Fall of the House of Usher, excerpt By Edgar Allan Poe
Upon my entrance, Usher rose from a sofa on which he had been lying at full length, and greeted me with a
vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality-of
the constrained effort of
the ennuyél man of the world. A glance, however, at his countenance convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We
sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe.
Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty
that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before me with the companion of my early
boyhood. Yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an
eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly
beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a
finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like
softness and tenuity; - these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up
altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing
character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I
doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above
all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its
wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its
Arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.
1Bored
Read this line from the text:
And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were
wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke.
What does the narrator mean by I doubted to whom I spoke in this paragraph?
He has never met this person before.
O He knows this is an imposter.
O He has decided to leave.
O He thinks his friend has changed a lot.