s illness is not the only one reason for
Roderick’s agitation, one reason for his desire to
have the “solace” of the narrator’s
companionship. Usher himself is suffering from a
“mental disorder,” which is reflected at the idea
of his family, he believes that in his family there is
the “evil”, one example of this according to the
view of Roderick is the situation where the family
never “put forth . . . any enduring branch . . . the
entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and
had always . . . so lain.” In other words, Roderick
and Madeline Usher are the products and
inheritors of an incestuous family lineage—one
that has remained predominantly patrilineal, so
that the name of the family always remained
Usher. This is the dilemma of Roderick,
Madeleine is his last relative on the earth and he
should commit incest to preserve the family.
During the story, and the stay of the narrator, they
began to have another type of relationship, they
read to each other literature concerning classical
myth, penitential rituals, theology, physiology,
supernaturalism, and demonism—all of which
are meant to indicate to the reader Roderick’s
preoccupation with anything that might help him
to understand his and his sister’s dilemma. What
he comes to feel certain about is that the house
itself—because it was built and lived in by his
forefathers, and because he believes there is
“sentience [in] all vegetable things, that has a
“terrible influence” on him and Madeline, and
that it has “made him.”
The House of Usher becomes a living, feeling
character in Poe’s story, and one that, Roderick
suggests, may be urging the two remaining
Ushers to commit incest; the narrator emphasize
that he is so realistic to be taken by the
hypochondriacal theories of Roderick but, he
gradually begins to feel “infected” by his host’s
condition: “I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet
certain degrees, the wild influences of his . . .
fantastic yet impressive superstitions.” Until, the
stage is set for the story’s horrifying climax,
beginning one evening when Roderick informs
his guest that Madeline is dead.
Rather than burying his sister in the family
cemetery some distance from the house, Roderick
decides to keep her body for two weeks in one of
the many vaults within the house—for, after all,
one suffering from catalepsy may seem dead but
not, in fact, be dead; it would be horrible to bury
Madeline alive. In short, the narrator assists his
host in entombing the body temporarily in, first, a
coffin with its lid screwed down, and then in a
vault behind a massive iron door of profound
weight. There she remains for a week, as Roderick
roams through his house aimlessly, or sits and
stares vacantly at nothing for long hours.
One tempestuously stormy night—a “mad
hilarity in his eyes”—Roderick enters the
narrator’s bedroom, where they sit together, the
narrator reading to him and both of them trying
to ignore the terrible grating sound they
hear coming from below the bedroom
(the vault into which they placed
Madeline’s body is directly below
this bedroom, and the heavy door to
that vault always makes a loud
grating sound when it is being
opened). As the sound continues more
noticeably, Roderick suddenly informs
the narrator that he has been listening
to noises downstairs for many days,
but—apparently fearful that his sister
was still living, and that he would
again have to face the evil prospect of
perpetuating his family’s tradition of incest—he
says, “I dared not speak!” Abruptly, the bedroom
door swings open and Madeline, her white robes
bloodied by her struggle to escape the coffin and
vault, falls into the room and on Roderick. The
narrator flees the house, and from a short distance
away he turns to look back and sees the House of
Usher split in two and crumble into the dark
waters of the tarn before it.
2. THE BLACK Cat.
Told in the first person by narrator that we do not
know if he distorts the truth, the story can be seen
to be divided into two parts, each of which builds
toward a climactic physical
catastrophe: in the first part, the
narrator’s mutilation and later
murder of a favorite pet, as well as
a fire that destroys all he and his
wife own; in the second part, the
narrator’s ax murder of his wife,
followed by his arrest and death
sentence.
Opening with both suspense and mystery in his
revelation that he wants to “unburden” his soul
because he will die the next day, the narrator gives
details of his early love for animals and marriage
to a woman of the same sentiments, who presents
him with many pets. Among these is his favorite,
a black cat, whose name, Pluto, foreshadows the
narrator’s descent into the murky regions of
alcoholism, self-deception, and violence.
