Question

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 ennuyé1 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:


hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity


What is the meaning of this description of Usher’s hair?


A) His hair is thin and creepy.

B) His hair is made of spiderwebs.

C) His hair is filled with bugs.

D) His hair is coarse and healthy.

Answer 1

A

Step-by-step explanation:

Answer 2

The meaning of this description of Usher is that (A.) his hair is thin and creepy.

In "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe, Roderick Usher is a man that suffers from fear and it is as ill as his twin sister. The narrator describes him as pale and very thin and he even talks about a "cadaverousness of complexion". His hair also contributes to create this "madman" image since the narrator characterizes his hair as thin and he even compares it to a spiderweb for its weakness, which also makes it look creepy.