The Works of Edgar Allan Poe
What was the name of the familial house featured in one of Poe's 1839 short stories that included a woman buried alive and the end of a dynasty?
- The House of Usher is the setting for this sad story, featuring ghostly happenings, bumps in the night, and an entombed Usher descendant who ultimately ends the bloodline.
What animal is featured at the center of Poe's most famous poem, penned in 1845, that repeatedly utters the phrase "Nevermore"?
- "Quoth the raven" is one of the most iconic lines of poetry in the last few centuries, and Poe's masterpiece is beloved by many readers.
In "The Tell-Tale Heart", after a murderer hides his victim's body, where does the killer believe he hears the dead man's heart impossibly beating?
- After dismembering his victim, the narrator-and-murderer is consumed by guilt and thinks he can hear the dead man's heart beating below the floorboards where his body was hidden.
What was the name of the man entombed alive behind a brick wall in "The Cask of Amontillado"?
- Centered around ideas of revenge, fear of small spaces, and body horror, Poe describes the skin-crawling situation where Fortunado is methodically bricked up behind a cellar wall during a party.
What happened to the narrator's love interest named Annabel Lee, in Poe's 1849 poem by the same name?
- Though the young lovers were deeply infatuated, Annabel Lee caught a chill by the ocean and succumbed to the illness, later being buried by the sea.
What was the name of the lady described as "rare and radiant" in Poe's "The Raven"?
- The speaker of the poem asks the raven above his doorframe about his deceased love, asking if he will eventually "clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."
What is the name of the short story published in 1838 that details a man's first wife dying, and his second wife, Rowena, shortly sickening and also passing away— but when he prepares her body for burial, Rowena has transformed into his first wife?
- At the end of the story, it appears that the husband's longing for his first wife, named Ligeia, or perhaps her own sorcery has brought her back from the dead— but not as the same woman.
In Poe's story "The Masque of the Red Death", how does a group of wealthy individuals try to avoid a deadly plague sweeping the land, called the Red Death?
- In a metaphor for hubris, the prince and his friends throw a ball to wait out the plague— little do they know, the specter of sickness has already entered the building and begins killing the guests.
In the story "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", written in 1841, who was the murderer the entire time and killed two women?
- The murders of two women were ultimately traced back to a sailor's pet orangutan that gets spooked and, armed with a shaving razor, flees into the night in confusion and fear.
Which of Poe's short stories has the following famous first line: "I was sick— sick unto death with that long agony"?
- Starting in media res, "The Pit and the Pendulum" is a classic Poe title and an excruciating tale of prison, pain, and punishment.
