This month, our English teacher made us discover an incredible author, Edgar Allan Poe, the father of horror litterature. He as made the most famous short stories.  He was born in 1809, in Boston and started to write at the age of 18. We’ve learn a lot about him and his stories and we wanted to share one of his best stories: The Fall of the House of Usher. Here’s a little summary:

An unamed narrator arrives at the House of Usher, a very creepy residence owned by his boyhood friend named Roderick Usher. The narrator spends some time admiring the awesome Usher edifice. Lately, Roderick has been very sick and he wrote to his friend, our narrator, to stay with him before he dies. Roderick and his sister are the last of the Usher bloodline, and the family is famous for its dedication to arts.

Roderick suffers from an “acuteness of the senses”. He has hyper-sensitivity to light, sound, taste, and tactile sensation and he feels that he will die of the fear he feels. His sister, Madeline, who lives with him,  suffers from catalepsy(a sicknes involving seizures) and will soon die too. The narrator tries to help Roderick get his mind off all his death and gloom by poring over the literature, music, and art that he loves so but it doesn’t seem to help.

As predicted, Madeline dies. At least we think so because Roderick stops talking about her and she disapear. The narrator helps Roderick to entomb body of his sister in one of the vaults underneath the mansion. About a week later, on a dark stormy night, the narrator and Usher find themselves unable to sleep. They decide to pass away the scary night by reading a book. As the narrator reads the text aloud, all the sounds from the fictional story can be heard resounding from below the mansion. Usher freaks out and declares that they buried Madeline alive and that now she is coming back. The doors blow open and there stands a trembling bloody Madeline.

As you may have seen, there’s a few posters around the school promoting Poe’s stories. We invite you to have a look at them whenever you have free time.