Edgar Poe
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 ennuyél 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.
In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence-an inconsistency, and I soon found this to arise from a series of
feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy-an excessive nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed
been prepared, no less by his letter than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical
conformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision to that
species of energetic concision—that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation—that leaden, self-balanced and
perfectly modulated guttural utterance.
Bored
Which of the following descriptions does Poe use to directly illustrate the "incoherence" and "inconsistency of Usher?
O suffered to grow all unneeded
O His voice varied rapidly
ghastly pallor of the skin
O A cadaverousness of complexion