Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allen Poe was a very famous poet and writer,Poe created many poems and stories such as The Raven, The Tall -Tale Heart, The Fall of The House of Usher and many more. (tompson 1)Edgar lived from 1809 to 1849. He was born on January 19,1809, in Boston Massachusetts but grew up in Richmond Virgina but through his many travels he lived in half a dozen eastern cities. He lived a short and tragic life. His first career was to study in law but soon went against his family and started a career in acting. His critic reviews were poor. Many critics thought his technique was bad.

Edgars father was an actor by the name of David Poe and his mother also an actress by the name of Elizabeth. edgar was the second of three children, about the time that the third child was born Edgars father died. After his father had died Edgars mother and her two yougest children went to Richmond, his brother William already had been settled with relatives in Baltimore. Poes mother was in the lastest stages of her diesease, struggling with two kids, she died. Edgar and , an infant, Rosalie, were orphaned. Poe finally was hit with the reliazation of his parents death.

In 1811on a visit of generousity, Mrs. Francis Allen learned of the situation of the Poe babies. Mrs. Allen had no babies of her own and to that she took home handsome little Edgar. Mr. John Allen didnt aprove of a permant adoption but he began to in time support the child, and became proud of his good looks and intelligence. When Edgar was six years old Mr. Allens bussiness took them to Scotland, they lived there for about five years. Edgar persued his education at the Irvin Grammer School in Irvin, Scotland. After many journeys throughtout his hildhood Edgar and the Allens returned to Richmond, Virgina.

There at the age of 11 Mr. Allen enrolled Edgar into the English and Classical School attended by sons of the more fashionable families of Richmond. There Edgar began to feel the difference between himself and the others at this school. To this Edgar the sense of injury made its self evident at home with fits of temper and rebellion for which there seemed to the family , no justification. Mr. Allen did not put up with such behavior , Mr. Allen repeatedly reminded Edgar about his “disreputable” parentage.

In Edgars college years his growing antagonism between father and son, Mr. Allen was willing to send Edgar to the University of Virgina. Edgar had gone to the university to in fact get away from the Allen house hold. This indescribable social college campus set Edgar in for a major turn around , Edgar began to gamble to where he couldnt pay off debts he incountered, when Edgar drank is sent him into a wild statof excitement. Edagr was then pulled out of the University for such behavior. Mr. Allen then out him in a low, routine job at hjis counting house. This was very humiliating or Edgar and he just couldnt bear it anymore , the answer, to leave home.

He left to Boston where he manage to publish a collection of his poems, desperate for money, he then joined the army under the name of Edgar A. Perry. Army barracks were no place for this young noblemen. Poe turned to his foster father for reconciliation, Mr. Allens then purchased Edgar out of the army, which was possible at that time. Shortly after he publisheds another set of his writings. Little more then a year after Poe decided consider a military career, he gained admission to the United States Military Academy at West Point , New York.

Edgar was of two minds about the Academy: an army career was suitable for a Virginia gentleman he longed to be, but the discipline was uncongenial. The second mind won, and Edgar deliberately provoked expulsion by cutting all drills and classes. This was it for Mr. Allen. Mrs. Allen death removed Edgars friend in the house. Edgars love life began with a woman named Sarah Elmira Royster, they got engaged but never got married because sarahs dad disapproved of the marriage . Edgar went to Charlottesville but said he would write to her everyday.

Her father intercepted every letter he wrote her and everyday since sarah never got the letters of course she never wrote back and everyday that Edgar never got a letter from her he got more and more depressed. John Allen broke off the engagement . (tompson5) In the two years after his final rupture with Mr. Allan, Poe lived for a considerable time in Baltimore with his aunt, Mrs. Maria (Poe) Clemm. She was a poor seamstress, but she welcomed Poe into her home and took care of him. Outwardly, it was a do-nothing period for him, but inwardly it was significant.

He wrote a group of npublished short stories. Even more importantly, he began to dramatize himself as one whom “unmerciful disaster followed fast and followed faster”. He probably had an inherited emotional instability which fed his feeling of persecution. Once established in his job, he brought Mrs. Clemm and her daughter, Virginia, to live with him. A little later he married his cousin, Virginia, who was some years younger than he. From that time on, the three formed a household. Throughout all his vicissitudes, the two women, his wife, Virginia, and her mother were unfailingly devoted to him.

Much f the time, Mrs. Clemm kept boarders to make a home for Poe and Virginia. Mrs. Clemm found no fault in him; at his worst, to her he was “poor Eddie”. Her motherliness cradled all his weaknesses and eccentricities. (He called her “Muddie. “) In her way, Virginia was equally devoted. She was sweet and gentle, but rather simple-minded. She could not follow the wild flights of Poe’s erratic genius, but she gave him an adoring, unquestioned admiration which was incense to his spirit. She found a childish pleasure and absorption clipping and pasting the long scrolls on which he wrote.

Poe, in turn, showed his best self to them. Here, where there was no will beside his own, where two loyal satellites revolved about the central sun of his ego, he was at his best and gentlest. He was affectionate toward Mrs. Clemm and increasingly tender and loving to Virginia, an invalid who was slowly dying of tuberculosis. The pathetic little family made its last move to a tiny cottage in Fordham, then a village about thirteen miles from New York. Mrs. Clemm set about making the place habitable, setting aside the best room of four as “dear Eddie’s” study.

They managed hrough the summer, but as autumn came on, there was not even fuel to warm the house. Virginia grew steadily worse. Poe sank deeper into melancholia. In the depth of winter, Virginia died. With the loss of his wife, Poe’s last hold on reality vanished. He worked feverishly at writing a book, Eureka, which he believed would be an expression of profound truth. It was more nearly a curious hodge-podge of unproven scientific statement and wild imagining, springing from his disturbed state. He wandered from one city to another, drifted back to Richmond and on to Baltimore, where he died.

Edgar Allan Poe was perhaps one of the most widely read and influential writers in Americas narrative history. He was born in Boston in 1809 to a family of traveling actors. His name at birth was simply Edgar Poe, but after the early death of both of his parents, he was taken in by the Allans. Thus he obtained the adopted name of Allan which he used as a middle name. From June 1815 until July 1820 Edgar was in England with the Allans, and from February until December 1826 he studied at the University of Virginia.

Nevertheless, he met his first and last love, Elmira Royster, while he was studying. He asked her to marry him twice, and even though he was accepted both times he never married her. His stay at the University of Virginia was cut short by his wild lifestyle, which involved a great amount of gambling. However, his life was not one of total happiness. Edgar Allan Poe was an epileptic, manic-depressive, and a neurophiliac. Perhaps his life of sorrow is what made him the great writer which everyone knows him as He is a figure who appears once an epoch, before passing into myth.

Edgar Allan Poe can be called a gothic writer by his unique use of medieval settings, murky atmospheres, and mysterious and violent incidents. Poe was a very talented writer with a vigorous imagination. Along with his immense writing ability and intense imagination; Poe had a seemingly boundless vocabulary. He mostly wrote poems and tales of dark and terror-causing subjects. Poe wrote many poems, and to the English language The Raven is one of the most recognized. He also published one novel along with the stories which he contributed to his many journals. Poe wrote sixty-eight tales during his lifetime, but only a few are known by everyone.

Edgar Allan Poes writings still hold their uniqueness in our literature through their possessions of shady surroundings and somewhat weird characters and events. In many of his poems Edgar Allan Poe placed the characters or events in somewhat medieval settings. His use of unique places stands out particularly in his world famous The Raven and also in Ulalume. In The Raven the poet is grieving the death of his lover Lenore in a chamber. Throughout the poem the narrator questions a raven which has flown into his chamber if he will ever see his lost love again.

After every question that he asks, the bird simply replies nevermore. In Ulalume the poet is in a spirit-haunted woodland. Ulalume is the name of the poets long dead love. In the poem the poet visits the tomb of his dead lover, yet he cannot figure out what demon made him come back to the gravesite. Poe also used medieval settings in some of his tales. The events in the tales happen all in the same placea remote, inaccessible surroundingbut the place each time is newly and splendidly decorated. The Fall of the House of Usher and The Cask of Amontillado are two excellent examples of his use of giving his tales unique settings.

In The Fall of the House of Usher the mansion appears to have a dull and mystic vapor when looked at through water. In the tale the fungi covered front of the mansion and the names of the characters give the story its unusual setting. In The Cask of Amontillado Montresor encaves Fortunado in a crypt to slowly die. After becoming drunk by Montresors wine, Fortunado finds himself in one of the tombs that hold Montresors ancestors. He awakens just in time to see the last of the bricks go in place to encase him in the cellar.

Edgar also used a gloomy atmosphere in a majority of his poems and tales. The City in the Sea, Dream-Land, and A Paean are just of few of his poems that possess his one-of-a-kind atmosphere. In The City in the Sea Death reins in the town. The town itself is actually founded by Death. In Dream-Land the land is made of lonely lakes and swamps. The land in the poem is ruled by a phantom called Night. In A Paean the girls friends are pleased that she died. The entire poem reflects on the secret pleasure of the characters about the death of the rich and beautiful young girl.

Poe used the same type of atmosphere in most of his tales; especially in The Premature Burial and The Fall of the House of Usher. In The Premature Burial the author mentions several accounts of people being buried alive. The entire tale is supposed to reveal the terror which goes along with being buried before death. The House of Usher looks out upon a black and lurid tarn and is surrounded by decaying vegetation. The tale shows how the sickness of Lady Usher plays on Roderick Ushers nerves and leads him to dying from fright when he realizes he has buried his sister prematurely.

Along with his use of medieval settings and gloomy atmospheres, Edgar Allan Poe also used accounts of violent actions throughout his works. The Black Cat and Annabel Lee serve as good examples of his use of barbaric actions. In The Black Cat the narrator tries to kill a cat with an axe but his wife intervenes. He then buries the axe in her head. In Annabel Lee the girl is taken and killed and buried in a tomb by the sea. The narrator mourns the loss of his beloved Annabel Lee throughout the entire poem. Perhaps the most known use of Poes use of violent actions comes from his tales.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue, William Wilson, and The Tell-Tale Heart stand out as good examples of the use of savage actions. William Wilson is a story about the life and crime of the narrator which takes the name of the tale. He tries to seduce the wife of a host who is throwing a party and is caught by the host. This time, however, he drags the offender into an antechamber and kills him with his sword. Even though the character only commits one crime, it leads him to suicide. In The Murders in the Rue Morgue a woman and her daughter have been murdered, and the narrator is attempting to find the bodies, when he finds a clue.

But a large amount of soot was lying in the fireplace, and they soon found the corpse of the daughter thrust up the chimney, head downward. He also finds the body of the mother in an alley close to the house with the head cut off. In The Tell-Tale Heart the narrator is driven mad the eye of his landlord. In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. In his devious plan to kill the old man, the narrator chops the body of the man into small parts and conceals them under the steps inside the gentleman’s house. Edgar Allen Poes unique writing ability earned him the fame he sought after all of his life.

However, this fame did not come until after he was well into his grave. Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it. The poet was known, personally or by reputation, in all this country: he had readers in England, and in several of the states of continental Europe: but he had few or no friends. Many people wondered what Poe died from, but the same idea was shared by everyone: Poes death is almost a suicide-a suicide a long time in preparation.

Poe was known to have a drinking problem as a result of his manic-depressive character. Alcoholism probably led him to his suicide, but no one knows the exact cause of his passing. Many people ask what caused the horror that made Poe what everyone knows him by. There are several ideas that explain the problem. Poe faced the death of several close people in his early years of life. Some believe that the loss of his parents, foster-parents, and friends started the gloomy shadow that would forever follow him.

