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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does the narrator say is the principal feature of the Usher mansion upon closer inspection?
(a) Pretension
(b) Ostentatious detail
(c) Excessive antiquity
(d) Ornate gables

2. What is the "grim phantasm"?
(a) A ghost who haunts the House of Usher
(b) Fear
(c) The night
(d) Death

3. What does Usher do when Madeline passes through the apartment?
(a) Asks if she is well
(b) Cries
(c) Asks her to summon a servant
(d) Jumps up and hugs her

4. What is the narrator later unable to convey about the time he spent with Usher?
(a) The horror at being trapped with a madman
(b) Exactly what the two did during the time
(c) The ways Madeline continually impinged upon their time
(d) The sorrow at failing to cheer his friend

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

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

7. In what was much of the vault beneath the narrator's apartments sheathed?
(a) Wood
(b) Copper
(c) Stone
(d) Iron

8. What does Usher say he dreads?
(a) Events in the future
(b) Losing his mind
(c) His sister suffering because of him
(d) The past being uncovered

9. What is the "Ververt et Chartreuse"?
(a) A painting by Monet
(b) A region in France
(c) A book ostensibly by Gresset
(d) A poem by Machiavelli

10. What is Usher carrying as he knocks on the narrator's door?
(a) A Bible
(b) A lantern
(c) A book
(d) A sword

11. What does the narrator think Usher is attempting to find the courage to do after Madeline has been dead for several days?
(a) Ask the narrator to live there permanently
(b) Tell the narrator a secret
(c) Bury Madeline
(d) Leave his home and travel abroad

12. What effect does Usher think plants have had upon his life?
(a) They have kept him alive long after he should be dead
(b) They have whispered insane arguments to him and caused him anxiety
(c) They have made him what he is now
(d) They have kept him tied to the manor

13. What does the narrator describe as long and improvised
(a) Usher's harangues against the gods
(b) Usher's dirges
(c) The fighting songs the two sang together
(d) The paeans to his ancestral lineage

14. How does the hero finally get into the dwelling?
(a) Magic
(b) Coaxing
(c) By force
(d) He doesn't get in

15. What appalls the narrator when Usher enters the narrator's rooms?
(a) Usher's joviality
(b) Usher's recital of a poem that makes no sense
(c) Usher's general demeanor
(d) Usher's desire to enlist the narrator's aid

Short Answer Questions

1. How does the narrator describe the atmosphere of the room?

2. Of what does the narrator suggest the MS. he receives gives evidence?

3. What is the creature guarding?

4. What does the narrator describe Usher as seeming to pour forth as if it were "an inherent positive quality"?

5. What happens to the narrator as he lies in bed the eighth night after Madeline's death?

(see the answer keys)

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