NBC Short Story - Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall Of The House Of Usher" (1958) - Boxcars711 Old Time Radio Pod

EDGAR ALLAN POE'S "FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER"

The NBC Short Stories were very high quality productions. Authors ranger from Shelley to Bradbury to Edgar Allen Poe. In this episode, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, as like many of Poe's stories, does not use the typical, first person point of view where the protagonist tells a personal account of a crime that he or she has committed. Instead, the narrator is a character of whom we know very little, who acts like a participant/observer. It is easy for the reader to become "the friend" in Poe's story as both the narrator and the reader invite "madness" as they are drawn into the underworld of the mind where fantasy becomes reality. Twice near the end of the story, Roderick calls the narrator "Madman!" However, the narrator escapes, to watch both the tenants and the house of Usher disappear into the tarn, an underworld which is their true home.