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

This anthology gathers nineteen Poe tales about obsessive minds, premature burial, doubles, plague, murder, and revenge. Lovers die in a mysterious assignation; Egaeus violates Berenice's grave for her teeth; Morella's identity appears to return in her daughter; and revelers confront embodiments of death. Ligeia seems to overcome death through another woman's body, the Usher twins perish as their house collapses, and William Wilson destroys himself while attacking his double. Other narrators face an inquisitorial dungeon, confess murders under psychological pressure, or expose their own crimes through pride and compulsion. Prince Prospero's isolation cannot keep out the Red Death, and Montresor seals Fortunato into a family vault. In the final story, the abused entertainer Hop-Frog turns a masquerade into a trap, burns the king and his ministers in front of their court, and escapes with Trippetta.

In “The Assignation,” a mysterious stranger rescues the Marchesa's infant from a Venetian canal. The narrator later visits the stranger's lavish rooms and finds him dead after drinking poisoned wine; news then arrives that the Marchesa has also died, suggesting a planned reunion between them. In “Berenice,” the reclusive Egaeus becomes fixated on the teeth of his sick cousin and fiancée. After being told that she has died, he loses awareness of several hours. A servant reports that Berenice's grave has been opened and that she was found alive; Egaeus discovers dental tools and a box containing her teeth, revealing what he did during the blackout. In “Morella,” a scholar's wife dies while giving birth to a daughter who grows to resemble her with disturbing exactness. At the girl's baptism, the father impulsively names her Morella; she dies at the name, and when he places her in the family tomb he finds no trace of the first Morella's body.

In “King Pest,” two sailors flee a tavern bill into a plague district and encounter a grotesque group holding court among coffins and drink. Condemned to drown in ale, the sailors fight back, defeat their captors, and escape with two women from the group. “Shadow” places seven companions in a sealed room during an epidemic. A shapeless shadow appears from behind the corpse of their friend and speaks in a voice made from the voices of many dead acquaintances, leaving the survivors terrified. In “Ligeia,” a widower mourns his brilliant first wife, whose fierce will could not prevent her death. He later marries Lady Rowena and lives with her in a gloomy abbey. Rowena falls ill and dies after the narrator, clouded by opium, sees unexplained drops fall into her drink. Her shrouded body repeatedly shows signs of life before rising and changing in height and appearance. When the wrappings fall away, the narrator recognizes Ligeia.

In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” a visitor tries to comfort the terrified Roderick Usher while Roderick's twin, Madeline, wastes away. After her apparent death, the men place her in a vault. Roderick becomes increasingly agitated, and during a storm the sounds in a story read aloud correspond to noises within the house. Roderick admits that Madeline was buried alive. She enters bloodied from her escape and falls upon him; both twins die, and the visitor flees as the house splits and sinks into the tarn. In “William Wilson,” the narrator is repeatedly checked in his vicious conduct by a nearly identical man who shares his name. At a masquerade he stabs the double, then sees his own image and hears that by killing his opponent he has destroyed himself. In “The Man of the Crowd,” a convalescent observer follows an unreadable old man through London for an entire night and day. Unable to discover his purpose, he concludes that the man cannot bear solitude and embodies a secret that cannot be read.

In “The Oval Portrait,” an injured traveler shelters in a remote château and becomes fascinated by a lifelike portrait. A guidebook explains that the painter's young wife sat for him despite resenting his devotion to art; as he perfected her image, he failed to notice her life fading, and she died when the painting was completed. In “The Masque of the Red Death,” Prince Prospero walls himself and his courtiers away from a fatal epidemic. During a masked ball, a figure dressed like a plague victim crosses seven colored rooms. Prospero confronts it and dies, the guests find no body beneath its costume, and the Red Death kills everyone in the abbey. In “The Pit and the Pendulum,” a condemned prisoner survives a hidden pit and escapes a descending blade by smearing his bonds with food so rats chew them apart. Heated walls then force him toward the pit, but French troops enter Toledo at the final moment and General Lasalle pulls him to safety.

In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” a narrator kills an old man because of his clouded eye, dismembers the body, and hides it under the floor. He calmly receives police officers, but imagines a heartbeat growing unbearably loud and confesses. In “The Black Cat,” an alcoholic narrator abuses his pets, kills Pluto, and later adopts another black cat. While trying to kill the animal he murders his wife and walls her body into the cellar. He boasts to investigating police and strikes the wall; a cry answers from inside, and the officers uncover the corpse with the cat perched on its head. In “The Premature Burial,” a man obsessed with accounts of live burial prepares elaborate safeguards against that fate. He awakens in a cramped darkness and believes his fear has come true, only to learn that he fell asleep in a small berth on a boat. The shock breaks his fixation, and he abandons the habits that fed it.

In “The Oblong Box,” a traveler is puzzled by his friend Cornelius Wyatt's long crate and strange traveling arrangements. When their ship sinks, Wyatt refuses rescue, lashes himself to the box, and goes down with it. The captain later explains that Wyatt's wife had died before sailing and that the box held her body, while a maid posed as the living wife to avoid alarming passengers. In “The Imp of the Perverse,” a narrator describes the irrational urge to do what one knows will cause ruin. He has murdered a man with a poisoned candle and inherited his estate without suspicion. Years later, the thought that only confession could expose him becomes an irresistible spoken phrase. He runs through the streets, blurts out the truth before witnesses, and is convicted and condemned to death.

In “The Cask of Amontillado,” Montresor uses Fortunato's pride in his wine expertise to lure him deep into family catacombs during carnival. He chains the intoxicated man in a recess and builds a brick wall across the opening. Fortunato's appeals and final silence do not deter him, and Montresor reveals that the remains have gone undisturbed for fifty years. In “Hop-Frog,” a king forces his abused court entertainer to drink and throws wine at Trippetta when she intervenes. Hop-Frog proposes that the king and seven ministers attend a masquerade chained together in flammable disguises. During the celebration he hooks their chain to a chandelier line, raises them above the guests, and sets their costumes on fire after declaring their identities and crimes. The eight men burn to death. Hop-Frog climbs up the chain and escapes through the roof; Trippetta has disappeared, and both are believed to have returned to their homeland.

The collection closes with Hop-Frog's revenge on the king and seven ministers who have abused him and Trippetta. He persuades the men to appear at a masquerade chained together and disguised as wild animals, then has them hoisted above the crowd. After identifying them publicly as the king and his councillors, he sets their flammable costumes alight. All eight men die. Hop-Frog climbs away along the rigging and escapes through the roof. Trippetta has already vanished, and the account concludes that the pair planned the punishment together and returned to their homeland. The preceding final tales also end in destruction: Montresor entombs Fortunato alive and keeps the crime secret for fifty years, while the self-described victim of the imp of perversity exposes his own concealed murder and is condemned.