Austin Nolan
Mr. Crowell
English 10H
14 April 2014
Usher Study Guide Part 2
1. Roderick decided to keep Madeline’s body in the house because he did not want the doctors to use her body for their experiments and studies. He was afraid that if he put her body in a grave at the edge of his property that the doctors would sneak in and take it.
2. Throughout the whole story we have known that Roderick and Madeline were brother and sister, but when they are placing the body in the temporary tomb, the narrator notices that Roderick and Madeline are twins.
3. The days following Madeline’s entombment, the narrator notices some changes in Roderick’s behavior. He notices that Roderick has been pacing around the house a lot and also that he has been muttering to himself. The narrator begins to notice that Roderick’s obscure behavior is rubbing off on him.
4. On that stormy night, Roderick sees the giant storm and the electrical phenomena that is taking place outside. The narrator explains to Roderick that it is just a normal old lightning storm and then the narrator just tries to get Roderick away from the window.
5. The narrator reads a book to Roderick because he is trying to calm him down. He reads Roderick a story about Sir Lancelot and how he defeated a dragon even though nobody thought he could. The narrator is trying to calm Roderick down because he is going mad, which is kind of like what the narrator did in the Raven. In the Raven, the narrator was going mad so he tried to calm himself down.
6. The narrator notices that every noise that is happening in the story seems to be happening in the house. The actual noises are coming from Madeline escaping from her tomb in the basement.
7. Roderick did not release Madeline from her tomb because he was afraid of what she would say or do to him because he buried her alive. Also, it could be the fact that Roderick is just completely insane and was ignoring her.
8. The title of this story has a lot to do with...