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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What superstitious impression chains Usher?
(a) The belief that Usher's grandfather controls Usher's life from the other side
(b) The belief the garden is full of evil sprites
(c) The belief that a demon lives in the cellar
(d) The belief that the house of Usher had itself caused Usher's malady

2. What two aspects of the Usher family does the narrator say the peasantry links together?
(a) Their name and their behavior
(b) Their madness and generosity
(c) Their intellect and their eccentricities
(d) Their family name and the family mansion

3. How does Usher greet the narrator?
(a) With a certain amount of cynicism
(b) With charmed indifference
(c) With grave formality
(d) With a vivacious warmth

4. What deficiency does the narrator note about the Usher family ancestry?
(a) That it was speckled with other races
(b) It had included persons of dubious character
(c) That the entire family lay in the direct line of descent
(d) That it had a number of issues that were never discussed

5. How does the narrator describe Usher's ideality?
(a) Lofty
(b) Imaginative
(c) Unintelligible
(d) Base

6. For what temperament does the narrator say the Usher family is known?
(a) Placid
(b) Artistic
(c) Sanguine
(d) Mercurial

7. Instead of danger, what does Usher abhor?
(a) Terror
(b) A placid life
(c) Being abandoned by all
(d) Being misunderstood

8. What is the narrator doing at the opening of the story?
(a) Writing a letter to his son
(b) Plowing
(c) Riding on horseback
(d) Fighting in a duel

9. What does the narrator have to ride over to approach near the house?
(a) A wooden bridge of several haphazard planks
(b) A covered bridge wide enough for three carriages to ride abreast
(c) A short causeway
(d) A shallow stream

10. What does Usher try to overcome in the presence of the narrator according to the narrator?
(a) Usher's nervous agitation
(b) The resentment Usher had always held toward the narrator for the narrator's superior mind
(c) The sorrow Usher felt when the narrator's sister rejected his marriage proposal
(d) The rancor the two men felt when they last parted

11. How does Usher announce Madeline's death?
(a) He does not announce it; he lets the narrator learn of it when the narrator goes to visit Madeline
(b) Abruptly
(c) He sings her a dirge
(d) He has the physician tell the narrator

12. Upon what do the clouds press according to the narrator?
(a) The gates of hell
(b) The bog and tarn
(c) His own fears
(d) The turrets of the house

13. What about the facade of the mansion seems contradictory?
(a) The bright colors of the soffit compared to the grey of the stone
(b) The fact that so many individual stones are crumbling but the mansion is still quite intact
(c) The care taken with the cornices compared to the haphazard placing of the windows
(d) The fact that the grounds are so well kept compared to the facade of the mansion

14. What bewilders the narrator as he listens to Usher speak of his problem?
(a) Why Usher refuses to see a physician
(b) The way Usher speaks in a combination of French, English and Italian
(c) Why Usher wants the narrator there
(d) Some of the symptoms that Usher relates pertaining to his malady

15. What word does the narrator use to describe the hours he spends with Usher?
(a) Lazy
(b) Solemn
(c) Frightful
(d) Peaceful

Short Answer Questions

1. From what does the narrator say his feelings about Usher must arise?

2. What had Usher done as the narrator is reading to him?

3. What emotion does the narrator say is rapidly increasing as he sits aside his horse and surveys the surroundings?

4. How does the narrator know Usher is not asleep?

5. What is one of the Usher's favorite volumes that the narrator and Usher read?

(see the answer keys)

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