Conversations: About Edgar Allan Poe

I love teaching Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “Fall of the House of Usher” to my 11th graders. I love Poe’s language, I love his magnificent skill at crafting the perfect mood for his story, I love the way Poe could create characters and stories that stick with you not just hours after your finish the story, but months and years later. But mostly, I love teaching this story because invariably (as happened today), my class winds up having some variation of the following conversation:

Me: What the narrator is implying here is that… well… the Usher Family Tree didn’t have a lot of branches on it.
Student 1: You mean they’re inbred?
Me: Yep.
Student 2: I bet that’s why he’s so sick all the time!
Me: Very good. If a person has a recessive gene, then has a child with somebody else who has the same gene, there’s a much greater chance that the gene will become dominant. That can cause all kinds of different, unwanted conditions and abnormalities. From a genetic viewpoint, that’s the problem with inbreeding.
Student 2: Are there other problems?
Me: Of course. There’s the cultural reason it’s a bad idea.
Student 1: What’s the cultural reason?
Me: It gives me the flaming heebie-jeebies.