When he does later succumb to alcoholism, the
narrator shortly thereafter begins maltreating his
wife and pets, which gives a double meaning to
his term for drinking, “Fiend Intemperance,”
referring not only to alcohol abuse but also to
intemperate transgression of rational thought and
behavior.
Eventually the narrator maltreats “even Pluto”
which implies that the cat was valued more than
his wife, whom he has maltreated earlier. One
night, presumably out of frustration, he seizes the
cat, which has been avoiding him. When it bites
him, the narrator says he became “possessed” by
a “demon” and with his pocket knife cut out one
of the cat’s eyes. At first grieved and then irritated
by the consequences of his action, the narrator
says that he was then “overthrown” by “the spirit
of perverseness” unconscious desires to do all
things, even wrongs, for pleasure’s sake and the
death wish the “spirit of perverseness” causes the
narrator, even while weeping, to hang Pluto in a
neighboring garden. That night a fire destroys his
house and all his possessions, and the next day the
narrator discovers on the only wall that remains
standing the raised gigantic image on its
surface of a hanged cat. His
alcoholism continuing.
 The narrator one night at a disreputable tavern search. As they are about to leave the cellar, the
discovers another black cat, which he befriends narrator, apparently with taunting bravado but
and adopts an implication making a substitution really with unconscious guilt that seeks to delay
out of guilt and remorse, as does his wife. them so he may be arrested and punished,
However, the narrator rapidly develops a remarks to them on the solidity of the house’s
loathing. First, it has only one eye, which reminds walls, rapping with a cane the very spot of the
him of his crimes against Pluto. Second, it is too concealed tomb. When a horrible scream is
friendly—an ironic inversion of the common emitted from the wall, the police break down the
complaint that cats are too aloof, as the narrator bricks, discover the corpse with the black cat
complained about Pluto. Third, it has a white howling on its head, and arrest the
patch on its breast that to the guilty narrator’s criminal. Rationalizing to the end, the
imagination looks more and more like gallows, narrator blames the cat for his misdeeds
which points both backward to his hanging of and capture: “the hideous beast whose
Pluto and, unknown to him, forward to his craft had seduced me into murder, and
hanging for the murder of his wife. whose informing voice had consigned
me to the hangman.”
One day, with his wife on an errand into the cellar
of their decrepit old house, the narrator,
infuriated when he is almost tripped on the stairs
by the cat, starts to kill it with an ax, is stopped by
his wife, and then instead kills her with the ax.
With insane calmness and ratiocination, the
narrator concocts and implements a plan of
concealing the corpse in a cellar wall. Meanwhile,
the cat, which has tormented his dreams, has
vanished, allowing him to sleep—despite his
wife’s murder. Inquiries are made about his
missing wife, however, and on the fourth day
after the murder, the police come for a thorough
3. The masque of the red
death.
The Red Death, a bloodier version of the Black
Death, ravages Europe in the early fourteenth
century. In response, the feudal overlord Prince
Prospero selects a thousand congenial
individuals from the upper ranks of the society
he rules and isolates them
within a lavishly furnished
and securely sealed,
fortified
abbey. There,
they plan to
enjoy
themselves
to their
hearts’ content while the plague runs its deadly
course outside.
After several months of isolation, the courtiers’
entertainments climax in an amazing masked
ball held in a mazy complex of seven rooms, each
one decorated in a different color and equipped
with apposite stained-glass windows, all
illuminated by a single central fire. The terminal
chamber is decorated in black, and its windows
are blood red, producing such a terrible effect
that hardly anyone dares venture into the room.
The ebony clock in the chamber strikes
exceedingly peculiar notes when it chimes,
inevitably causing the ball’s musicians to pause.
The exotic costumes worn by the masqueraders
follow exemplars provided by the Prince himself,
many of them being described as “dreams.”
As the masquerade reaches the height of its
excitement at the approach of midnight, the
revelers notice the presence among them of a
red-clad figure whose mask simulates the
symptoms of the final phase of the Red Death.