His life became stricken with suicide attempts, delirium, and failing romantic entanglements after the death of his wife Virginia. Poe faced long periods of bankruptcy and little or no fame. Others believe that his lack of money and popularity caused the problem. Perhaps his manic-depressiveness caused him to drink so much. Whatever the cause of his death may be, it led to birth of one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century. Edgar Allan Poes use of ancient settings, sorrowful atmospheres, and odd and brutal actions have made him the greatest of gothic writers.

Edgar Alan Poe was an American writer, known as a poet and most famous as the first master of the short story, especially tales of the mysterious and macabre. The literary merits of Poe’s writings have been debated since his death, but his works have remained popular and many major American and European writers have professed their artistic debt to him. Born in Boston Massachusetts, Poe was orphaned in his early child hood. Raised by John Adam, A successful businessman of Richmond, Virginia.

Taken by the Allan Family to England, at the age of six, Poe was placed in a private school upon returning to the US in 1820, he ontinued to study in private school. He attended the university of Virginia for a year but in 1827 his foster father displeased by the young mans drinking and gambling he refused to pay his debts and forced him to work as a clerk. Poe, disliking his new duties intensely, quit the job, and went to Boston. Published his first book in 1827, Tamerland and Other Poems, in 1827, the book was published anonymously. Shortly afterward Poe enlisted in the U. S. Army and served a two-year term.

In 1829 his second volume of verse, Al Aaraaf, was published, and he effected reconciliation with Allan, who secured him an ppointment to the U. S. Military Academy. After only a few months at the academy Poe was dismissed for neglect of duty, and his foster father disowned him permanently. Poe’s third book, Poems, appeared in 1831, and the following year he moved to Baltimore, where he lived with his aunt and her 11year old daughter, Virginia Clemm. The following year his tale “A MS. Found in a Bottle” won a contest sponsored by the Baltimore Saturday Visitor.

From 1835 to 1837 Poe was an editor of the Southern Literary Messenger. In 1836 he married his young cousin. Throughout the next decade, much of which was marred by his wife’s long llness, Poe worked as an editor for various periodicals in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and in New York City. In 1847 Virginia died and Poe himself became ill; his disastrous addiction to liquor and his alleged use of drugs, may have contributed to his early death. The story a Tell-Tale Heart, by Edger Allan Poe is about a crazy man who has an obsession on another persons eye.

The man is crazy, but thinks that his sickness has sharpened his senses. He claims he can hear everything from heaven and earth and also many things in Hell. With all these self proclaim heightened senses the man wonders why is he considered mad. The crazy man lived with an elderly man. They were somewhat roommates. A specific characteristic of the elderly man drove the man he lived with crazy. It wasn’t bad habits or anything that you would think that would bring bickering between roommate. It was something that even the elderly man had no idea of. It was the elderly man’s eye.

His eye was kind of deformed, but to the roommate it was the sign of evil. He has been disgusted of the eye for the longest of time, but has never done anything that will harm the man. After time, the disturbed man plotted against his elderly roommate. During the week that action was going o take place the roommate was being extremely kind to the elderly man. His objective was to get rid the evil eye from his life. In a swift instent, in the bedroom of the old man, the disturbed roommate killed the man and rid himself of his “evil eye”. His covering up of the incident was, in his opinion, true generous.

The body was dismembered by every part and there was no mess. In the killers mind he wondered how a person who devised such a plan and cover up his tracks so well could be branded crazy. The next afternoon police came to the house. A shriek was heard and foul play was a suspicion. As before the man overed his tracks with virtually no flaw. No evidence of a violent disturbance was seen and an excuse for the absence of the elderly man was made. The man was very confident that his innocence would not be questioned in their mind. In the beginning of the story the man talked of how his sickness sharpened his senses.

This might have proven to be right because while the investigation was going all right the man heard the beating of the elderly man heart under the floor and it drove him mad. The confession came out. Edgar Alan Poe has cast a long shadow. He has probably had a greater influence than any other American writer. Although Poe’s tales and poems range from masterful to ludicrous, Poe exerted his most significant influence as a man who understood the temper of his times, and foreshadowed so much of the future of literature. His wide-ranging tales and his broad criticism sought a method for American literature where none had prevailed.

Poe deliberately sought great variety in his tales. A review of his more than seventy pieces of fiction testifies not merely to his range, but also to the significant popular genres he created or made his own which today form the staples of American fiction. Poe’s greatest influence comes about in the murder mystery. Although murders in fiction existed before Poe, his preoccupation with the ingenious solution of the crime established in his tales of ratiocination (the process of exact thinking) changed the emphasis from the acts to getting the facts.

Poe’s cerebral and eccentric detective Dupin (“the ingenious are always fanciful and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic”) Because of the power of Poe’s narrative voice, many a tale is indelible. Poe’s imaginative sociology in “The Man of the Crowd” will tell you more about loneliness in the crowd than David Riesman did. The psychological analysis in “William Wilson” is an excellent nd frightening exploration of split personality two generations before Freud.

One would think that Poe would be best remembered for his powerful tales, but much of his international reputation rests on his critical acumen that pointed in equally new directions. Poe was among the first to discern the tendency of the age toward “the curt, the condensed, the pointed, the readily diffused” In a famous critical piece, Poe recognized Hawthorne as one of our “few men of indisputable genius;” he went on to formulate his famous conception of the short story, which must be designed for “a single effect” and every word of which must be made to count.

Poe’s method leads to the symbolist poetry of Mallarme and to Rimbaud and the dream inspired surrealists Poe’s brooding heroes and symbolic houses lead to the decadent heroes, new Roderick Ushers with their concern for the artificial detail of their shut-in paradise, reflected earlier in such Poe tales as “The Mask of the Red Death” and “The Philosophy of Furniture”.

Poe is returned to America through French symbolism, and so made digestible to such important American poets as T. S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens. In opposition to the romantic stress on the expression of personality, Poe insisted on the importance not of he artist, but of the created work of art. He stands as one of the few great innovators in American literature that took his place in international culture as an original creative force.

I disagree with the author that wrote that criticism. One thing is writing is imagination and not fears. Poe has many great tales and poems, in the stories that we read in class did not have to do anything with his fears. Poes life or any ones life would not influence their writing. The stories he wrote are incredibly creative and he has wide imaginations. I like his stories and I look forward to read more stories that he wrote.

Edgar Allan Poe was one of America’s famous poets, fiction short-story writers, and literary critics. He is known as the first master of short story form especially in tales of horror, and mystery. The work he produced was considered to be some of the most influential literary criticism of his time. His poems made him one of the most famous figures in American literary history. His influence on literature is seen in all literature books in schools everywhere.

Some of his famous writings is that of “Annabel Lee”; his detective story, “The Murders in Rue Morgue”; “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” are the best among his horror stories; and The Raven one of his best poems which among all these, made him very famous in 1845. “The Fall of the House of Usher”, and “The Masque of the Red Death”, made him a forerunner of symbolism, and impressionism. Poe antagonized many people with a scathing campaign against an American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow for supposed plagiarism.

Later that year Poe admitted to being drunk, which further separated him from the public. Poe’s later years were full of economic hardship and ill health. Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 19, 1809. He was orphaned at the early age of two, his father deserted the family and his mother died all before he was three in 1811, then Poe became a ward and was raised as a foster child by John Allan, a wealthy merchant of tobacco, and his wife Frances in Richmond, VA but they never legally adopted him. Taken by the Allan family to England at the age of six, Poe was placed in a private school.

In 1826 Poe enrolled at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. where he acquired gambling debts that John Allan refused to pay. Eventually, Poe was forced to withdraw from the university, and Allan prevented his return to the university and broke off Poe’s engagement to Sarah Elmira Royster, his Richmond sweetheart. His relationship with Allan was declined and he moved from his foster father and enlisted in the army. Also in 1827, he went to Boston where he wrote his fist book “Tamerlane and other poems” that he sold for $. a copy but it didn’t sell.

He served a two year term while waiting for an appointment to the US Military Academy. While temporarily reconciled, Allan secured him an appointment to the academy. In 1830 Poe entered the US Military Academy at West Point, NY, where he excelled in languages but was expelled in 1831 and now his foster father disowned him permanently. Later on sometime after 1831 he moved to Baltimore where he lived with his aunt, Maria Clemm, and her daughter- his cousin, Virginia Clemm. March 27, 1834 John Allan dies leaving Poe with nothing.

In May of 1836 he married Virginia, his 13-year old cousin. For 10 years Poe worked as an editor for various periodicals and contributor to magazines in several cites on the pay of $10 a week, so he was unable to support his family, his aunt, Virginia, and himself. Lots of time they went without eating. But it was in one of those that his story “The Fall of the House of Usher” first appeared in 1839. He unsuccessfully tried to found and edit his own magazine which would have granted him financial security and artistic control in what he considered a hostile literary marketplace.

The last years of Poe’s life was a tragic period. In January of 1842 Virginia broke a blood vessel while singing, and died of tuberculosis on January 30, 1847 after five years of illness. Then Poe himself became ill, he had a deadly addiction to liquor and his alleged use of drugs which probably contributed to his early death. In the summer of 1849 he revisited Richmond, lectured , and was accepted anew by the fiance he had lost in 1826. After his return north he was found unconscious on a Baltimore street. Poe was only 40 when he died in 1849.

Newspapers gave the cause of death as “congestion of the brain” and “cerebral inflammation”, which my sources said was terms that suggest doctors didn’t have a definitive explanation but they thought it was a severe neurological disorder. Another doctor from the University of Maryland Medical Center reviewed his case and was assigned to make and explain a diagnosis based on available facts and he came to the conclusion that it was a rabies infection. The case was known to be a antique because of the lack of lab data. Back then they didn’t have CT scans, or MRI’s.

Before his death he was seen passing through Baltimore in later September 1849 and vanished. He turned up on Oct. 3 muttering incoherently and dressed in filthy, strange, and unusual clothing. He was taken to Church Hospital then known as Washington Medical College on Broadway where he spend four days where his doctor put very simply: “talking with spectral and imaginary objects on the walls”. So in other words he was crazy, delirious and other times he was either in a coma. Despite the widely held belief that Poe was in a drunken stupor, he showed no signs of alcohol when he was admitted to the hospital.

According to medical records he had abstained from drinking after and few months earlier attending a temperance league in Richmond. One theory says his condition seemed to improve for a time, but by the evening of his third day he became combative calling out the names of family, friends and somebody named Reynolds and had to be restrained. Another theory says that he was found unconscious and remained unconscious. Bout both theories state that he died on the fourth day, October 7th at 5 am. His last words were said to be “Lord, help my poor soul”.

He was buried near his grandfather in the Presbyterian cemetery. It was obvious that Poe was in a depressing situation most of his life. His life was exaggerated and exposed in a embarrassing manner. He was hurt by his enemies and I think he was ashamed of himself or wanted more of his life. Poe was hounded by economic troubles, haunted by nightmares and visions, he had many fears, and a ot of imagination which he expressed in his stories. It has been 150 years since Poe’s death but since his death, but he has had more books published than any other American author. I think he will always be remembered.

Edgar Allen Poe, the greatest American teller of mystery and suspense tales in the 19th century was a tormented artist. He struggled to become the accomplished author he is known as today. Poe is now acclaimed as one of America’s greatest writers, but in his own unhappy lifetime, he struggled to make ends meet. When he was 17, Poe entered the University of Virginia. Allan, his step father, gave Poe only a small allowance, and the young man soon began owing money. He gambled and ran into greater debt. By the end of the year he owed 2,500 dollars.

He was nervous and unstable, and he began to drink. Despite his frequenting liquor, he could never hold it well. He would easily become ill from the alcohol. Allan angrily withdrew Poe from school, and a few months later Poe left home. For the next four years Poe struggled to earn a living as a writer. He returned to Mrs. Clemm’s home and submitted stories to magazines. His first success came in 1833, when he entered a short-story contest and won a prize of 50 dollars for the story “MS. Found in a Bottle.

