The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Classic Tales of Horror characters

First appears in chapter 2

A withdrawn scholar whose life is dominated by illness, dreams, and an obsessive attachment to his cousin Berenice. He is prone to long periods of absorbed attention in which the world around him disappears.

First appears in chapter 2

Egaeus's cousin and intended bride. Once energetic and graceful, she has been changed by a wasting illness and suffers attacks that can resemble death.

First appears in chapter 3

A learned and intellectually formidable woman whose husband is both fascinated and unsettled by her studies and her intense ideas about identity and existence.

First appears in chapter 6

The unnamed narrator's first wife, remembered for her extraordinary intelligence, force of will, dark beauty, and commanding presence. He recalls their marriage through grief and admits that he never knew her family history.

First appears in chapter 7

A sensitive, physically frail musician and the last male member of the ancient Usher family. He summons a childhood friend to his decaying ancestral house because he is suffering from acute fear, nervous agitation, and painfully heightened senses.

First appears in chapter 7

Roderick's twin sister and the only other surviving member of the Usher family. She is gravely ill with a mysterious condition that leaves her weak and subject to trance-like attacks.

First appears in chapter 8

A man who adopts the name William Wilson and looks back on a proud, unruly youth. At school he meets another boy who shares his name, birthday, appearance, and manner, and who repeatedly challenges his conduct.

First appears in chapter 11

A wealthy nobleman who seals himself and a thousand courtiers inside a fortified abbey while a deadly epidemic ravages the country. He arranges an extravagant masked celebration within a suite of seven colored rooms.

First appears in chapter 12

An unnamed prisoner who awakens in total darkness after being condemned by inquisitors. Disoriented and terrified, he tries to measure the hidden cell and determine what dangers surround him.

First appears in chapter 13

An unnamed speaker who insists that heightened senses prove sanity, even while calmly explaining an obsessive fear of an old man's clouded eye.

First appears in chapter 14

An unnamed condemned man recounting how alcoholism and escalating cruelty destroyed his affectionate earlier nature. He begins his account as a lover of animals with a particular attachment to his black cat.

First appears in chapter 14

The narrator's large black cat, once his favorite companion. Pluto is intelligent and devoted, but becomes the focus of the narrator's violence as drink changes their household.

First appears in chapter 18

A calculating man from an old family who meets Fortunato during the carnival and privately claims to have endured a serious insult from him. He conceals his hostility behind courtesy.

First appears in chapter 18

A wealthy wine enthusiast whom Montresor encounters dressed for carnival in a jester's costume. Proud of his judgment as a connoisseur, he is easily drawn into a question about a rare cask of wine.

First appears in chapter 19

A court entertainer taken from his homeland and forced to serve a cruel king. Small, disabled, and treated as an object of amusement, he is nevertheless inventive and skilled at designing spectacles.

First appears in chapter 19

A graceful young dancer from Hop-Frog's homeland who has also been forced into service at court. She is his closest companion and tries to protect him when the king humiliates him.