Madeline is somewhat elusive to the narrator for the majority of the story, for she pays no mind to him, and he says, “As he spoke, the lady Madeline (for she was so called) passed through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared” (Poe 600). Madeline suffers from a condition where she goes into a comatose state for extended periods of time. Roderick, in a very disturbed state of mind, mistakes one of her cataleptic episodes with death, and asks the narrator to help him bury her. Later that night, much to the narrator’s horror, Roderick reveals that they buried Madeline alive, and the sounds they were hearing was Madeline trying to escape her imprisonment (whether or not this was purposeful is debatable). Ultimately, this false burial leads to Madeline’s actual death, but before she dies, she comes into the room Roderick and the narrator are in and, quite literally, frightens Roderick to death. The narrator flees directly after, and the House of Usher collapses in on itself, to be swallowed by the tarn.…