By 1835 he was the editor of he Southern Literary Messenger. He married his cousin Virginia, who was only 13, and Mrs. Clemm stayed with the couple. The Poes had no children. This success would not last. Poe’s stories, poems, and criticism in the magazine, The Southern Literary Messenger soon attracted attention, and he looked for wider opportunities, not a good choice. From 1837 to 1839 he tried free-lance writing in New York City and Philadelphia but earned very little. Again he tried editing. His work was praised, but he was still paid little.

His fforts to organize his own magazine were unsuccessful. For the next two years he turned again to free-lance writing. For one of the most well-known and talented writers of our time, Poe had to struggle for any kind of monetary reconcilement for his genius works. The papers he worked for gained many readers who would buy only for Poe’s stories. It seems to me amazing that after seeing the response to his works when published in the newspapers, they wouldn’t offer him more money for his presence at their company. They obviously didn’t realize what they had.

Edgar Allan Poe is one of the leading figures of American literature. He is known as a poet and a critic, but is most famous as the first master of the short story form, especially tales of the mysterious and gruesome. In Poes poems, like his tales, his characters are tortured by nameless fears and longings. Today Poe is acclaimed as one of Americas greatest writers, but in his own unhappy lifetime he knew little but failure. Poe had an unstable family life. The insecure place he held at home interfered with his emotional stability. He was born as the son of actors.

The two were not notably talented; they played minor roles in third-rate theatrical companies. (Buranalli 7) Between them they barely managed to make a living. Poe was the second of their three children. About the time the third child was born, the father died, or disappeared, and Mrs. Poe went to Richmond, Virginia with the two youngest children. The oldest child, William Henry, had been left in the care of his grandparents in Baltimore shortly after his birth. Mrs. Poe was overtaken by a fatal illness (tuberculosis). Devastated by the disease and worn out with the struggle to support her children, she died.

Edgar, two years old, and the infant, Rosaline, were orphaned. Poe was taken into the home of John Allan, a wealthy merchant. His wife, Frances Allan, had no children and wanted to adopt Poe as her son. Mr. Allan was unwilling to commit himself to a step of such permanence. The acting profession was despised at the time and was even considered immoral. (Meyers 11) Mr. Allan thought the little son of actor parents was a questionable person to inherit his name and the fortune he was busy accumulating. He was however, willing to support the child, to please his wife.

Family was of the greatest importance in Richmond, the place where Poe spent most of his boyhood. Poe felt the difference between the children at school and himself. He was not close to his (foster) father, like other boys were. Mr. Allans unwillingness to adopt him bothered him greatly. It hurt him that he was not wanted enough by his father to legally be his son. He acted out in fits of temper and rebellion. His family did not understand his reasoning for being so upset. Mr. Allan was a hardheaded businessman with no patience for Poes reasonless actions.

He handled the situation by reminding the boy of his disreputable parentage; he reproached him for lack of gratitude for his home. (Buranelli 37) Mr. Allan had from time to time engaged in extra-marital relations. Some of his natural children were then living in Richmond and the knowledge of this, in one way or another, seemed to have become known to his wife. Her sorrow was great. When Edgar learned of his foster fathers affairs, he took sides with his mother. Mr. Allan was cold to Poe and it was seldom that they got along.

Poe was eager to escape the Allan house, and was relived when he was sent off to the University of Virginia. His foster father provided him with considerably less than the amount necessary to pay his way. In order to maintain his position he began to gamble heavily, this only led him to greater debt. By the end of the year he owed 2,500 dollars. He was nervous and unstable, and he began to drink. Mr. Allans pride and thrift could not tolerate such conduct. Without delay, he pulled Poe out of the University and set him to work at a lowly, routine job in his counting house.

Poe despised his job and his foster father, so he left home. After this point the only time Poe communicated with his foster father was when he needed money or needed to be bailed out of a difficult situation. Mr. Allan reluctantly helped him, until the death of Mrs. Allan. When Mrs. Allan died his foster father remarried and disowned Poe. Although Poe had no support from his (foster) family, he still made a success of himself. He was praised in his time, as he is now, but he was never paid much for his work. His career started when he won a story contest for the MS. Found in A Bottle in 1833.

The prize money was not much, but one of the judges, novelist John P. Kennedy, had an interest in Poe and befriended him by helping him sell a story to the new Southern Literary Messenger of Richmond. Poe joined the editorial staff of the magazine and soon became its editor. A number of his own stories appeared in its pages. He was shown to be an able editor and perceptive literary critic. He made a name for both himself and the magazine. Unfortunately, Poe was an alcoholic. He was dismissed from the Messenger for intoxication, taken back, and again dismissed for the same reason.

Poe looked for work in a publishing house or with a magazine, but had no luck because during this time there was a financial panic and various magazines were compelled to cease publication. He successfully published a long sea story, called The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. This story was so convincing in its detail that some critics were sure it was the record of an actual voyage. (Carlson 78) After two years, Poe began editing again, this time for Burtons Gentlemens Magazine. A contract for a Monthly feature set him to writing some of his stories of horror and the supernatural.

These stories were collected and published under the title, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840, followed by The Prose Romances of Edgar Allan Poe. The same year Burton’s was sold (the name was changed to Grahams Magazine) Poe became editor of its successor. Under his management, it became perhaps the most important American magazine of its day. (Carlson 84) In it was printed his first detective story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue. In 1843, his story, The Gold Bug, won a $100 prize from the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper.

This brought him considerable publicity. The next year, he left Graham’s Magazine. Soon after, his poem, The Raven, was published in the New York Evening Mirror. It was reprinted in a number of magazines, and at once became extremely popular. Poe himself often read it to groups, with the lamps turned down until the room was almost dark, while his voice took on an appropriately eerie tone. (Meyers 152) With The Raven, Poe reached the height of his fame. Nevertheless, his reputation brought him little money, and the family remained desperately poor.

Few free-lance writers can make a living by writing only; most depend upon editorial and other positions. Poe worked briefly on the Evening Mirror, the Broadway Journal, and wrote a series of sketches for Godey’s Lady’s Book. He was successful in getting such editorial jobs, but he never held them long. Alcoholism and mounting mental disorder made Poe quarrelsome and unreasonable. (Carlson 209) He was known to often have outbursts of senseless rage. His childish tantrums and his hostile verbal attacks offended the very persons who could have helped him most in his career.

When Poe lost his wife, his last hold on reality vanished. He worked feverishly at writing a book, Eureka, which he believed would be an expression of profound truth. The book was a strange jumble of unproven scientific statement and wild imaginings, springing from his disturbed state. It is known that Poe was the originator of the American short story. There had been other short works of fiction, but Poe perfected the short story as an art form. Jules Verne, Rudyard Kipling, and Conan Doyle were all influenced by his writing. Poe was most popular for his detective stories.

No one has outdone him in creating an atmosphere of morbid horror in such tales as The Pit and the Pendulum and The Tell-Tale Heart. It is sad that, though his talent was recognized and appreciated, he was never in very good financial state. Poes love life was just as depressing as his professional and family lives were. His romances all ended in despair. He met his first love, Sarah Elmira Royster, while he was attending the University of Virginia. She lived on a nearby street, so he visited he often. Before Poe left the University he was engaged to Elmira.

Their affair was not made known to the adults of either household. Mr. and Mrs. Royster learned of the love affair and brought pressure to break off the match. Poes letters to his sweetheart were intercepted and Elmira was forbidden to write. The attentions of an eligible young bachelor, A. Barret Shelton, were pressed upon her, and she was finally sent away for a while into safekeeping. (Buranelli 94) On September 22, 1835, Poe married his first cousin Virginia Clemm. She was only about thirteen years old at the time. Virginia was unfailingly devoted to him.

She was sweet and gentle, but rather simple-minded. She could not follow the wild frights of Poes erratic genius, but she gave him an adoring, admiration. He showed his best self to her. In January of 1842 Virginia started showing symptoms of tuberculosis. She grew sicker steadily for five years, while Poe sank deeper into melancholia. During this time Poe resorted to drinking more than ever. There is also evidence of him using opium at this time. During the winter of 1846-47, when the couple had little food of fuel, Virginia reached the end of life.

After Virginias death Poe became even more depressed and temperamental. He slept with many women in a vain attempt to find comfort for the loss of his wife. In 1849 he re-met his high school sweetheart, Elmira. They became engaged. After making wedding plans, he set out for New York City from Richmond, but disappeared in Baltimore. He was found five days after he disappeared very near death. He died without regaining full consciousness, four days later on October 7, 1849, ten days before the date he had set for his wedding.

Poes life was indeed marked by misery and tragedy. He was abandon by his father, lived in poverty as a writer, and suffered the loss of many loved ones. On the other hand, maybe it was his dreary life that caused him to escape into the imaginative fantasy world that became his writers playground. Looking at it from that perspective, perhaps his unfortunate personal life was the springboard for his success as a writer. Poe did, no matter, have great talent and will forever be remembered for his brilliance in American literature.

Edgar Allan Poe is a name even the literary illiterate know, but not many people know Edgar Allan Poe the person. When reading the works of this poetic genius many might think that he had a vivid imagination or just a morbid soul. The truth is that the works of Poe are based on his own life, the life of an orphan who suffered from an obsessive compulsive disorder and who eventually became diseased by alcoholism. Understanding Poe the man, who had true medical problems that caused erratic behavior and depression among many other things, is to have an understanding of the true meaning hidden behind the words of his poetry.

Poe earned his place as a major figure in American letters for his tales of the bizarre and fantastic, short stories that are structurally brilliant and considered precursors of many forms and themes in subsequent American and European literature (Bloom, Harold p. 491). Born of impoverished parents and orphaned at the age of two, Poe lived a brief and tragic life: a life whose legend has often proved an overpowering influence on the critical reception of his work (Bloom, Harold p. 491).

Before Poe was three years old both of his parents died, and he was raised in the house of John Allan, a prosperous exporter from Richmond, Virginia, who never legally adopted his foster son. Poe attended many of the best schools at that time. At the University of Virginia he distinguished himself academically, but after little more than only one year he had to leave because of financial debt and lack of adequate funds from Allan. Poe went on to enlist himself in the army where he finished and published his first poetry collection Tamerlane and Other Poems.

These works received no recognition. When his second set of works appeared in 1829, it received only slight attention. Also in 1829 Poe was honorably discharged from the army, having attained the rank of regimental sergeant major, and was then admitted to the United States Military Academy at West Point (Gale Research p. 1). However because Allan would neither provide Poe with sufficient funds to maintain himself as a cadet nor give the consent necessary to resign from the Academy, Poe gained a dismissal by ignoring his duties and violating regulations.

He went on to New York after this where his third collection of works were published and then he moved on to Baltimore. Over the next few years the first of Poe’s short stories appeared in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier and his “MS. Found in a Bottle” won a cash prize for the best story in the Baltimore Saturday Visitor (Gale Research p. 2). Despite this Poe was still broke and the death of Allan didn’t provide him with any legacy.

Finally things began to look up financially when he accepted an editorship at The Southern Literary Messenger. His writing for the Messenger exhibited a unique talent for criticism characterized by a probing analytical quality (Bloom, Harold p. 1). With this job Poe made himself known as a wonderful author of all types of writing and as a critic with such imagination and insight that the world has yet to see someone as brilliant as he. After his wife’s death from tuberculosis in1847, Poe became involved in a number of romantic affairs.

It was while he prepared for his second marriage that Poe, for reasons unknown, arrived in Baltimore, and about one month after his arrival he was discovered in a state of semi-consciousness; he died four days later without regaining the necessary lucidity to explain what had happened during the last days of his life (Gale Research p. 2). Aside from a common theoretical basis, there is a psychological intensity that is characteristic of Poe’s writings, especially the tales of horror that comprise his best and his best known works (Gale Research, p. 3).

