Edgar Allan Poe's story “The Fall of the House of Usher” is told from the first-person point of view of an unnamed narrator who is an old friend of Roderick Usher, whose gruesome acts and end comprise the tale's plot.

The narrator arrives to find the Usher home deteriorating along with its owner's physical and mental health. Usher lives in the house with his sister, Madeline, who suffers from seizures. Usher himself is highly nervous, and the narrator does all he can to calm his friend, engaging in art, literature, and music.

Soon, though, Madeline dies even though, to the narrator, she does not look dead. The two men take Madeline's body down to the tomb in the vaults. A week passes, and one night, neither Usher nor the narrator can sleep. They decide to read, and strangely, each passage the narrator reads comes to life in front of them. Then Madeline appears at the door. Usher and the narrator have buried her alive. The brother and sister fall to the floor dead, and the narrator flees as the house collapses behind him.