The cask of Amontillado

The story is told in first person, so we don’t explicitly learn the narrator’s name

until near the end. Until then, we’ll call him “the narrator.” Here we go.

The narrator begins by telling us that Fortunato has hurt him. Even worse,

Fortunato has insulted him. The narrator must get revenge. He meets

Fortunato, who is all dressed up in jester clothes for a carnival celebration − and

is already very drunk. The narrator mentions he’s found a barrel of a rare

brandy called Amontillado. Fortunato expresses eager interest in verifying the

wine’s authenticity.

So he and the narrator go to the underground graveyard, or “catacomb,” of the

Montresor family. Apparently, that’s where the narrator keeps his wine. The

narrator leads Fortunato deeper and deeper into the catacomb, getting him

drunker and drunker along the way. Fortunato keeps coughing, and the narrator

constantly suggests that Fortunato is too sick to be down among the damp

crypts, and should go back. Fortunato just keeps talking about the Amontillado.

Eventually, Fortunato walks into a man-sized hole that’s part of the wall of a

really nasty crypt. The narrator chains Fortunato to the wall, then begins to

close Fortunato in the hole by filling in the opening with bricks. When he has

one brick left, he psychologically tortures Fortunato until he begs for mercy –

and we finally learn the narrator’s name: Fortunato calls him “Montresor.”

After Fortunato cries out Montresor’s name, he doesn’t have any more lines.

But just before Montresor puts in the last brick, Fortunato jingles his bells. Then

Montresor finishes the job and leaves him there to die. At the very end,

Montresor tells us that the whole affair happened fifty years ago, and nobody

has found out.

Berenice

The narrator, Egaeus, is a studious young man who grows up in a large gloomy

mansion with his cousin Berenice. He suffers from a type of obsessive disorder,

a monomania that makes him fixate on objects. She, originally beautiful, suffers

from some unspecified degenerative illness, with periods of catalepsy a

particular symptom, which he refers to as a trance. Nevertheless, they are due

to be married.

One afternoon, Egaeus sees Berenice as he sits in the library. When she smiles,

he focuses on her teeth. His obsession grips him, and for days he drifts in and

out of awareness, constantly thinking about the teeth. He imagines himself

holding the teeth and turning them over to examine them from all angles. At

one point a servant tells him that Berenice has died and shall be buried. When

he next becomes aware, with an inexplicable terror, he finds a lamp and a small

box in front of him. Another servant enters, reporting that a grave has been

violated, and a shrouded disfigured body found, still alive. Egaeus finds his

clothes are covered in mud and blood, and opens the box to find it contains

dental instruments and "thirty-two small, white and ivory-looking substances" –

Berenice's teeth.

The Latin epigraph, "Dicebant mihi sodales si sepulchrum amicae visitarem,

curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas," at the head of the text may be

translated as: "My companion said to me, if I would visit the grave of my friend,

I might somewhat alleviate my worries." This quote is also seen by Egaeus in an

open book towards the end of the story.

The Fall of the House of Usher

An unnamed narrator arrives at the House of Usher, a very creepy mansion

owned by his boyhood friend Roderick Usher. Roderick has been sick lately,

afflicted by a disease of the mind, and wrote to his friend, our narrator, asking

for help. The narrator spends some time admiring the awesomely spooky Usher

edifice. While doing so, he explains that Roderick and his sister are the last of

the Usher bloodline, and that the family is famous for its dedication to the arts

(music, painting, literature, etc.). Eventually, the narrator heads inside to see his

friend.

Roderick indeed appears to be a sick man. He suffers from an "acuteness of the

senses," or hyper-sensitivity to light, sound, taste, and tactile sensations; he

feels that he will die of the fear he feels. He attributes part of his illness to the

fact that his sister, Madeline, suffers from catalepsy (a sickness involving

seizures) and will soon die, and part of it to the belief that his creepy house is

sentient (able to perceive things) and has a great power over him. He hasn’t left

the mansion in years. The narrator tries to help him get his mind off all this

death and gloom by poring over the literature, music, and art that Roderick so

loves. It doesn’t seem to help.

As Roderick predicted, Madeline soon dies. At least we think so. All we know is

that Roderick tells the narrator she’s dead, and that she appears to be dead

when he looks at her. Of course, because of her catalepsy, she might just look

like she’s dead, post-seizure. Keep that in mind. At Roderick’s request, the

narrator helps him to entomb her body in one of the vaults underneath the

mansion. While they do so, the narrator discovers that the two of them were

twins and that they shared some sort of supernatural, probably extrasensory,

bond.

