While the objects around me—while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy—while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this—I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. (6)

This creeptastic short story takes treating-the-setting-as-a-character to a whole new level. This house is old and it is mad…but we don't really know why. The brother and sister pair (the Usher twins) are suffering from a pair of truly awful illnesses. Here, the narrator ponders his current state of fear in a place that should be familiar.

In this passage, the comfortable sense of the familiar is subverted and the house makes the narrator feel uneasy. The house used to be as well-known to him as his friend, but now, like his friend, things are different, strange, and frightening. The setting itself also suggests a supernatural undercurrent that the narrator can't explain. In keeping with Gothic literature's highest values, the house definitely makes him feel things and moves his imagination to some interesting places.

Poe heightens suspense by using first-person perspective. This was a common technique of later Gothic novels, and it served to keep the reader in the dark. That brings us to the reliability of this unnamed character: How can we trust him? How can we assess the truth of what he's saying when he's experiencing these strange things?