Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Comparative Literary Analysis / Edgar Allan Poe
Literary analysis of Edgar Allan Poe's work
Compare two poems by Edgar Allan Poe
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Comparative Literary Analysis / Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe’s stories “The Cask of Amontillado”, “The Black Cat”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, and “The masque of the Red Death” all share a similar setting, mood and characters. They also share a similarity of death. This is due to him loosing so many people to tuberculous. Throughout his life he saw his mother, his wife, and his sister die of the dreaded disease, which helped him write his stories and poems. Poe’s stories “The Cask of Amontillado”, “The Black Cat”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, and “The Masque of the Red Death” all share a common setting. “The Fall of the House of Usher” has a setting of creepy and dark setting. The setting helps with this story because the rest of the Usher family dis off and the house falls. …show more content…
The setting of “The Masque of the Red Death” is an invite only party the prince is having in his isolated abbey. The story says “When his dominions were half depopulated; he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light- hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired …show more content…
In the story “The Cask of Amontillado” Montresor purposefully built Fortunato into a wall and it satisfied him. In the text it says “A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back. For a brief moment I hesitated, I trembled, unsheathing my rapier, I began to grope with it about the recess; but the thought of an instant reassured me. I placed my hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs, and felt satisfied.” This shows him being nervous about burying him in a wall but then felt satisfied. In the story “The Black Cat” the narrator is strange and mad. He shows this by hanging his cat. He hung the cat because he thinks the cat no longer loves him. The quote “That urged me to continue and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute. One morning, in cool blood. I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to he limb of a tree; -- hung it with the 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 reason of offence; -- hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin” shows the main character being strange and mad. Also “The Fall of the House of Usher” shows one of the main
In Poe literature readers will see an abundance of suspense, symbolism, and gothic elements used mostly to create gloomy atmospheres. In "Fall of the House of Usher" Poe uses suspense, symbolism, and gothic elements to create a chilling tone of fear, loneliness, and oppression.
Authors use various styles to tell their stories in order to appeal to the masses exceptionally well and pass the message across. These messages can be communicated through short stories, novels, poems, songs and other forms of literature. Through The Masque of the Red Death and The Raven, it is incredibly easy to get an understanding of Edgar Allen Poe as an author. Both works describe events that are melodramatic, evil and strange. It is also pertinent to appreciate the fact that strange plots and eerie atmospheres are considerably evident in the author’s writings. This paper compares and contrasts The Masque of the Red Death and The Raven and proves that the fear of uncertainty and death informs Edgar Allen Poe’s writings in the two works
Death, despair, and revenge, these three words form a treacherous triangle to any reader who dare enter the mind of Edgar Allen Poe. In many of his works these expressions seem to form a reoccurring theme. Comparing the works "The Mask of the Red Death" and "The Cask of Amontillado", we will discuss these themes while analyzing the method behind Poe’s madness.
In “The Fall of the House of Usher”, Poe’s use of dark, descriptive words allow him to establish an eerie mood. Poe’s unique style of writing along with his foreshadowing vocabulary is significant in creating a suspenseful gothic story. At the beginning of the short story, Poe describes the House of Usher to be “dull”, “oppressive”, and “dreary” (1265). His choice of words strongly emphasizes a mood of darkness and suspense as he builds on the horrific aspects of this daunting tale. At first glimpse, the house itself is surrounded by the feeling of “insufferable gloom”, (1265) “[t]here was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart, an unredeemed dreariness of thought [...]” (1265). The atmosphere that Poe describes in the statement above establishes a spine-chilling mood. Poe uses words such as “insufferable gloom”
Edgar Allan Poe is undoubtedly one of American Literature's legendary and prolific writers, and it is normal to say that his works touched on many aspects of the human psyche and personality. While he was no psychologist, he wrote about things that could evoke the reasons behind every person's character, whether flawed or not. Some would say his works are of the horror genre, succeeding in frightening his audience into trying to finish reading the book in one sitting, but making them think beyond the story and analyze it through imagery. The "Fall of the House of Usher" is one such tale that uses such frightening imagery that one can only sigh in relief that it is just a work of fiction. However, based on the biography of Poe, events that surrounded his life while he was working on his tales were enough to show the emotions he undoubtedly was experiencing during that time.
