PSAT Reading Practice Test 40: Fiction: "The Fall of the House of Usher"

Questions 1-9 refer to the following information.

Below is the opening excerpt from Edgar Allan Poe's 1839 short story, "The Fall of the House of Usher," in which an unnamed narrator approaches the home of his childhood friend Roderick Usher after not having seen him for many years.

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the
clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through
a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening
drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was-but, with the
05first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insuffer-
able; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment,
with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or
terrible. I looked upon the scene before me-upon the mere house, and the simple landscape
features of the domain-upon the bleak walls-upon the vacant eye-like windows-upon a
10few rank sedges-and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees-with an utter depression of
soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of
the reveller upon opium-the bitter lapse into every-day life-the hideous dropping off of the
veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart-an unredeemed dreariness of
thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What
15was it-I paused to think-what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House
of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that
crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclu-
sion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which
have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations
20beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars
of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to
annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse
to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling,
and gazed down-but with a shudder even more thrilling than before-upon the remodelled
25and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like
windows.
Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of some weeks.
Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon companions in boyhood; but many
years had elapsed since our last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant
30part of the country-a letter from him-which, in its wildly importunate nature, had admitted
of no other than a personal reply. The MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer
spoke of acute bodily illness-of a mental disorder which oppressed him-and of an earnest
desire to see me, as his best and indeed his only personal friend, with a view of attempting, by
the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all
35this, and much more, was said-it was the apparent heart that went with his request-which
allowed me no room for hesitation; and I accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered
a very singular summons.
Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really knew little of my
friend. His reserve had been always excessive and habitual. I was aware, however, that his
40very ancient family had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of tempera-
ment, displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and manifested, of
late, in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion
to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognizable beau-
ties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher
45race, all time-honored as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other
words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling
and very temporary variation, so lain.