Gothic Genre Lesson

1. The fall of the
house of usher
Edgar Allan Poe
Week 1 & 2

2. 1. Students will deepen their perspective of the text by reading, writing, speaking,
listening, and presenting.
2. Expand their knowledge and use of academic and concept vocabulary.
3. Note differences in language style over time and in various contexts.
4. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English, grammar and
usage when writing or speaking
Lesson OBJECTIVES

3. Typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts.
Usually involves murder or other crimes & remains mysterious
until the end of the story.
Combines dark elements, spooky settings and disturbed
characters.
Expresses deep emotions and thoughts in a personal way.
Overlaps subgenres including crime, horror and detective fiction.
Activity
Instructions: You will be presented with 5 statements that define 5 different
literature genres. You must then decide which statement best defines that
genre. Students will be picked at random to come to the whiteboard and
write the correct definition to the genre.
Statements

4. Science
fiction
Typically deals with imaginative and futuristic
concepts.
Mystery Usually involves murder or other crimes &
remains mysterious until the end of the story.
Gothic Combines dark elements, spooky settings and
disturbed characters.
Poetry Expresses deep emotions and thoughts in a
personal way.
Thriller Overlaps subgenres including crime, horror and
detective fiction.
Answers

5. Guess what genre we are focusing on by
listening to the sound.
I will give you 1 minute to listen.

6. 02
Fall of the house of
usher
Edgar Allan Poe

7. 03
VOCABULARY

8. VOCABULARY
Turn to PG.12 in your Savvas textbook.
You have 12 minutes to find the part of speech, meaning, synonym, and write a sentence for
each word. Use https://www.learnersdictionary.com/ to
find word meanings and https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus for synonyms.
1. Annihilate
2. Antiquity
3. Fissure
4. Dissolution
5. Rending
6. Tumultuous

9. ANNIHILATE
Utterly or completely destroy something or someone; oblite
MEANING:
PART OF SPEECH:
SYNONYMS:
Verb
Crush, beat, conquer.
The atomic bomb annihilated numerous villages in Japan.

10. Antiquity
The ancient past, especially the period of classical and
other human civilizations before the Middle Ages.
.
MEANING:
PART OF SPEECH:
SYNONYMS:
Noun
Antiques, relics, of ancient times
The great civilizations of antiquity may be found in Rome.

11. FISSURE
A long, narrow opening or line of breakage made by
cracking or splitting, especially in rock or earth.
MEANING:
PART OF SPEECH:
SYNONYMS:
Noun
Crack, crevices, hairline cracks
The bacteria survive around vents or fissures in the deep ocean floor.

12. Dissolution
The action of formally ending or dismissing an
assembly, partnership, or official body.
MEANING:
PART OF SPEECH:
SYNONYMS:
Noun
Ending, termination, closure.
The dissolution of their marriage resulted in a sad divorce.

13. RENDING
To tear (something) into pieces.
MEANING:
PART OF SPEECH:
SYNONYMS:
Verb
Tear, rip, split.
The crocodile has snapping teeth that would rend human flesh to shreds.

14. TUMULTUOUS
Making an uproar or loud, confused noise.
MEANING:
PART OF SPEECH:
SYNONYMS:
Adjective
Rowdy, loud, wild (storm)
As the rock star sang there was a tumultuous applause.

15. About the author
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) is regarded as the
first American literary critic and the inventor
of the detective story. Despite his literary
success, Poe’s life was almost as dark and
dismal as the fiction he wrote. Shortly after his
birth, his father deserted the family, and his
mother died. He was raised by a wealthy yet
miserly merchant and lived most of his adult
life in extreme poverty. Poe died at the age of
40. The circumstances of his death remain a
mystery.

16. At the beginning of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of
Usher,” the narrator responds to a mysterious summons and travels
to the ancestral home of Roderick Usher, a sick friend he’s hardly
seen since childhood. Known as the House of Usher, the vast, ancient
structure overlooks a dark lake that intensifies its gloom. “House of
Usher” also refers to the old and distinguished family that will no
longer exist if Roderick dies: his twin sister Madeline is close to
death, and he is the end of the line. The narrator establishes a routine
of reading and music to distract Roderick from mortal dread. When
Madeline dies, they deposit her body in a secure vault under the
house, but when the narrator tries to resume their routine, he
inadvertently unlocks from deep within the House of Usher a force
of evil that transcends our understanding of life and death.
SUMARRY

17. As we read, please follow in
your textbooks
• Make annotations
• Make notes
• Draw inferences
Close read

18. Paragraph 1
● Setting is mysterious so it creates a dull, dark,
miserable mood.
● Overall narrator is feeling anxious, depressed
● He is describing the house of Usher
● The words that describe the mood create an overall
feeling of anxiety for the reader
● Last sentence: he describes the house as remodeled since
every time he looks at it, it seems scarier than before.
● Imagery- Gray sedges (plants), decayed trees
● The description of the setting is creating a foreboding,
ominous mood that makes you feel like something bad
is going to happen.
● Creates a sense of thrill, sense of disturbing

19. MOOD
Mark details in the first three sentences of
paragraph 1 that the author uses to describe the
setting and the narrator’s feelings about the setting.
What can a reader can infer from the author’s
descriptions?
By using words such as melancholy and insufferable
gloom, the author is creating a dark and gloomy
mood. These details connect the emotional state of
the narrator directly to the setting of the story. The
author included these details to illustrate the
connection between the characters in the story and
the setting in which the story takes place. Together,
these details set the mood of the text.

