Read the excerpt from "the fall of the house of usher." i had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the usher race, all time-honoured 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. how does poe develop a short story element in the paragraph? by characterizing usher’s family as close-knit by revealing a conflict between usher family members by unfolding the plot as the narrator meets his friend’s family by introducing family and heredity as underlying themes