These stories which include “The Black Cat,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” are often told by a first person narrator, and through this voice Poe probes the workings of a character’s psyche (Gale Research, p. 3). This technique foreshadows the psychological explorations of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and the school of psychological realism (Gale Research, p. 3). The sense of despair and melancholy in his work as well as his well-known concept that the greatest theme for poetry is the “death of a beautiful woman,” bear the influence of the Romantic movement (Bloom, Harold p. 1).

It was Poe’s particular genius that in his work he gave consummate artistic form both to his personal obsessions and those of previous literary generations, at the same time creating new forms from which provided a means of expression for future artists (Gale Research, p. 4). It was not until the 1941 biography by A. H. Quinn that a balanced view was provided of Poe, his work, and the relationship between that author’s life and his imagination (Gale Research, p. 5).

Nevertheless, the identification of Poe with the murderers and madmen of his works survived and flourished in the twentieth century, most prominently in the form of psychoanalytical studies such as those of Marie Bonaparte and Joseph Wood Krutch (Gale Research, p. 5). Added to the controversy over the sanity, or at best the maturity of Poe (Paul Elmer More called him “the poet of unripe boys and unsound men”), it was the question of the value of Poe’s works as serious literature (Gale Research p. 5).

Edgar Allan Poe’s personal life, especially the stories surrounding his drinking and early death, are dealt with extensively by Poe’s contemporary critics as well as those writing in the twentieth century (Bloom, Harold p. 491). In their confusion of the man and his literary creations, certain critics have ascribed to Poe a morbidity of character and a cruel and unnatural temperament. (Bloom, Harold p. 491).

This critical attitude was adumbrated by the publication of Poe’s letters under the direction of R. W. Griswold, his literary executor (Bloom, Harold p. 491). Griswold, for reasons unknown, sought to defame Poe by falsifying his letters and printing forged material that portrayed Poe as a bizarre and menacing character (Bloom, Harold p. 491). Although he was ultimately vindicated through the scholarship of A. H. Quinn and others, it has been the work of modern scholars to reestablish Poe’s reputation based on the work and not the man (Bloom, Harold p. 491).

Edgar Allen Poe was a very famous poet and writer,Poe created many poems and stories such as The Raven, The Tall -Tale Heart, The Fall of The House of Usher and many more. (tompson 1)Edgar lived from 1809 to 1849. He was born on January 19,1809, in Boston Massachusetts but grew up in Richmond Virgina but through his many travels he lived in half a dozen eastern cities. He lived a short and tragic life. His first career was to study in law but soon went against his family and started a career in acting. His critic reviews were poor. Many critics thought his technique was bad.

Edgars father was an actor by the name of David Poe and his mother also an actress by the name of Elizabeth. edgar was the second of three children, about the time that the third child was born Edgars father died. After his father had died Edgars mother and her two yougest children went to Richmond, his brother William already had been settled with relatives in Baltimore. Poes mother was in the lastest stages of her diesease, struggling with two kids, she died. Edgar and , an infant, Rosalie, were orphaned. Poe finally was hit with the reliazation of his parents death.

In 1811on a visit of generousity, Mrs. Francis Allen learned of the situation of the Poe babies. Mrs. Allen had no babies of her own and to that she took home handsome little Edgar. Mr. John Allen didnt aprove of a permant adoption but he began to in time support the child, and became proud of his good looks and intelligence. When Edgar was six years old Mr. Allens bussiness took them to Scotland, they lived there for about five years. Edgar persued his education at the Irvin Grammer School in Irvin, Scotland. After many journeys throughtout his hildhood Edgar and the Allens returned to Richmond, Virgina.

There at the age of 11 Mr. Allen enrolled Edgar into the English and Classical School attended by sons of the more fashionable families of Richmond. There Edgar began to feel the difference between himself and the others at this school. To this Edgar the sense of injury made its self evident at home with fits of temper and rebellion for which there seemed to the family , no justification. Mr. Allen did not put up with such behavior , Mr. Allen repeatedly reminded Edgar about his “disreputable” parentage.

In Edgars college years his growing antagonism between father and son, Mr. Allen was willing to send Edgar to the University of Virgina. Edgar had gone to the university to in fact get away from the Allen house hold. This indescribable social college campus set Edgar in for a major turn around , Edgar began to gamble to where he couldnt pay off debts he incountered, when Edgar drank is sent him into a wild statof excitement. Edagr was then pulled out of the University for such behavior. Mr. Allen then out him in a low, routine job at hjis counting house. This was very humiliating or Edgar and he just couldnt bear it anymore , the answer, to leave home.

He left to Boston where he manage to publish a collection of his poems, desperate for money, he then joined the army under the name of Edgar A. Perry. Army barracks were no place for this young noblemen. Poe turned to his foster father for reconciliation, Mr. Allens then purchased Edgar out of the army, which was possible at that time. Shortly after he publisheds another set of his writings. Little more then a year after Poe decided consider a military career, he gained admission to the United States Military Academy at West Point , New York.

Edgar was of two minds about the Academy: an army career was suitable for a Virginia gentleman he longed to be, but the discipline was uncongenial. The second mind won, and Edgar deliberately provoked expulsion by cutting all drills and classes. This was it for Mr. Allen. Mrs. Allen death removed Edgars friend in the house. Edgars love life began with a woman named Sarah Elmira Royster, they got engaged but never got married because sarahs dad disapproved of the marriage . Edgar went to Charlottesville but said he would write to her everyday.

Her father intercepted every letter he wrote her and everyday since sarah never got the letters of course she never wrote back and everyday that Edgar never got a letter from her he got more and more depressed. John Allen broke off the engagement . (tompson5) In the two years after his final rupture with Mr. Allan, Poe lived for a considerable time in Baltimore with his aunt, Mrs. Maria (Poe) Clemm. She was a poor seamstress, but she welcomed Poe into her home and took care of him. Outwardly, it was a do-nothing period for him, but inwardly it was significant.

He wrote a group of npublished short stories. Even more importantly, he began to dramatize himself as one whom “unmerciful disaster followed fast and followed faster”. He probably had an inherited emotional instability which fed his feeling of persecution. Once established in his job, he brought Mrs. Clemm and her daughter, Virginia, to live with him. A little later he married his cousin, Virginia, who was some years younger than he. From that time on, the three formed a household. Throughout all his vicissitudes, the two women, his wife, Virginia, and her mother were unfailingly devoted to him.

Much f the time, Mrs. Clemm kept boarders to make a home for Poe and Virginia. Mrs. Clemm found no fault in him; at his worst, to her he was “poor Eddie”. Her motherliness cradled all his weaknesses and eccentricities. (He called her “Muddie. “) In her way, Virginia was equally devoted. She was sweet and gentle, but rather simple-minded. She could not follow the wild flights of Poe’s erratic genius, but she gave him an adoring, unquestioned admiration which was incense to his spirit. She found a childish pleasure and absorption clipping and pasting the long scrolls on which he wrote.

Poe, in turn, showed his best self to them. Here, where there was no will beside his own, where two loyal satellites revolved about the central sun of his ego, he was at his best and gentlest. He was affectionate toward Mrs. Clemm and increasingly tender and loving to Virginia, an invalid who was slowly dying of tuberculosis. The pathetic little family made its last move to a tiny cottage in Fordham, then a village about thirteen miles from New York. Mrs. Clemm set about making the place habitable, setting aside the best room of four as “dear Eddie’s” study.

They managed hrough the summer, but as autumn came on, there was not even fuel to warm the house. Virginia grew steadily worse. Poe sank deeper into melancholia. In the depth of winter, Virginia died. With the loss of his wife, Poe’s last hold on reality vanished. He worked feverishly at writing a book, Eureka, which he believed would be an expression of profound truth. It was more nearly a curious hodge-podge of unproven scientific statement and wild imagining, springing from his disturbed state. He wandered from one city to another, drifted back to Richmond and on to Baltimore, where he died.

Edgar Allen Poe by, Brandon Derr January 15, 1999 Edgar Allen Poe, an America writer, was known as a poet and critic but was most famous as the master of short stories, particularly tales of the mysterious and the macrabe. The literary merits of Poe’s writings have been debated since his death, but his works have continued to be popular and many American and European writers have declared their artistic debt to him. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Poe was orphaned in his early childhood and was raised by John Allen, a successful business man of Richmond, Virginia.

Taken by the Allen family to England at the age of six, Poe was placed in a private school. Upon returning to the United States in 1820, he continued to study in private schools. He attended the University of Virginia for a year, but in 1827 his foster father, angry by the young man’s drinking and gambling, refused to pay his debts and forced him to work as a clerk. Poe, disliking his new duties violently, he quit the job as a clerk, thus estranging Allen, and went to Boston. There his first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), was published anonymously.

Shortly afterward Poe enlisted in the United States Army and served a two-year term. In 1829 his second volume of verse, Al Aaraaf, was published, and he completed a agreement with Allen, who secured him an appointment to the United States Military Academy. After only a few months at the Military Academy Poe was dismissed for neglect of duty, and his foster father disowned him permanently. Poe’s third book, Poems, appeared in 1831, and the following year he moved to Baltimore, where he lived with his aunt and her eleven-year-old daughter, Virginia Clemm.

The following year his tale “A MS. Found in a Bottle” won a contest sponsored by the Baltimore Saturday Visitor. From 1835 to 1836, Poe was editor of the Southern Literary Messenger. In 1836 he married his young cousin. Throughout the next decade, much of which was linked by his wife’s long illness, Poe worked as an editor for several periodicals in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and in New York City. In 1847 Virginia died and Poe himself became ill; his disastrous addiction to liquor and his alleged use of drugs, recorded by contemporaries, may have contributed to his early death.

Poetry and Essays Among Poe’s poetic output, about a dozen poems are exceptional for their perfect literary construction and for their haunting themes and rhymes. In “The Raven” (1845), for example, the narrator is astounded by depressed omens of death. Poe’s extraordinary manipulation of rhythm and sound is particularly evident in “The Bells” (1849), a poem that seems to echo with the chiming of metallic instruments, and “The Sleeper” (1831), which reproduces the state of drowsiness. “Lenore” (1831) and “Annabel Lee” (1849) are verse lamentations on the death of a beautiful young woman.

In the course of his editorial work, Poe functioned largely as a book reviewer and produced significant body of criticism; his essays were famous for their sarcasm, wit, and exposure of literary pretension. His evaluations have withstand the test of time and have earned for him a high place among American literary critics. Poe’s theories on the nature of fiction and, in particular, his writings on the short story have had a lasting influence on American and European writers. Stories Poe, by his own choice, was a poet, but economic necessity forced him to turn to the relatively profitable genre of prose.

Whether or not Poe invented the short story, it is certain that he originated the novel of detection. Perhaps his best-known tale in this genre is “The Gold Bug” (1843), about a search for buried treasure. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), “The Mystery of Marie Roget” (1842-1843), and “The Purloined Letter” (1844) are regarded as forefathers of the modern mystery , or detective, story. Many of Poe’s tales are distinguishing by the authors unusual grotesque inventiveness in addition to his marvelous plot construction.

Such stories include “The Narrative of Arthur Gorden Pym” (1838), noted for its blend of factual and fantastic material; “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), in which the piercing gloominess of the character is accented equally with plot and characterization; “The Pit and the Pendulum” (1842), a exhilarating tale of cruelty and torture; “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843), in which a deranged murderer is subconsciously haunted into confessing hisguilt; and “The Cask of the Amontillado” (1846), an eerie tale of revenge.

