As the narrator comes to the House of Usher, he is filled with an inexplicable and overwhelming sense of gloom and foreboding. Nothing he does, no stretch of his imagination, can erase his black mood.
He explains that he is on his way to the House of Usher to spend a few weeks at the request of his childhood friend, Roderick Usher. Roderick had written to him detailing his current mental agitation and hoping that a visit might cheer him in some way. The narrator admits that, though they were close as children, he knows little of Roderick now except that his family has been very passionate about the arts. He also notes that, "the stem of the Usher race ... had put forth, at no point, any enduring.....