The appearance of this intruder angers the
prince, who considers as a direct affront. He
commands that the
individual should be
seized, unmasked, and
hanged from the
battlements at dawn, but
no one dares lay a hand
on the mysterious figure
as he retreats through the
sequence of colored
rooms. Eventually, the
enraged Prospero rushes
after his disrespectful guest himself, pursuing
him all the way to the black room—where he is
revealed to be a literal personification of the Red
Death, come to extend his dominion to the last
refuge of the arrogant and mighty. While the
ebony clock in the chamber strikes exceedingly
peculiar notes, every person was dying until the
last strike to mark the midnight.
4. The tell-tale heart.
A man insists that he is not mad. In spite of being
dreadfully nervous, he also insists that his
senses, especially his hearing, have been
heightened rather than destroyed. He
claims that the calm and healthy way
he will tell the following story is
evidence of his sanity.
He admits that he cannot say when
the idea to kill the old man had come
into his mind. He says he had no reason,
nor passion, for killing him; the old man had
never harmed or insulted him. He did not want
his money. He says he loved the old man. He
thinks he killed him because of the old man’s
eye, like the eye of a vulture, a pale blue eye that
made the old man’s blood run cold.
The narrator says that he had never been kinder
to the old man than he had been during the week
before he killed him. He tells the following story:
Before the murder, every night at midnight, he
makes a small opening in the old man’s chamber
door and puts a small closed lantern inside.
Taking an hour to slowly place his head in the
opening so he can see the old man, he opens the
lantern, allowing the light to shine on the vulture
eye. He does this for seven nights, but because
the eye is always closed, he does not become
enraged by it. In great detail, he praises himself
for his cunning, asks his listener if a mad person
could have been so clever as he, and even tells
the listener that he or she would have laughed if
they had seen how methodically he had opened
the door and placed the lantern inside the old
man’s chamber.
On the eighth night, he tells the listener, he once
again puts the lantern inside the chamber, but
this time his finger slips, making a noise that
wakens the old man, who then cries out. For an
hour, the narrator waits; then he hears a groan
and recognizes it as the groan of mortal terror, a
sound he, too, has made in the night. He slowly He answers the officers’ questions, cheerily, but
opens the crevice in the lantern until the light then thinks he hears a ringing in his ears, which
falls on the open vulture eye. Still he waits, gets louder and more distinct. Finally, he thinks
knowing the old man’s terror must be extreme. that the noise is not from within his ears but
He hears a sound like that of a watch inside from beneath the flooring. He becomes more and
cotton and thinks it is the beating of the old more agitated, pacing, swearing, and grating his
man’s terrified heart. Imagining that the sound is chair upon the floor over the body. He thinks the
so loud it could be heard by a neighbor, he bursts police can hear the sound also, and that they are
inside the chamber, pulls the old man to the pretending they do not, making a mockery of his
floor, and suffocates him with the bedding. He own horror. Finally, he feels he must scream or
then cuts up the corpse and puts the body parts die. He shrieks loudly, admitting the murder and
under the floor, replacing the boards so cleverly insisting the officers pull up the planks to reveal
so that no one could ever see anything wrong. the beating of the old man’s “hideous heart.”
Proud that a tub had caught all of the old man’s
blood, he then cleans up the crime scene and
prepares to go to bed when he hears a knock at
the door. Three men who identify themselves as
police tell him that neighbors had reported
hearing a shriek in the night. He smiles and says
it was his own shriek in a dream. He tells the
officers that the old man is out, visiting in the
country, then takes them through the house,
leading them to the old man’s bedchamber. He
brings in chairs for them to sit on, placing his
own chair right over the spot where the corpse is
hidden beneath the floorboards.
5. WILLIAM WILSON.
William Wilson wants to hide his real
name, being ashamed of all the bad
things his mother had done in life. He
blames circumstances and
temptations for all the evils he could
not fight against. He is convinced that
genes took part in his wrong doings.
His parents were unable to stop his malicious
behavior, even at a young age, he has become
usurper in their home. He went to school in an
old building which reminds him of jail. In that
school rules order and discipline. His pastor, Dr.
Bransby was also a headmaster of the school.