Throughout literature, an author’s works almost always reflect their mood and character. Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer whose short stories and poems reflected his pessimistic moods. One of Poe’s poems, “The Raven,” is about a raven that flies into the home of a sad and lonely man. This poem best expresses Poe’s sense of despair and gloominess because the literary elements used in the poem are a constant reference to them. An example that portrays “The Raven” as a reflection of Poe’s despair and gloominess is the poem’s setting.

The poem takes place in a haunted house uring a violent storm. For example, in the poem it says, “On this home by horror haunted,” and “.. tempest tossed thee here ashore. ” The time and place of the poem deliver a feeling of negativity and pessimism to the reader. Poe’s use of a depressing and negative setting for “The Raven” illustrates his despair and gloominess. Another example that illustrates the poem as an expression of Poe’s mood is the raven itself. A raven is a large bird of the crow family with lustrous black feathers and a straight, sharp beak.

Poe could have used any bird, however e wanted the reader to experience the gloom and despondency that he experienced. Therefore he wrote about a raven. Finally, Poe’s use of assonance throughout the poem also contributed to the poem’s illustration of despair and gloominess. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sound. For instance, at the end of each stanza it says, “Quoth the raven, Nevermore,” “This is it and nothing more,” or a phrase ending with the word more. The repetition of these sounds emphasize the words that contribute to the mood of the poem. Nevermore is a negative word meaning never again.

The aven only said this word. Poe emphasizes nevermore because it helps accentuate the depressed and despaired mood of the poem. “The Raven” best reflects Edgar Allan Poe’s sense of despair and gloominess because the literary elements of the poem constantly refer to his sadness and gloom. The setting , a major character, and Poe’s use of assonance, assist in portraying his pessimistic moods. They each deliver negative feelings to the reader, emphasize the mood of the poem, and illustrate Poe’s feelings of despair and sadness. Therefore “The Raven” best expresses Poe’s mood.

Edgar Allen Poe who was best known for his poems and short fiction, deserves more credit than any other writer for his transformation of the short story from anecdote to art (1996 Groiler Multimedia). He virtually created the detective story and perfected the psychological thriller. Edgar also produced some of the most influential literary criticism of his time – with important theoretical statements on poetry and the short story, that has had a world wide influence on literature.

In this paper I will try to capture the life of Edgar Allen Poe through his childhood and the loss of both his biological parents before the age of three ( Edgar Allen Poe, Buranelli 36). Edgar Allen Poe attended school for 5 years in England, but only briefly in the U. S. at the university of Virginia, due to large gambling debts incurred that his foster farther John Allen refused to pay(Buranelli, 88). His farther also prevented Edgar from returning to the university of Virginia and broke off his engagement to Sarah Elmira Royster( Buranelli, 102).

This Paper will reflect the ups and downs of Edgar’s lifelong dream of becoming a journalist and publisher(Life of Edgar Allen Poe, James Molloy). Edgar worked many jobs that provided no future for him most noticeably as a writer for the Philadelphia Saturday courier which also published two of his stories, both comic and satric. Edgar also took on a related job as an editor of the southern literary messenger in Richmond VA in 1835( Edgar Allen Poe, Joseph Lonely 65).

Edgar’s life has taken him from many places such as Virginia, Philadelphia, Maryland and overseas to England. Edgar’s life tour came to an abrupt end on a Baltimore street in 1849 where he was found unconscious. In a brief obituary the Baltimore clipper reported Poe had died of “congestion of the brain”, two years after his wife Virginia’s death in January 1847 which caused a heavy mental blow to his ability to write and lecture.

Many a great author have come to inhibit to the world distinguished literary merit, some to be considered masterpieces of novelty, others to be frowned upon for not meeting the requirements of civilized society. Edgar Allen Poe was one of the authors frowned upon because his talent of writing was based on bringing out the fears and deep suspense of which a single person can barely hold on to.

Quoth the raven, Nevermore take into account the essence of this single phrase used in Poes writing, so simple; and yet so strategically placed as to pull the reader deeper and farther into Poes own imagination; as to for just a moment cause the reader to be Poe, see as Poe, think as Poe, and for even shorter a moment experience the fear and enthrallment that Poe faces while writing his novels.

Edgar Allen Poe had a way to manipulate the mind, to cause what people feared and loathed to come to life; but at the same time keep a distinctive grasp on any who read his literature, once a story or poem was began it was a trap that pulled you in and held on, the only way out was to finish the whole way through.

Somehow, Poe initiated a method of incorporating suspense and trickery into his novels and poems, a reader may be anxious to get to the end and find out what was the final occurrence was; while at the same time the reader knew that paying attention to the story carefully, was of vital importance to understand why, what happened at the end happened. Edgar Allen Poe was quite good at using guilt as a side effect; he would cause the antagonist of his stories to think of themselves as the better people when they would commit deeds of revenge and or trickery.

But what normally began as pride or reason for the deed would quickly be reversed within time to guilt and pain. Poe had a way of describing the pain of others, especially guilt he would find distinctive phrases and or words that would describe pain as unending and inescapable, to a point of anxiety where you dont think you can take much more and just at that exact moment; at the apex of the climactic sequence Poe would deliver an astonishing blow that would cause you to slow back down and relax at the stories end.

I have been a great fan of Edgar Allen Poe ever since I read the Tall Tale Heart, in the fourth grade to do as a book report. The one and only thing I have ever found negative in Poes literature is how confusing he makes his stories to be. I have discovered in such stories as The murders in The Rue Morgue, The Black Cat, The Mystery of Mary Roget and others, Poe must write his works with a certain eloquence and properness that can most likely be appealing to only him and a distinct few others.

D. H. Lawrence wrote an essay that extensively describes Edgar Allen Poes writing style. Lawrence looks at Poes work as a scientific and mechanical way of writing. The tales Poe writes are not really tales at all. The only reason they are even considered as tales is because they are a concatenation of cause and effect. Lawrence saw Edgars stories as more than just a tales. They are love stories. Poe does not write looking at the human part of someones life. The characters are looked at as inanimate objects with human qualities, rather than the characters being human with inorganic qualities.

Lawrence elaborates on Poes style by mentioning that he finds it to be mechanical. Poe never sees anything in terms of life. He only views life in terms of matter or force, thus the Lawrences reference to scientific writing. This facile viewpoint on life brings out his sensitiveness to sounds and effect. Lawrence also believes that Edgar Allen Poe was a very deep man. He wrote with his soul. Poe gives you a look at what is underneath consciousness. His writing is all fair-spoken on the surface. Beneath it is more, the awful murderous thoughts that flowed inside Edgars head.

Lawrence confers about Poes style in Ligeia and how he wants to analyze her until he knows all of her parts and what they do. He sees her as a chemical salt, which he needs to analyze out in the test tube of his own brain. Overall Lawrence finds Edgar Allen Poes works to be mechanical and scientific. Poe has a different style of writing from any other. It is an inanimate type of writing. This makes his works interesting and suspenseful. If Poe did not have this type of style he would not be as well known today. Edgar uses his obscure styles to create his visual stories.

The Tell Tale Heart is mechanical and scientific in the way that Edgar Allen Poe has written it. Edgars mechanical style is evident in the way he describes the eye of the old man. He sees it as a thing that haunts his dreams. Poe shows the reader this in the descriptive way by writing, a pale blue eye, with film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; (36). This passage illustrates the way the eye is not even a part of the old man. Poe writes about the not wanting to kill the old man, just wanting to destroy the eye.

Picturing the eye we do not even see the old man being a part of it. Poe mechanically repeats words all through the story. This style is used well in Poes statement a very, very little crevice in the lantern (37), and again with It was openwide, wide open (37). Poes repetition heightens the senses and makes his point clear. Looking back at the first passage, it also states the eye made his blood run cold. The way the blood runs through him is a scientific insight. The scientific style of Edgar Allen Poe is relevant to this story. When he writes, First of all I dismembered the corpse.

I cut off the head and the arms and the legs. (Poe 38), shows his scientific language. With words such as corpse and dismembered it is hard not to think scientifically. Science is defined as the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena. Poes work falls into this category of science. For example, I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. (Poe 38). Describing something as stone is a cold way of looking at it. There is no life in a stone, and this is they way he pictures the old man.

In summery, Edgar Allen Poe has the most unique style of writing. His vast description of inanimate objects and his repetition make this possible. The work of Poe has a certain flow to it, which is somewhat mechanical. Edgars stories also have certain intelligence to them. They are written in a language that is scientific to read. Also, the way he describes the characters and objects with underling meaning gives his stories a different feel. Mechanical writing and scientific writing are techniques Poe uses to create his own unique style.

Edgar Allan Poe was an author who wrote dark and sinister stories and poems and whose motives in writing such works were closely related to his life. Edgar Allan Poe has captured the attention of many of his readers, but what is not said is that his life affected his works. His dark and sinister works link the innermost side of Poe to that of his pieces. One of his most famous poems is “The Raven. ” Woodberry stated in his 1st volume of The Life of Edgar Allan Poe that, “…’The Raven’ and ‘Ulalume’ are in his poetry, the richest of his imaginative work.

The poem gives many insights to Poe’s life. The poem is about a man in a room all by himself. “Leave my loneliness unbroken! ” (Poe) He is then visited by a raven, which says nothing, but “Nevermore. ” It brings out the thoughts and feelings of the lonely man. This lonely man (the name of the man was never mentioned), is like a mirror image of Poe. During the time that Poe was rewriting “The Raven” (the original was written ten years before), life was really hard for him.

He had been for ten years a writer of untiring industry, and in that time had produced an amount of work large in quantity and excellent in quality, much of it belonging in the very highest rank of imaginative prose; but his books had never sold, and the income from his tales and other papers in the magazines when he was not attached to a magazine had never suffice to keep the wolf from the door. ” (Woodberry 2: 72) Hard times fell on Poe like raindrops falling onto the ground.

The money needed to sustain his day to day needs proved insufficient. He had written many works in ten years and. Although his works were abundant, money wasn’t. In Short, Poe had a hard time selling his works and was poorly paid. “‘A host of small troubles growing from the one trouble of poverty…. ‘” (Woodberry 2: 103) “‘You speak of “estimate of my life,” — and, from what I have already said, you will see that I have none to give. ‘” (Woodberry 2: 93) His regard for himself was small.

In direct contrast was his regard for his works. ‘I have been too deeply conscious of the mutability and evanescence of temporal things to give any continuous effort to anything — to be consistent in anything. My life has been whim — impulse — passion — a longing for solitude — a scorn of all things present, in an earnest desire for the future. ‘” (Woodberry 2: 93) This passion, and desire for the future fueled Poe to write more. Many of Poe’s feelings are portrayed by the guy in the poem.

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor shall be lifted — nevermore! (Poe) “My soul” can be seen as his heart or his passion for writing. “…Shall be lifted—nevermore! ” implies that something (established writers) is keeping Poe from becoming one with his soul (his heart or passion) and making the world realize the unity. His hard time establishing himself in the literary world and his efforts of establishment brought harsh criticism and scorn when it came to his works. He fought back with this: ‘I have no faith in human perfectibility.

I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy— nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary—and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain—that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future—that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves—nor are we with our posterity. ‘” (Woodbery 2: 91) His outlook of humanity showed in his works.

His opinion of himself is shown by “I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. ” His opinion of making vain efforts to establish himself as a writer is quite clear. The people who chose not to print his works got this response, “Man is now only more active…nor more wise…. ” The pursuit of recognition was beginning to be in vain for Poe. This can account for his need for solitude to rest his troubled soul and ease his mind. Solitude is what brought out more ideas, calmed him down, and brought back a glimmer of hope.

