NCDPI – AIG Instructional Resource: Background Information
Resource Title:
Details, Details, Details: How the Narrator in The Fall of the House of Usher
Helps Accomplish Poe’s Unity of Effect
Subject Area/Grade Level (s):
11th grade English or AP
Time Frame: 1-2 class periods
Common Core/Essential Standard Addressed:
RL.11.3 Analyze the impact of the author’s choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set,
how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed).
RL.11.5 Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text (e.g., the choice of where to begin or end a story,
the choice to provide a comedic or tragic resolution) contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact.
W.11.2 Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the
effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.
W.11.9 Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.
Additional Standards Addressed: NA
Brief Description of Lesson/Task/Activity: Students will analyze one of Poe’s richest and most challenging works, The Fall of the House of Usher. They will
gain an understanding of the construction of the work through focusing on the information revealed through the point of view of the narrator. After
discussing the first five paragraphs of the work as a group, students can work independently to find other evidence to support the task. After the
student(s) have had the opportunity to search the text for support, students can respond to a question that captures the goal of the lesson.
Type of Differentiation for AIGs (include all that apply)
Adaptations for AIGs:
x Content
Process
Enrichment
X Extension
Acceleration
x Product
PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF NORTH CAROLINA State Board of Education | Department of Public Instruction
AIG ~ IRP Academically and/or Intellectually Gifted Instructional Resources Project
Explanation of How Resource is Appropriate for AIGs To begin with, the story itself isn’t very accessible to the high school student. The
narrator, like many of Poe’s narrators, is somewhat unreliable, and the reader has to constantly evaluate the information given by the narrator.
Along with the narrator, the writing, through its long sentences and elevated vocabulary, requires a reader with strong skills to see through the
writing to the Poe’s constructs beneath.
Needed Resources/Materials: Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, The Fall of the House of Usher
Sources: NA
TEACHER NOTES: NA
NCDPI AIG Curriculum Resource Outline
STAGE ONE: ENGAGE
How can a writer use the narrator of the story to strengthen the work? How can a writer create suspense by only limiting the narrator’s
perspective? How does Poe utilize the first person narrator?
Students may give answers that include:
 The narrator can shape the tone of the work.
 The narrator can have or lack knowledge that helps sustain or heighten interest.
 The narrator can deliver the feelings of the writer or a community.
 Having read The Fall of the House of Usher prior to this lesson, discussion can shift to this specific story.
STAGE TWO: ELABORATE
Guided practice and questions:
1. What do you feel Poe is trying to achieve in this story?
2. Review paragraphs 1-5 and consider how Poe uses the narrator to develop the story. How does the 1st person narration support Poe’s
intent?
3. In other words, why is 1st person narration a better choice than 3rd person narration for this story?
4. Independent Practice:
5. Find other examples where the details the narrator reveals further Poe’s purpose for the story. Two crucial sections of the story to
analyze are Roderick Usher’s poem, The Haunted Palace, and the final night in the castle.
PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF NORTH CAROLINA State Board of Education | Department of Public Instruction
AIG ~ IRP Academically and/or Intellectually Gifted Instructional Resources Project
STAGE THREE: EVALUATE
Consider: Poe wrote in his review of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tale that “the unity of effect or impression is a point of the greatest
importance. It is clear, moreover, that this unity cannot be completed in one sitting.”
Now respond: Determine what you feel Poe is trying to accomplish in “one sitting” and how the narrator helps/hinders Poe’s goal. Use textual
evidence to support your analysis. Make sure that both portions of your response work together.
Responses may include analysis of:
 The gothic nature of the Usher home
 The physical features of one/both of the Ushers
 Roderick’s music
 The description of Roderick’s mental state as it is revealed in the poem
 The storm and Madeline’s return as they align with the story the narrator reads
 The crumbling house of Usher and the moon
A successful/excellent response will contain a few of these ideas as well as what is absent in the story as well. The lack of commentary from the
narrator during the entombment of Madeline Usher is an important aspect of the story to consider.
A satisfactory response would consider a few of the bullet points above but may not make a solid connection with the overall purpose of the text.
An unsatisfactory response will reveal that the student has been unable to understand that this particular short story’s success is built upon the
limits of the narrator.
TEACHER NOTES: This lesson only considers Poe’s concept of the unity of effect in this one story. With any rich text, more is available to
discover and this lesson can be expanded to include other Poe stories or concepts that Poe utilized like the paradoxical law of terror as well as
the general concepts associated with American Romanticism.
PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF NORTH CAROLINA State Board of Education | Department of Public Instruction
AIG ~ IRP Academically and/or Intellectually Gifted Instructional Resources Project