20. Par. 8
Mark details in paragraph 8 that relate to the absence
of color and force.
What portrait of Usher do these details create?
Usher’s appearance has changed dramatically since the
narrator last saw him, and not for the better.
What does this portrayal of Usher help the reader
understand?
Usher has been completely cut off from society, living
alone in the house with his sister, and he has become
more and more mentally unstable.

21. PAR. 13
In the first two sentences of paragraph 13, mark the
sections that are set off by dashes or parentheses.
Why does the author structure these sentences in this
way?
The text between the dashes and parentheses is used to
further explain details in the sentences.
What do these fragmented sentences suggest about the
way Usher speaks and behaves?
These fragmented sentences suggest that Usher speaks
and behaves in a rambling, disjointed way.

22. PAR. 25
Mark examples of Usher’s character according to the narrator
in paragraph 25.
What can we infer from what was marked?
The narrator is afraid that Usher’s preoccupation with the
destruction of beauty and order has led him to explore some
very dangerous areas of secret knowledge that are kept
hidden beyond the range of normal human perception.
Why do you think the author might have included these
details?
These details are important because they indicate to the reader
the grave danger Usher had put himself in. They also show
that the narrator has some knowledge of the kind of research
Usher has been involved in.

23. PAR. 30
In paragraph 30, mark words that relate to physical
actions and behavior.
What do these physical details show about Usher’s
mental state and emotions?
They provide evidence of Usher’s descent into insanity
and despair.
What is the effect of these descriptive details?
These descriptive details set a scary and unsettling
suspenseful tone.

24. PAR. 46
Mark details of words that the author chooses to repeat.
These repetitions are intended to echo or reflect the
persistent morbidity of Usher’s terrified utterances.
We can infer that the repetition of these words
compounds the reader’s understanding of the character’s
delirious state

25. 04
ANALYZE CRAFT
AND STRUCTURE

26. “The Fall of the House of Usher” is an example of Gothic literature,
a literary genre that began in England in the late 1700s. The term
Gothic was originally used as an architectural term. It refers to
medieval buildings, such as castles and cathedrals, that were seen
as dark and gloomy by later generations. When writers began to
set their stories in those buildings of the past, the term for the
architecture was applied to the literature. The Gothic style, which
has the following elements, appealed to Edgar Allan Poe’s dark
view of the world:
• Bleak or remote settings
• Characters in psychological and/or physical torment
• Plots that involve weird incidents
• Strongly dramatic and intensely descriptive language
• A gloomy, melancholy, or eerie mood
• Symbolism that evokes ideas and feelings through repeated
images

27. 05
Homework and
activities

28. Complete the table on PG. 33

29. HOMEWORK:
Comprehension check Pg. 20
Extension questions:
Assigned on SAVVAS

30. COMPREHENSION CHECK
The narrator has come to help Usher through an illness.
The narrator observes a long crack running down the front of the house.
Usher shares paintings he has created, including one that shows a deep, subterranean vault. He
also plays music and improvises songs, one of which –”The Haunted Palace”- the narrator
reproduces entirely.
The narrator learns that Usher and Madeline were twins.
The narrator confesses that they must have put Madeline into the vault
alive.

31. 06
GRAMMAR
Dependent and independent clauses

32. WATCH VIDEO ABOUT INDEPENDENT AND DEPENDENT
CLAUSES. WHAT IS THE MAIN DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN
INDEPENDENT AND DEPENDENT CLAUSE?
WARM-UP

33. dependent and independent
Sentences can be classified by the number of independent and dependent clauses
they contain. An independent clause has a subject and a verb and can stand alone as a
complete thought. A dependent, or subordinate clause also has a subject and a verb,
but it cannot stand alone as a complete thought. This chart shows examples from
“The Fall of the House of Usher” of the four basic sentence structures

34. Simple: The house collapses.
Compound: The house collapses, and the lake
seems to swallow it whole.
Complex: The house collapses as I flee in
terror.
Compound-Complex: The house collapses,
and the lake seems to swallow it whole, as I
flee in terror.

35. WORDWALL
wordwall.net/resource/6413351
Complete the quiz on Wordwall to
test your understanding of
dependent and independent
sentences

36. Complete the SAVVAS ASSIGNED
WORKSHEET Conventions worksheet

37. WRITING

38. PROJECT 1: EXPLANATORY TEXT
Explanatory essay

39. Consider class discussions, presentations, and the Launch Text
as you think about the prompt.
PROMPT: In what ways does transformation play a role in
stories meant to scare us?
QUICKWRITE
In your notebooks, write a short paragraph responding to the
prompt. You have 15 minutes for this activity.

40. POSSIBLE
RESPONSE
QUICKWRITE ACTIVITY
Stories that are designed to scare us use
things that are unexpected or
uncomfortable. Transformation can be
both unexpected and uncomfortable.
When a person or an object changes or
transforms unexpectedly, it startles us.
It even creates feelings of fear, because
once something has transformed once,
you never know when it might happen
again and whether the transformation
will be good or bad.No matter whether a
transformation is big or small, fast or
slow, it can make us uncomfortable.
People do not usually like change. We
like things to stay the way they are
because it is what we are used to and we
know how to handle it. When stories
include transformations, they can make
us uncomfortable, just like change
makes us uncomfortable in real life