There are epochs when any kind of mental exercise is torture, and when nothing yields me pleasure but solitary communion with the “mountains and the woods,”…I have thus rambled and dreamed away whole months, and awake, at last, to a sort of mania for composition. ‘”

Poe’s life was intricately woven into the works that he wrote. Knowing how his life was during the time he wrote his pieces, changes the perspective and gives further insight to the symbolism within his work. This change of perspective creates a kind of conduit into his heart and makes the reader understand the motives behind Edgar Allan Poe’s works.

In every story conceived from the mind of Edgar Allan Poe, a scent of his essence had been molded into each to leave the reader with a better understanding of Poe’s life. Poe displayed his greatest life’s achievements and his worst disappointments in a series of stories created throughout his whole life. It is the goal of this research paper to reveal symbolic facts about his life and define these hidden maxims in a way that is easy to understand and beneficial to the reader. Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19th, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts (“Poe, Edgar Allan,” Encyclopedia Britannica 540).

Poe’s parents were David Poe, an actor based in Baltimore and Elizabeth Arnold Poe, an actress born in England, also based in Baltimore (540). Upon birth, Poe had been cursed. Shortly after his birth, Poe’s father abandoned the family and left Poe and his mother to fend for themselves. Not long after that, the cruel hands of fate had worked their horrid magic once again by claiming his mother. In 1811, when Poe was two, his mother passed away, leaving him with his second depressing loss (540). After his father’s cowardly retreat and mother’s sudden death, Poe was left in the capable hand of his godfather, John Allan.

John Allan was a wealthy merchant based in Richmond, Virginia with the means, knowledge and affluence to provide a good life for Poe (“Poe, Edgar Allan,” Encyclopedia Britannica 540). In 1815, Poe and his new family moved to England to provide Poe a classical education (which was finished out in Richmond. Upon returning from England in 1826, Poe enrolled at the University of Virginia (“Poe, Edgar Allan,” Encyclopedia Britannica 540). This was a magnificent feat for him, because Poe was only seventeen at the time while the normal age for attendance was nineteen (Quinn 130).

For the first time, life had hit a high note and provided for him what seemed to be a path paved with gold. Upon entering college, Poe realized his path of gold was really a mountain of grief and disappointment. In no more time than it took Poe to unpack his bags, he was already involved in immoral acts of gambling and drinking. He developed gambling debts from 2,000 to 2,500 dollars, which caused some fraction between his godfather and himself (Quinn 130). After eleven months at the university, Poe dropped out due to his debts, but mostly for John Allan’s refusal to pay for them (“Poe, Edgar Allan,” Encyclopedia Britannica 540).

No sooner then Poe was home, then he been invited to a party of Sarah Elmira Royster’s, his sweetheart before college. When he arrived at the party, he learned that it was Elmira’s engagement party, striking a dramatic blow to Poe’s heart (540). After John Allan and Poe had their quarrels over Poe’s gambling addiction, he joined the army under the alias of “Edgar Allan Perry” (“Poe, Edgar Allan,” Encyclopedia Britannica 540). In 1829, Poe was honorably discharged, but not before attaining the rank of Sergeant Major (540). A year later, John Allan scheduled an appointment for Poe with the West Point U. S. Military Academy (540).

Poe had not been in the academy for a year when he was dismissed from West Point. It was after his military career when Poe starting to become a successful writer of poetry and short stories. In 1831, Poems included three of his greatest works: “To Helen,” “The City in the Sea,” and “Israfel” (“Poe, Edgar Allan,” World Book Encyclopedia 591). When his poems failed to reach recognition, Poe began to write short stories such as “MS. Found in a Bottle” in 1833 (591). It was around this time when he married his fourteen-year old cousin, Virginia Clemm, who was a very influential character in Poe’s later works (591).

In 1840, Poe published a collection of his first twenty-five stories called Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (“Poe, Edgar Allan,” World Book Encyclopedia 591). Even when this collection failed to sale or gain recognition, Poe still kept a daily routine of working on literature. In 1843 he sold 300,000 copies of “The Gold Bug” (592). Also in 1843 Poe published one his greatest works, “The Tell-Tale Heart” (“Poe Edgar Allan,” Encarta Encyclopedia n. pag). Then again in 1845, Poe struck gold with his twelve stories in Tales and 30 poems in The Raven and Other Poems (592).

In 1848, Poe explained his theories on the universe in his well-known piece, “Eureka” (“Poe, Edgar Allan,” World Book Encyclopedia 592). In 1843, Poe wrote the timeless classic of “The Tell-Tale Heart” (Encarta N. pag). It was the poem, “Raven” that brought Poe the most recognition and finally provided a spot for him among America’s greatest writers. Writers and critics were bestowing great praises to him during this time. It was with his stories of mystery and murder featuring C. Auguste Dupin that inspired one critic to write, “Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it? Quinn 139).

“It is not enough—certainly for literary criticism it is not enough to call his stories, strange, extraordinary, fantastic” (“Edgar Allan Poe, The Dark Genius of the Short Story” n. pag) is a perfect quote to summarize Poe’s works and their effect on critics and people. This period of tranquility and good tidings would turn out to be Poe’s last. In 1847, Virginia Clemm died of tuberculosis and in doing so added one more name to Poe’s list of lost loves (“Poe, Edgar Allan,” World Book Encyclopedia 591). Her death had affected Poe more greatly than any other of his former loses.

Poe was once quoted saying: Each time I felt all the agonies of her death—and at each accession of the disorder I loved her more dearly and clung to her life with more desperate pertinacity. But I am constitutionally sensitive—nervous in a very unusual degree. During these fits of absolute unconsciously I drank, God only knows how often or how much. (Buranelli 38) Despite the tremendous agony Poe felt over Virginia Clemm’s death, he still passed a sigh of relief over her passing. In Poe’s belief, death should not be feared, but instead it should be sought (Quinn 137).

As Poe had said in “For Annie,” “The fever called ‘Living’ is conquered at last” (Buranelli 38). For Poe, when Virginia died she escaped the curse of life. In 1849, Poe met up with his former sweetheart, Sarah Elmira Royster and became engaged shortly after (“Poe, Edgar Allan,” World Book Encyclopedia 591). As fate would have it, just days before his wedding, Poe stopped in Baltimore and disappeared. On October 3rd, 1849, Poe was found lying in a side street anesthetized (591). He was taken to a hospital where he lay unconscious on his bed.

After four days of complete unconsciousness, Edgar Allan Poe died on October 7th, 1849 (“Poe, Edgar Allan,” Encyclopedia Britannica 540). The cause of his death had remained a mystery since then. Several theories have been presented before the public, but only one has the evidence to back up its claim—rabies. All of Poe’s works of literature possess a link to his own life’s stories and events. His characters’ profiles possess biographical insights into his loved ones’ lives. Poe learned sometime in his life that a good story possesses real life events and those events are what gives his stories a scent of truth.

In one particular case, Poe wrote a passage in his story of “Marginalia” that could only apply to a person such as himself: I have sometimes amused myself by endeavoring to fancy what would be the fate of any individual gifted, or rather accursed, with an intellect very far superior to that of his race. Of course, he would be conscious of his superiority; nor could he (if otherwise constituted as man is) help manifesting his consciousness. This he would make himself enemies at all points. And since his opinions and speculations would widely differ from those of all mankind—that he would be considered a madman, is evident.

How horribly painful such a condition! Hell could invent no greater torture than that of being charged with abnormal weakness on account of being abnormally strong. ” (Buranelli 23) Poe was a genius in the literary field and that gave him the grounds to say so. As he explains in this passage, his far superior ability to write pieces of literature caused a lot of friction between the modern day critics and writers and himself. This passage was an autobiographical account of his writing style and its effect on the society of the time.

Along with writing about his style of writing, Poe also included autobiographical elements in his stories. These stories explained to the reader how Poe lived his life. The somber figure of Edgar Allan Poe stalks forever through the pages of his stories and poems. He is declared to have only one endlessly repeated male character—himself. He is pictured as appearing and reappearing under the guises of his melancholic, neurasthenic, hallucinated, mad and half-mad protagonists: Roderick Usher, Egaeus, William Wilson, Cornelius Wyatt, Montresor, Hop-Frog, Metzengerstein. Buranelli 19-20)

Among these protagonists, the one Poe seems to represent more is the half-mad, Roderick Usher. In the story “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe presents himself through the morbidly uncanny Roderick Usher. “All in all, he is an unbalanced man trying to maintain an equilibrium in his life” (Partridge N. pag). Usher was also a man who realizes his insanity but struggles to grasp his lost sanity. In this passage Poe writes about the narrator’s description of Roderick Usher, but in doing so describes himself to his readers:

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 molded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than weblike 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. ” (Poe 198)

Poe also manages to describe his more unpopular personality traits when he refers to himself as “a lost drunkard or the irreclaimable eater of opium” (198). Poe also used his memory of past events and places to set the backdrop for his pieces of literature. In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe uses his Gothic home as the backdrop and his family as its characters. “Poe often drew upon his memory for his settings, as in ‘The Fall of the House of Usher,’ which concerns the fate of a decayed aristocratic family and it moldering Gothic mansion” (Buranelli 28).

Poe knew the feelings that came to a person when confronted with a relic from their unpleasant past and with that knowledge he could write a story appealing to readers. Poe also used “The Fall of the House of Usher” to portray loved ones, such as his mother, to the reader. He could never bear to take about his mom frequently, because of the pain it put on his heart. To compensate for this he portrayed her through the guise of Lady Madeline (Buranelli 35). Lady Madeline was Usher’s mysterious sister who in the end died without warning or reason.

Poe also wrote a sonnet called “To My Mother” that appeared to be for his mother, but was indeed for his mother-in-law. Along with putting his mother in his tales, Poe also portrayed his life’s greatest love, Virginia Clemm. Virginia inspired such pieces as “Eleanora” and Annabel Lee” (Buranelli 38). I was a child and she was a child, in this kingdom by the sea; but we loved with a love that was more than love—I and my Annabel Lee; with a love that the winged seraphs of heaven coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago, in this kingdom by the sea, a wind blew out of a cloud, chilling my beautiful Annabel Lee; so that her highborn kinsman came and bore her away from me, to shut her up in a sepulchre in this kingdom by the sea…for the moon never beams without bringing me dreams of the beautiful Annabel Lee; and the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes of the beautiful Annabel Lee; and so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride, in the sepulchre there by the sea, in her tomb by the sounding sea. ” (Bloom 145)

In this excerpt, Poe portrays to the reader his love for his wife. “Annabelle Lee” was written in 1849, just two years after Virginia Clemm’s death (“Poe, Edgar Allan,” World Book Encyclopedia 591). Poe was trying to explain her death and its importance to him. He never neglected to portray an aspect of his life before the readers, even when he was facing a loss. Poe is a man writhing in the mystery of his own undoing. He is a great dead soil progressing terribly down the long process of post-mortem activity in disintegration…yet Poe is hardly an artist. He is rather a supreme scientist. “Edgar Allan Poe, The Dark Genius of the short story n. pag)

In every story conceived from the mind of Edgar Allan Poe, a scent of his essence had been molded into each to leave the reader with a better understanding of Poe’s life. Poe has used his greatest achievements, such as marriage and his worst times, such as his wife’s death to help the reader better understand what his life has been like. Poe is a genius in the fact that he can captivate a reader with his true-to-life stories and then explains himself through allusions and hidden maxims. When a person reads works of Edgar Allan Poe, he is actually reading his autobiography.

As vague as Edgar Allan Poe could be at times with the theme of one of his stories, The Fall of the House of Usher contains a theme which is decipherable with little energy expended. The story can be interpreted as an artist who becomes detached from the external world and therefore loses his ability to create art. This also results in his ultimate demise. We first see evidence of this very early in the story. The narrator receives a letter from Mr.