About a week later, on a dark and 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. It doesn’t take long for

Usher to freak out; he jumps up and declares that they buried Madeline alive

and that now she is coming back. Sure enough, the doors blow open and there

stands a trembling, bloody Madeline. She throws herself at Usher, who falls to

the floor and, after "violent" agony, dies along with his sister. The narrator flees;

outside he watches the House of Usher crack in two and sink into the dark, dank

pool that lies before it.

The Oval Portrait

The tale begins with an injured narrator (the story offers no further explanation

of his or her impairment) seeking refuge in an abandoned mansion in

the Apennines. The narrator spends his or her time admiring the paintings that

decorate the strangely shaped room and perusing a volume, found upon a

pillow, that describes them.

Upon moving the candle closer to the book, the narrator immediately discovers

a before-unnoticed painting depicting the head and shoulders of a young girl.

The picture inexplicably enthralls the narrator "for an hour perhaps". After

steady reflection, he or she realizes that the painting's "absolute life-likeliness'

of expression is the captivating feature. The narrator eagerly consults the book

for an explanation of the picture. The remainder of the story henceforth is a

quote from this book — a story within a story.

The book describes a tragic story involving a young maiden of "the rarest

beauty". She loved and wedded an eccentric painter who cared more about his

work than anything else in the world, including his wife. The painter eventually

asked his wife to sit for him, and she obediently consented, sitting "meekly for

many weeks" in his turret chamber. The painter worked so diligently at his task

that he did not recognize his wife's fading health, as she, being a loving wife,

continually "smiled on and still on, uncomplainingly". As the painter neared the

end of his work, he let no one enter the turret chamber and rarely took his eyes

off the canvas, even to watch his wife. After "many weeks had passed," he

finally finished his work. As he looked on the completed image, however, he felt

appalled, as he exclaimed, "This is indeed Life itself!" Thereafter, he turned

suddenly to regard his bride and discovered that she had died.

The Premature Burial

In "The Premature Burial", the first-person unnamed narrator describes his

struggle with things such as "attacks of the singular disorder which physicians

have agreed to term catalepsy," a condition where he randomly falls into a

death-like trance. This leads to his fear of being buried alive ("The true

wretchedness," he says, is "to be buried while alive."). He emphasizes his fear

by mentioning several people who have been buried alive. In the first case, the

tragic accident was only discovered much later, when the victim's crypt was

reopened. In others, victims revived and were able to draw attention to

themselves in time to be freed from their ghastly prisons.

The narrator reviews these examples in order to provide context for his nearly

crippling phobia of being buried alive. As he explains, his condition made him

prone to slipping into a trance state of unconsciousness, a disease that grew

progressively worse over time. He became obsessed with the idea that he would

fall into such a state while away from home, and that his state would be

mistaken for death. He extracts promises from his friends that they will not bury

him prematurely, refuses to leave his home, and builds an elaborate tomb with

equipment allowing him to signal for help in case he should awaken after

"death".

The story culminates when the narrator awakens in pitch darkness in a confined

area - he has been buried alive, and all his precautions were to no avail. He cries

out and is immediately hushed; he realizes that he is in the berth of a small

boat, not a grave. The event shocks him out of his obsession with death.

The Raven

It's late at night, and late in the year (after midnight on a December evening, to

be precise). A man is sitting in his room, half reading, half falling asleep, and

trying to forget his lost love, Lenore. Suddenly, he hears someone (or

something) knocking at the door.

He calls out, apologizing to the "visitor" he imagines must be outside. Then he

opens the door and finds…nothing. This freaks him out a little, and he reassures

himself that it is just the wind against the window. So he goes and opens the

window, and in flies (you guessed it) a raven.

The Raven settles in on a statue above the door, and for some reason, our

speaker's first instinct is to talk to it. He asks for its name, just like you usually

do with strange birds that fly into your house, right? Amazingly enough, though,

the Raven answers back, with a single word: "Nevermore."

Understandably surprised, the man asks more questions. The bird's vocabulary

turns out to be pretty limited, though; all it says is "Nevermore." Our narrator

catches on to this rather slowly and asks more and more questions, which get

more painful and personal. The Raven, though, doesn't change his story, and

the poor speaker starts to lose his sanity.