for the first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne. The verses, which were entitled “The Haunted Palace"...

The narrator recalls a poem recited to him by Usher. (A poem written by Poe and published separately called "The Haunted Palace.") The poem is positively laden with portentous doom, foreshadowing the House of Usher's imminent demise. The head is used as a conceit to stand for the palace. In that sense, a "haunted palace" expresses Usher's psychological deterioration. The use of the conceit in this way further illustrates the intimate connection between Roderick's mental state and the structural stability of the palace.

One of the most interesting is this one:  the narrator notices a crack that runs a very long length in the estate's structure.  This is symbolic as well as being an instance of foreshadowing. The long crack is symbolic of the fractured nature of Roderick Usher's mental capacities.  He is in a deep depression and it only gets worse as the story goes on. 

The crack is also symbolic of Roderick's relationship with his sister, Madeline.  There is some evidence that their family had a history of incest, so it is not a stretch to say that perhaps Roderick and Madeline has this type of relationship.  Neither was married and they lived with each other.  They clearly had issues within their relationship and it was fragile at best. 

The relationship between Roderick and Madeline crumbles, just as the house does, when Madeline is buried alive.  She is able to make her way out of her tomb and falls upon a completely shocked Roderick, who dies instantly.  The narrator is able to escape and turns to watch the house fall in on itself. 

At the beginning of "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe, the reader observes the house and its setting through the eyes of a first-person narrator, a school friend of Roderick Usher. At the end of the story, the house collapses, killing Roderick and his sister Madeleine, whom he has accidentally buried alive.

The first element of foreshadowing is emotional, specifically the use of the "pathetic fallacy"—namely, using description of inanimate objects in a way that makes them reflect the mood of the narrator. The day is described as dull and dark, the weather oppressive, and the landscape dreary. The trees are described as decayed and the landscape as desolate and gloomy. The house itself is described as having vacant, eye-like windows, a term repeated twice in the first paragraph.

The pervasive sense of gloom and desolation and the narrator's sense of sorrow and dread foreshadow the fact that the house will collapse at the end of the story and be left vacant by the deaths of the last two members of the Usher family. The sense of incipient horror at the beginning of the story reflects the full-fledged horrors that the reader encounters at the end. Thus, the mood and landscape description in the first paragraph lead the reader to anticipate a tragic ending.

From the opening line, the weather is ominous and foreboding:

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone . . .

The sense of gloominess in the weather invades the narrator's spirit, and he finds himself "unsufferable" as he approaches the House of Usher.

The weather comes into sharp focus as the fateful night at the end of the story unfolds. Roderick asks the narrator whether he has "seen it" and throws open a window, where a torrential storm is brewing outside. The narrator notes that it is "wildly singular in its terror and its beauty," much as Madeline Usher evolves over the story. The wind blows in "frequent and violent alterations," and the clouds hang heavily. There are no stars and no lightning.

This violent storm signals the violent end of the Usher twins, and therefore the House of Usher. This is just before Madeline seems to reappear from death and Roderick completely breaks with sanity. In the House of Usher, no light (or hope) remains. Their world is spinning out of control, teetering on the brink of imploding in on itself. The storm's intensity seems to be a precursor of the tension among the three characters as the plot reaches a climax.

After the narrator believes that he witnesses Madeline kill her brother (which could be the narrator's own inner storm, influenced by the troubled mind of his friend Roderick), he flees the scene as the storm is "still abroad in all its wrath."

Foreshadowing is a literary device used by authors to offer clues about coming events in a story. By hinting to readers about things that might happen in the future, writers create expectations that make stories more interesting and often mysterious. Sometimes, writers craft dialogue among characters that foreshadows events to come. The method helps fiction authors to develop a suspenseful atmosphere and advance the plot, leaving readers wanting more information.

In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) employs foreshadowing in several scenes. As a Gothic tale, the story creates an atmosphere of gloom and ghostliness, marked by mysterious appearances and supernatural occurrences. The opening passage is exemplary in its use of foreshadowing and its evocation of a classically Gothic atmosphere:

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.

The description by the unnamed narrator of the house and landscape is consistent with the foretold aura. He observes “bleak walls” and “decayed trees—with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation.” The Gothic tone coupled with the “mansion of gloom” and its “ghastly tree-stems” leaves no doubt that Poe intends the passage to portend evil.

Yet another portent is exhibited in the words of Roderick Usher when he explains to the narrator the horror he experiences living in his own house:

To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. "I shall perish," said he, "I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect—in terror. In this unnerved, in this pitiable, condition I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR."

The gloomy mood and mysterious tone constitute a brilliant demonstration of foreshadowing in “The Fall of the House of Usher.” From the outset of the tale, Poe sets the stage for events to come—even the title constitutes foreshadowing.