Roderick Usher, in which he describes an acute bodily illnessof a mental disorder which oppressed him… We learn later that Usher has remained with his sister in the manor that they have occupied for years. The narrator describes the house (and the family therein) as having no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn… This can be taken as a separation from the Ushers and the external world.

They are made completely out of the house and its surrounding property with no influence from the outside. Roderick Usher, an artist, has been affected by the distance that is between him and the external in another way. Because of hereditary affliction caused by intermarriage in his family, he has developed an illness that prevents him from listening to art in the form of music, created by anything but stringed instruments. Any music created in any other form results in a painful irritation.

This limitation can be seen as a minute example of the main theme that still conveys the same message. The ultimate demise of the House of Usher and its connected members is the second part of the theme. A separation from the external world will result in death. The fragments in the house that were so miniscule in the beginning of the story can be likened to the fragmented connection between Usher and the external world. As the story progresses the cracks grow and result in the collapse of the house and of the death of Roderick Usher.

Maybe conveying this message was not a completely selfless act of Poes. The story may have only expressed a realization of his own and was made to further his acceptance of such an idea. Edgar Allan Poe was certainly not the most social man and was quite the introvert. Maybe he saw his own demise and developed a character, an artist, modeled after himself. In any case, Poe did express that if one disconnected himself from the outside world, his collapse would be inevitable.

In the writings of great authors it is easy to pick out the literary elements used by them. Edgar Allan Poe is one of these authors. He makes use of the same literary elements in many of his stories. Three of the most used literary elements are irony, antagonists and foreshadowing. Irony is used very often by Poe. Irony is when something occurs that is the exact opposite of how it should be or seem. Irony varies in that it may be displayed through someone’s actions or an ironic happening.

An example of irony in someone’s action are in the Cask of Amontillado is when Montressor repeatedly seems concerned for Fortunato’s health, even though his real intentions are to kill him. It also may be considered ironic that Poe named the enemy of Monstressor, Fortunato. Being that Fortunato means fortunate or lucky in Italian, it is ironic that he is very unlucky in that he his buried alive in a wall. The Antagonist is also a literary element used by Poe is this story. We see how Forunato so ignorantly and thoughtlessly antagonized the questionably insane Montressor.

The consequence for this antagonist was death by dehydration and starvation. One of the most common literary elements used by Poe throughout many of his works is foreshadowing. Poe loved foreshadowing what is to come as much as he can. We see him often use little things to foreshadow. Such as, the infamous raven, or the dichromatic beating of the heart within a dead man buried in the floor. In the Cask of Amontillado, we see foreshadowing in the speech of Monstressor and Fortunato.

When Fortunato states, “I shall not die of a mere cough”, Monstressor enthusiastically agrees with him. If you read into this meaning behind this it is direct foreshadowing that he will not die of a mere cough, but starvation and dehydration caused by Monstressor burying him in a wall will be what kills him. Irony, antagonists and foreshadowing are three literary elements often seen in Poe’s works. They greatly attribute to his unique writing style and make his works as great as they are.

The short story writer which I have chosen to research is Edgar Allen Poe. After reading one of his works in class, I realized that his mysterious style of writing greatly appealed to me. Although many critics have different views on Poe’s writing style, I think that Harold Bloom summed it up best when he said, “Poe has an uncanny talent for exposing our common nightmares and hysteria lurking beneath our carefully structured lives. ” ( 7) For me, this is done through his use of setting and narrative style.

In many of Poe’s works, setting is used to paint a dark and gloomy picture in our minds. I think that this was done deliberatly by Poe so that the reader can make a connection between darkness and death. For example, in the “Pit and the Pendulum”, the setting is originally pitch black. As the story unfolds, we see how the setting begins to play an important role in how the narrator discovers the many ways he may die. Although he must rely on his senses alone to feel his surroundings, he knows that somewhere in this dark, gloomy room, that death awaits him.

Richard Wilbur tells us how fitting the chamber in “The Pit and the Pendulum” actually was. “Though he lives on the brink of the pit, on the very verge of the plunge into unconciousness, he is still unable to disengage himself from the physical and temperal world. The physical oppreses him in the shape of lurid graveyard visions; the temporal oppreses him in the shape of an enormous and deadly pendulum. It is altogether appropriate, then, that this chamber should be constricting and cruelly angular” (63). Setting is also an important characteristic is Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”.

The images he gives us such as how both the Usher family and the Usher mansion are crumbling from inside waiting to collapse, help us to connect the background with the story. Vincent Buranelli says that “Poe is able to sysatin an atomosphere which is dark and dull. This is one of the tricks which he laregely derived from the tradition of the Gothic tale” (79). The whole setting in the story provides us with a feeling of melancholy. The Usher mansion appears vacant and barren. The same is true for the narrator.

As we picture in our minds the extreme decay and decomposistion, we can feelas though the life around it is also crumbling. Narration is also an element in Poe’s short story style that appears to link all of the stories together. He has a type of creativity which lets the reader see into the mind of the narrator or the main character of the story. Many of the characters in Poe’s stories seem to be insane. The narrator often seems to have some type of psychological problems. For exapmle, In Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado, ” the story opens with a first person narrator (Montresor) speaking about the planning of Fortunato’s death.

By the anger and remorse that Montresor has for Fortunato, one might think that this was a recent incident. It is not until the very end of the story that we realize, that the entire event occurred fifty years ago. David Herbert Lawrence says, “To the characters in Poe’s story, hate is as inordinate as live. The lust of hate is the inordinate desire to consume and unspeakably possess the soul of the hated one, just as the lust of live is the desire to possess or be possessed be the beloved, uterly. ” (33).

Poe’s stories often have narrators that feel extreme hate or extreme love for another character in the story. Another example of Poe’s narrative style is seen in his story entitled,” The Black Cat”, where the narrator seems to have an obsession with pets. He has one “special” pet which is a black cat. Although their original relationship with each other is one of respect and love, the situation soon changes. The narrator becomes somewhat possessed with the hate for the car. He turns against his wife and stabs his cat in the eye.

By the end of the story, he killed his wife in an attempt to kill the cat. Afterwards, the narrator does not even feel remorse for the wrongful death of his wife. Instead, he is just happy that the cat dissapeared. This is just another instance in which the reader wonders what is the driving force begins the narrator’s insanity. Buranelli, “In both Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” and his “The Black Cat”, the barrators act without conscience. There are no doubts, hesitiations or second thought to impede the narrative. Both narrators just sought revenge” (77).

Even though there are many more elements to Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories than just his creative use of narration and setting, these are characteristivs which has attracted the most attention. Poe has a way of writing in which he does not have to reveal too much, or paint a pretty picture for the reader in order to attract his attention. In D. H. Lawrence’s Studies in Classic American Literature, the author states, “Poe’s narrowness is like that of a sword, ot that of a bottleneck: it is effective rather than constricting.

Nothing adventitious is in his great stories, only the essentials, the mininum of characterization, plot, and atmosphere. By ridding himself of everything except what is precisely to the point, he achieves unity of effect. ” (66). There is also a prominent distinction between right and wrong in Poe’s tories. Viscous characters tend to come to a bad end. This lets the reader accept these endings as a triumph of good over evil. As stated by Buranelli: “He has created a universe, given it psychological laws without enying the existence of the moral law, and peopled it with characters appropriate to such a universe.

Puttng overt mortality out of bounds helps to give him uniqueness” (74). After researching Edgar Allan Poe more in depth, I now have a much greater respect for him and a slightly different perspective of his stories. While it is still evident to me that narrative style and setting have a great deal to do with the development of Poe’s short stories, I also realise now that we can’t overlap and intertwine with other aspects of the story, making them equally as important.

I will end with a quote found in Vincent Buranelli’s Edgar Allan Poe: “Even though Poe is often looked upon as a gifted psychopath who is describing with consumate artistry his personal instablities and abnormalitiesm the fact remains that his superiority is more than a matter of art. There is a violent realism in his macabre writings unequaled by the Americans who worked in the same genre. “

Edgar Allan Poe is perhaps the best-known American Romantic who worked in the Gothic mode. His stories explore the darker side of the Romantic imagination, dealing with the grotesque, the supernatural, and the horrifying. He defined the form of the American short story. As one might expect, Poe himself eschewed conventional morality, which he believed stems from man’s attempts to dictate the purposes of God. Poe saw God more as a process than purpose. He believed that moralists derive their beliefs, and thus, the resultant behavioral patterns, from a priori knowledge.

In Eureka, we find that Poe shunned such artifices of mind, systems which, he professed, have no basis in reality. Yet Poe employed in his writing the diction of the moral tome, which causes confusion for readers immersed in this tradition. Daniel Hoffman reiterates Allan Tate’s position that, aside from his atavistic employment of moral terminology, Poe writes as though “Christianity had never been invented. ” (Hoffman 171) Poe did offer to posterity one tale with a moral.

Written in 1841 at the dawn of Poe’s most creative period, Poe delivers to his readers a satirical spoof, a literary Bronx cheer to writers of moralistic fiction, and to critics who expressed disapprobation at finding no discernible moral in his works. The tale “Never Bet the Devil Your Head: A Tale with a Moral” presents Poe’s “way of staying execution” (Poe 487) for his transgressions against the didactics. The story’s main character is Toby Dammit, who from infanthood, had been flogged left-handed, which since the world revolves right to left, causes evil propensities to be driven home rather than driven out.

The narrator relates that by the age of seven months, Toby was chasing down and kissing the female babies, that by eight months he had flatly refused to sign the Temperance Pledge, and that by the end of his first year, he’d taken to “wearing mustaches, but had contracted a propensity for cursing and swearing, and for backing his assertions with bets. ” (Poe 488) As Toby reaches manhood, the narrator finally accepts that his young friend is incorrigible. By this time, Toby utters scarcely a sentence without oaths, his favorite of which is to bet the devil his head that he can accomplish whatever challenge lies before him.

One day as the narrator accompanies Toby Dammit on a route which requires the crossing of a covered bridge, Toby bets the devil his head that he can leap over a bridge stile, pigeon winging as he performs the feat. Unexpectedly a “little lame old gentleman of venerable aspect” (Poe 491) interrupts with an emphatic “ahem” to take Toby up on his bet. The elderly gentleman wears an “a full suit of black, but his shirt was perfectly clean and the collar turned very neatly down over a white cravat. ” Oddly, his eyes are “carefully rolled up into the top of his head,” and he wears a black silk apron. 91)

After he takes charge of Toby, allowing him a running start, the elderly interloper takes his position just behind the stile. The narrator awaits the gentleman’s “One–two–three–and–away,” when Toby initiates his running leap. To all appearances, the young reprobate is destined to clear the stile easily, pigeon-winging as he flies, when abruptly his progress is arrested, and the luckless Toby falls flat on his back on his side of the stile. The elderly gentleman is indistinctly seen wrapping a bulky object in his apron and taking his leave of them.

When the narrator throws open an adjacent window, he sees that Toby has been deprived of his head by a sharp, heretofore unnoticed cross-support located directly above the stile. Stated so that the targets of Poe’s ridicule cannot miss it, the moral of his tale is the title of the story. Yet the moral of the tale is not its theme. Poe purposes ridicule of those who presume to judge him, and of their small-mindedness. This ridicule is his theme. His rendering of this riotous spoof illustrates that Poe believed he had more important things to do than pass moral judgment in his tales.

Poe instead opted to depict what occurred to him as the natural order of man’s behavior, rather than to engage in baseless speculation concerning what God intended for the individual. Appropriately, Poe asks, “if we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, how then in his inconceivable thoughts, that call the works into being! If we cannot understand him in his objective creatures, how then in his substantive moods and phases of creation”? (Poe 280-81) Instead, Poe’s work penetrated to the truths which govern the universe. How petty the moralists of his day must have seemed to him!