William, being bossy, has forced himself upon
other classmates. Everyone bows down to his
will, except one boy – his namesake.
“Coincidentally” they share the same birth date,
same height and looks also. William’s double
becomes leader between the boys. William was
annoyed by this fact so he starts competing with
the double. Eventually, resentment towards the
boy grows into extreme hate. W. Wilson is
sometimes convinced that he knew him in some
distant past.
After five years of education, Williams becomes a
student at Eaton. The memory of the double
slowly faded away. As a student, he lives a
dissipated life. On one gray morning, after the
crazy night, he sees his double who warns him
that the life he is leading is not good. His
wealthy parents are able to send him to attend at
Oxford. But he there lives profusely and starts
gambling. He uses various tricks thus damaging
rich lord Glendening who by merely looking at
him would cause compassion in one. William
could feel contemptible looks given from the
young men present in the room.
Then something odd happens:
heavy door opens, candles put out
and a stranger enters. This stranger
exposes Wilson as a fraud and
publicly shames him. He is also the
one who shows where Williams is
hiding his cards which he uses to win games.
Crushed and humiliated he then left Oxford and
starts his wandering through the world. But
escaping is worthless. Stranger follows him
wherever he goes; and at that moment, the main
character realizes that his tormentor is, in fact,
his double. He does not want to have anything
with him anymore so he challenges him to duel. Characters:
This event happened at the time of Carnival in
Rome. He pushes the double against the fence 1. The fall of usher house.
and pierces him through the chest with a sword.
 The narrator is an enigmatic character. One
Surprisingly, he looks in the mirror his pale and
way to explain his role is that the narrator’s
bloodied face. While
job is simply to narrate the story. We don’t
dying he hear
know his name, which is representative of
something strange
us knowing nothing about him at all.
that reminds
what he has  Roderick Usher is not well. While parts of
done. his affliction seem to manifest themselves
physically, in his overly-acute senses, his
illness is primarily a mental one.
 Madeleine usher is the Roderick’s sister she
suffers a strange and unnamed illness, she
has a direct relation with the house.
2. the black cat.
 The narrator a prisoner scheduled for
execution, his loathing to the loved
animals that once he loved leads him to
commit crimes.

 The narrator’s wife is a woman who

loves the animals that her husband
brought to home.
  The first black cat named Pluto loves the
narrator but it feels irritated when the
narrator follows it everywhere.
 The second black cat, is a cat that
substitutes the first one, the narrator
thinks that, this cat is a reincarnation.
 The policemen and the servant, they are
supporting characters.
3. the masque of the red death.
 Prince Prospero is the main character,
he is fearless and determinated.
 Thousands of congenial individuals,
they come form the upper ranks of
society
 The soldiers, they are supporting
characters
 The red death, it is the
personification of the death, but with
many elements of the red pestilence
4. the tell-tale heart.
 The narrator of ‘‘The Tell-Tale Heart’’
recounts his murder of an old man. Since
he tells the story in first-person, the reader
cannot determine how much of what he
says is true; thus, he is an unreliable
narrator.
 The old man had never done anything to
warrant his murder. However, the old
man’s cloudy, pale blue eye bothers the
narrator tremendously.
 The policemen, they are supporting
characters.
5. William Wilson.
 William Wilson narrator who murders his
double, also named William Wilson. The
first William Wilson suffers from a split
personality: he takes a figment of his
imagination and gives it physical shape.
 William Wilson -A classmate and rivalrous
competitor of the narrator. This second
William Wilson is the external embodiment
of the narrator’s paranoia.
Biography.
Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 to October 7,
1849) was an American writer, poet, critic and
editor best known for evocative
short stories and poems that
captured the imagination and
interest of readers around the
world. His imaginative
storytelling and tales of
mystery and horror gave birth
to the modern detective story.
Many of Poe’s works, including
“The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The
Fall of the House of Usher,” became
literary classics. Some aspects of Poe’s life, like
his literature, is shrouded in mystery, and the
lines between fact and fiction have been blurred
substantially since his death.
