Although Edgar Allan Poe claimed in his essays and reviews that he was against any didactic motive in literature, and although “The Fall of the House of Usher” is not a didactic story, Poe does communicate a definite moral message here. Importantly, however, the morality with which he is concerned is not that prescribed by any specific religion; instead, he seems to be suggesting that, despite the incestuously twisted and mentally deranged life of the Ushers, there exists an unwritten but operative universal morality that is ultimately as inescapable as the hereditary forces that determine a person’s life.