Best known for his poems and short fiction, Edgar Allan Poe deserves more credit than any other writer for the transformation of the short story from anecdote to art. He virtually created the detective story and perfected the psychological thriller. He also produced some of the most influential literary criticism of his time–important theoretical statements on poetry and the short story–and has had a worldwide influence on literature. Poe did not find it sufficient that he essays his theory of perversity in one story only. Perhaps his most lucid portrayal of perversity resides in his masterfully told tale “The Black Cat.

That work’s narrator owns a black cat named Pluto, which he dearly loves. However, the cat’s owner takes to drinking, and one day, in a tantrum, he is seized by perverse impulses beyond his control. He captures the unfortunate creature, and with his pen knife, removes one of its eyes. This is but the beginning of the narrator’s sorrows. He recognizes that it was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself–to offer violence to own nature–to do wrong for the wrong’s sake only–that urged me to continue and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute.

One morning, in cold blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree;–hung it with tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart;–hung it because I knew it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no offense;–hung it because I knew that in doing so I was committing a sin–a deadly sin that would jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it–if such a thing were possible–even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God. (Poe, “The Black Cat” 225)

Again, Poe employs language which can send a traditional moralist howling about the wages of sin. But catch the subjunctive, “if such a thing were possible. ” Poe makes it clear, even in this extreme set of circumstances, that he does not believe it possible to be beyond the reach of God. In Eureka, we saw why. In that work, Poe portrayed God as manifest in the works of his own creation. We saw him further declare that all things of the universe contain “the germ of their inevitable annihilation. ” Speaking through his narrators,” Poe illustrates perversity as the “germ” of annihilation as it resides in the human psyche.

But, for now, let us return to the story and witness perversity wreak its havoc. The night of the day he hanged Pluto, a fire swept through the narrator’s house. He, his wife, and the servant escaped, but the conflagration completely destroyed the house; yet one wall had not fallen in. Upon visiting the ruin, the narrator witnessed in the standing wall, “as if graven in bas relief upon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat… There was a rope about the animal’s neck. ” (Poe 66) The image of the cat detailed in what had been a freshly plastered wall profoundly affected the fancies of the narrator.

As if to atone for his actions, the narrator begins a search to adopt a similar cat, which he finally locates “in a den of more than infamy… reposing on the head of one of the immense hogsheads of Gin, or of Rum. ” (66) The new cat is completely black except for an indefinite white splotch on its chest. It follows him home. At first, he likes the cat, for it is quite affectionate. But his attitude changes; tension builds anew. The tension grows to hatred, caused in part by the narrator’s discovery that, like Pluto, the new cat has been deprived of an eye.

The narrator, only because of his terrors about his first cat, restrains himself from doing the new cat harm. But to his horror, the white patch of fur on his new cat’s chest gradually assumes the shape of the gallows. The narrator begins to fancy the cat as the tormentor of his heart, its hot breath in his face. Perversely, the narrator succumbs entirely to evil thoughts, “hatred of all things and of all mankind. ” (Poe 68) Finally, one day as the narrator and his wife descend the steps into their cellar, the cat causes the narrator to lose his footing.

In turn, the narrator flies into a rage and tries to axe the cat. The wife, trying to save the life of the cat, catches hold of the axe. Then entirely out of his mind, the narrator plants the axe in her skull. To avoid detection in his crime, he bricks his wife into a cellar wall. But the luckless narrator accidentally bricks the cat into the wall as well. After searching for the dreaded cat, the narrator concludes that the beast has “in terror, fled the premises forever. ” However, the fourth day, the police arrive to thoroughly examine the house.

They leave no “nook or corner unexplored. Poe 60) Even upon their third or fourth visit to the cellar, the narrator remains sublimely calm. Finally satisfied, and preparing to quit the search, the police are interrupted in their ascension of the stairs by the triumphant voice of the narrator. “Gentleman,” I said at last…, I delight to have allayed your suspicions. I wish you all health and a little more courtesy. Bye the bye, gentleman, this-this is a very well constructed house. ” [In the rabid desire to say something easily, I scarcely knew what I uttered at all. ]–“I may say an excellently constructed house.

The walls–are you going, gentlemen? these walls are solidly put together;” and here, through the mere frenzy of bravado, I rapped heavily, with a cane which I held in my hand, upon that very portion of the brick-work behind which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom.

No sooner had the reverberations of the striking of the cane died away, than there issued forth the howl, “a wailing shriek, half of horror and half of the triumph… , such as might have arisen… from the throats of the damned in their agony and of the demons that exult in the damnation. ” The cat had completed its conquest, revealing the location of the corpse and consigning the wretch to the gallows.

The final horror of the narrator, his crowning act of perversity, is reminiscent of the crazed killer of the old man in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” who had succeeded in hiding his atrocity, only to betray himself in direct effect, again to the police. Later, we shall see a similar psychological immolation performed by the narrator on himself in “The Imp of the Perverse. ” “The Black Cat” illustrates many manifestations and vehicles which the perverse can assume. First, the narrator succumbs to alcohol; then the narrator’s spirit of perversity, given a foothold in his psyche, causes the eventual decline in his temperament.

As the story progresses, the narrator reaches the point which Poe describes: “With certain minds, under certain conditions, it [perversity] becomes absolutely irresistible… radical… primitive… ” Alas, the hapless narrator cannot help himself. As mentioned previously, a traditional moralist will always be tempted to overlay his own principles on Poe’s tales, in this story, expostulating the evils of drink, perhaps. And understandably, when such tenets reside at the core of one’s belief structure, the temptation to perform moral judgment can be preemptory; yet Poe’s system of mind deserves our efforts to comprehend his system.

Certainly, Poe recognized the lure of alcohol; yet he chose to examine the primitive cause for the urge, rather than submit to the prescriptions of the moralists of his time. So let us, too, seek to discern Poe’s intentions. And what of this flailing narrator who possesses seemingly so little command of his life? He knows that he has violated his own vitality by removing Pluto’s eye, and by later hanging the cat in the tree. He displays regret for his actions, a conscience. But what can his conscience constitute in Poe’s system of morality? And for that matter, what is morality when one leaves God’s intention for man out of the picture?

Poe’s perversity is taken further with his story “The Imp of the Perverse” opens in the style of an essay, describing “the prima mobilia of the human soul,” a propensity which has been ignored by phrenologists and moralists, “although obviously existing as a radical, primitive, irreducible sentiment. ” (Poe 271) The sentiment thus described as “perverseness is subsequently delineated in three examples: The first involves a speaker’s tantalizing an audience by circumlocution, fully aware that he displeases, and though intending to please, he opts to indulge the “uncontrollable longing” to displease. 72-73)

After its July 1945 publication of “The Imp… ,” Poe spoke to open the Lyceum season on October 16. One cannot help wondering whether Poe’s self-effacing introduction and his reading of the whole of “Al Aaraaf” to an audience of Bostonians did not represent enactment of this episode from his story. (Silverman 267) The second example is much like that of the graduate student cited earlier. Procrastination as an agency of the perverse also seems to have plagued Poe before the Lyceum reading, since he had promised to read a new poem, which he never wrote, then disappointed with the lengthy and unsuccessful poem from his youth.

In contrast to the success of the graduate student in overcoming his perverse inclination, the “chanticleer-ghost” petrifies the victim in Poe’s illustration, until the striking of the hour designating that alas, “it is too late. ” (Poe 273) The third example places the victim on the brink of a precipice, where he begins to yearn for the “delight” in the horror of a “rushing annihilation” from such a height. What “would be our sensations? ” (273) The narrator points out that it is the very loathsomeness and ghastliness of such a death which causes one to most vividly desire it.

If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge and are destroyed. ” (Poe 274) A similar account can be found on the Isle of Tsalal in Poe’s novel, the Narrative of A. Gordon Pym, when the narrator is saved from a fall from a steep cliff only by the arms of Peters. Next, the reader discovers that he reads not an essay, but a tale of horror from a young man who has fallen victim to the spirit of perverseness he had so well portrayed.

One can also bet that Poe had John Allan in mind when he formulated the plot for this episode. The narrator devises a scheme that will secure his fortune from his benefactor-to-be. He poisons the wax of a candle and exchanges it for the candle at his benefactor’s bedside. Of course the benefactor suffocates; the evidence burns away; the taper is disposed of. The scheme is a success, as the crime goes undetected. For a number of years, the narrator enjoys his good fortune. But he begins to mutter to himself, “I am safe,” and finally, “I am safe–I am safe–if I do not fool enough to make an open confession.

At this suggestion, the narrator confronts his own double, his perverse self who reveals him “as the very ghost of him I had murdered…. ” (Poe 275) The narrator feels the pangs of suffocation as if it were he who is now being poisoned. Finally, completely dominated by his perverse spirit, the narrator rushes madly through the heavily populated avenues to confess his crime to the authorities. He relates all that is needed to convict him of his crime, then falls “prostrate in a swoon. ” (275) Those whom Poe satirizes in “Never Bet the Devil Your Head: A Tale with a Moral” would likely find a moral in “The Imp…

They would avow that the narrator’s guilt caused the confession. He was a bad egg, and, sonny boy, if you don’t want to end up like him, you won’t kill people. Moralists would completely ignore the narrator’s explicit explanation of perversity at the story’s outset, to insist that Poe tells herein a moral tale. It seems to this writer that we must give Poe credit for knowing what he was doing. If he presents a narrative in illustration of human perversity, the reader should take him at his word. But what of his confession?

Is this not the voice of his conscience? Yes, assuredly, his confession is the utterance of conscience, but it is a conscience in Poe’s scheme, an agent of the perverse, revealing the “deep secret,” the seed of annihilation residing in the human breast. It is not conscience which brings the individual into submission to a moral code. Perhaps the conditions which I described in the preceding paragraphs illustrate that creativity and perversity do, as Poe declared, walk hand-in-hand, just as do the attraction and repulsion motions of the universe.

Consider the possibility that man’s prolific creative genius necessarily must be just as abundantly perverse. Certainly, this antipodality of action and reaction seems to follow the basic laws of Newton, as well as the oscillations manifested throughout the universe. But what prevents the individual from recognizing his own perversity in Poe’s terms, as a primal force governing many of the activities of the psyche? After Toby’s debacle, I would not bet the devil my head, but could it be our own cultural conditioning which blinds us to this truth which Poe proclaimed as self-evident?

Must we deliberately shed the accouterments of the convention to travel Poe’s intellect? Yes, yes, emphatically, yes. It is also helpful to consider that Poe performed his search very much from the Romantic tradition and in the American spirit. He searched individually, passionately, but entirely alone. Yet his quest for transcendence to the unity of the Godhead and his profound postulates governing the spiritual universe rarefied him from his literary and social compatriots, and even from many modern readers. Readers of Poe’s time and of ours have much to unlearn before they can hope to decode his macabre.

In addition, Poe’s psychological theory, which represents the mind’s compulsion to kill the body, drew from the society of his time the author’s own imps of the perverse, most notably the Reverend Rufus W. Griswold, who believed Poe to be demented. Yet how could Griswold be expected to grasp Poe’s belief in a spiritually governed universe where God is manifest in his own creation. How could he comprehend Poe’s psychic landscape, where the mind wars against the body to rejoin the spirit with God. Griswold recoiled.

Though we disparage his onslaught of Poe’s reputation, his alteration of letters and other records of fact, we can also perceive the Reverend’s desperation. He was bright enough to see what Poe undertook and was scared silly. So what is being undertaken here is a psychical study of man, an examination of the seasons of intellect, body, and spirit, through which we all cycle. Also attempted is a portrayal of Poe’s creative spirit. Though hyper-aware of his own tendency to perversity, what creative impetus must have been requisite for Edgar Poe to have penned poems and stories which so closely mirror the psychic patterns of his own mind!