Poe self-published his first book, Tamerlane and
Other Poems, in 1827. His second poetry
collection, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor
Poems, was published in 1829. As a critic at the
Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond from
1835 to 1837, Poe published some of his own
works in the magazine, including two parts of
his only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon
Pym. In late 1830s, Poe published
Tales of the Grotesque and
Arabesque, a collection
of short stories. It
contained several of
his most spine-
tingling tales,
including "The Fall of the
House of Usher," "Ligeia" and
"William Wilson." In 1841, Poe
launched the new genre of
detective fiction with "The Murders in the Rue
Morgue." His literary innovations earned him the
nickname "Father of the Detective Story." A
writer on the rise, he won a literary prize in 1843
for "The Gold Bug," a suspenseful tale of secret
codes and hunting treasure. Poe never really
knew his parents — Elizabeth Arnold Poe, a
British actress, and David Poe, Jr., an actor who
was born in Baltimore. His father left the family
early in Poe's life, and his mother passed away
from tuberculosis when he was only three.
Money was also an issue between Poe and John
Allan. Poe went to the University of Virginia in
1826, where he excelled in his classes.
Glossary.
 Advice what you say to help people
 Alcohol liquid in drinks like beer and
whisky that can make people drunk.
 Anger the feeling when you are angry.
 Axe a tool for cutting trees and wood.
 Basket a kind of strong bag.
 Believe to think that something is true or
right.
 Board (n) a long thin flat piece of wood.
 Brick a small hard block which is used for
building walls.
 Candle a round stick of wax which gives
light when it burns.
 Cellar a room in the ground under a house.
 Chest the front part of the top of the body.
 Chime the sound of a bell in a clock.
 Cloak (n) a wide loose coat without
sleeves.
 Coffin the box in which a dead person is
put.
 Crack (n) a thin hole where something is
broken; to break open.
 Cruel not kind; bringing pain or trouble to
someone.
 Double the sakes in gambling, to play for
twice the amount of money.
 Evil very bad, very wrong.
 Gambling playing games of chance (e.g
cards, roulette) for money.
 Gloom a feeling of deep sadness and
hopelessness.
 Hell the place where bad people go when
they die.
 Mask a cover that is put over the face to
hide it.
 Plunge to push something in hard and
suddenly.
 Ray a thin line of light.
 Weak not strong.
 ACTIVITIES

 Use these five names to answer the  Match a word from A with a definition
questions: Roderick Usher, Lady Madeleine from
Usher, the stranger (in The Masque of the Red 1 evil
2 mad
Death), William Wilson (the narrator), the
3 terror
old man (in The Tell-Tale Heart). Who . . .
4 horror
. . ……….. nearly took all the money of a man 5 imagination
called
Glendinning? ...............
a) a feeling of great fear or dislike
. . ………… had a pale blue eye like the eye of a
b) making pictures in your mind
vulture? ……………..
. . . ………….was buried alive in a vault under c) very bad, very wrong
an old house? .................. d) with a sick mind
. . . …………… had the face of a dead man, e) very great fear
covered with blood? ...........................
. . …………. could only eat food that almost
had no taste? ..................
  Fill in the gaps using: axe, cloak,
 Answer these questions. There is dragon, lantern, sword.
one about each of the stories. a) In Roderick Usher’s favourite book,
The Sad, Mad life of Sir Launcelot
a) What was next to the House of
Canning, Ethelred fights a ...............,
Usher, and finally closed over it?
with fire coming out of its mouth.
..........................................................................
b) The narrator of The Black Cat kills
b) What changed the narrator in The Black Cat his wife with an .................
from a quiet gentle man into a violent one? c) William Wilson had a very
.......................................................................... unusual and expensive ...............,
which a shop made specially for
c) Where did the light for Prince
him.
Prospero’s seven rooms come from?
d) William Wilson killed the other
..........................................................................
William Wilson with a .................
d) In which city did William Wilson kill
the other William Wilson? e) The murderer in The Tell-Tale Heart
looked at the old man with a ...............
.......................................................................... at night.
e) Where did the murderer put the old
man’s body and his ‘tell-tale heart’?
..........................................................................