the grim underground vaults in a coffin. There they lifted the lid, and the Narrator observes a blush on her cheek. Nevertheless, they resealed the coffin and locked the vault's heavy iron door. During the days that followed his sister's death, Roderick Usher roamed aimlessly, stared blankly into space, the luster gone from his eyes. Late one night, the Narrator found himself unable to sleep, and a terror took hold of in which he felt Ushers condition infecting him. As he paced, Usher entered his room, with, a species of mad hilarity in his eyes restrained hysteria in his whole demeanor" (Poe, 372).In an attempt to calm Usher, the narrator began to read aloud. But in the midst of a passage describing a knight who tears apart a wooden door, the Narrator thought he heard, somewhere in the house, the same cracking and ripping sound portrayed in the book. Ignoring it, he read on this time, a passage that described the knight's fatal blow to a dragon, which then cried out with a long piercing shriek. There immediately came from somewhere in the dark recesses of the house a similar shriek. Although shaken, the Narrator kept reading. Now the book told of a shield fell down at his feet with a mighty great and terrible ringing sound", and once again, as soon as the words left his lips, there was a distinct metallic ringing noise. At this, he became totally unnerved and turned to Usher, who insanely babbled that he had buried his sister alive, and had listened to her stirring in her coffin; heard her struggles; felt the beating of her heart. Madman! Usher shrieks, Madman! I tell you that she stands without the door! (Poe, 375).At the climax of the story, the doors are flung open, and there stood the bloody, enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline. Her emaciated frame stood reeling and swaying in the doorway before she collapsed on top of her brother, he a corpse upon hitting the floor, a victim of his own anticipated fears.Aghast, the Nar...