Among Poe's most intriguing tales is "The Cask of Amontillado," first published in Godey's Lady's Book in November of 1847. A surface reading of that story reveals only a simple description by Montresor (the narrator) of how he kills another man who was called, ironically, Fortunato. Montresor exploits Fortunato's vanity concerning the connoiseurship of wine; specifically, Montresor pretends to want a wine cask of Amontillado verified as genuine. Montresor chooses a time when Fortunato is drunk to dupe him into going down the spiral stairs into the catacombs, which serve as a sort of family burial grounds for the race of Montresors. But rather than a mere cask of wine, Fortunato finds his death; for Montresor bricks him into a niche of the catacombs which has remained undisturbed for the fifty years since the murder was performed. How simple!
Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, sets a tone that is dark, gloomy, and threatening. His inclusion of highly descriptive words and various forms of figurative language enhance the story’s evil nature, giving the house and its inhabitants eerie and “supernatural” qualities. Poe’s effective use of personification, symbolism, foreshadowing, and doubling create a morbid tale leading to, and ultimately causing, the fall of (the house of) Usher.
The majority of his stories are based on the same recurrent motifs such as: crime, murder, evil, madness, burrying alive or corpses making sounds. Moreover, in almost all of them Poe introduced some Gothic elements: a gloomy and mysterious landscape or a haunted house. But the motif that is most noticeable in almost all of his works is that of a split personality. One of such stories is The Fall of the House of Usher. The narrator receives a letter from his friend form childhood, Roderick Usher, telling him that he is in need of his assistance. As he arrives the first thing that catches his attention is the house of his friend. It is in dilapidated condition and the murky and gloom surroundings fill him with a weird sense of mystery: " With the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit[...]" The narrator finds his friend in a similar condition. His complexion is pale and he seems to be subdued. During his stay in the house he learns that Roderick suffers from...
Edgar Allan Poe is a name that is prominent in literature as a slightly obnoxious, gruesome writer. His short stories and poems are sure to send a shiver down any reader’s spine with his vivid imagery. But if one takes the time to read all sixty-nine of his short stories, he or she would find many common elements that become slightly monotonous. Even though he uses some similar ideas, it is what separates his work as distinctly “Poe”. After dissecting each of his stories, it is intriguing to find what components he tends to repeat.
In the beginning of the story, with an extensive and vivid description of the house and its vicinity, Poe prepares the scene for a dreadful, bleak, and distempered tale. The setting not only affects Poe’s narration of the story but influences the characters and their actions as well. Both the narrator and his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher, question w...
Edgar Allan Poe is one of America’s most celebrated classical authors, known for his unique dealings within the horror genre. Poe was a master at utilizing literary devices such as point of view and setting to enhance the mood and plot of his stories leading to his widespread appeal that remains intact to this day. His mastery of aforementioned devices is evident in two of his shorter works “The Black Cat” and “The Cask of Amontillado”.
Throughout Edgar Allan Poe’s life, death was a frequent visitor to those he loved around him. When Poe was only 3 years old, his loving mother died of Tuberculosis. Because Poe’s father left when he was an infant, he was now an orphan and went to live with the Allan’s. His stepmother was very affectionate towards Edgar and was a very prominent figure in his life. However, years later she also died from Tuberculosis, leaving Poe lonely and forlorn. Also, later on, when Poe was 26, he married his cousin 13-year-old Virginia, whom he adored. But, his happiness did not last long, and Virginia also died of Tuberculosis, otherwise known as the Red Death, a few years later. After Virginia’s death, Poe turned to alcohol and became isolated and reckless. Due to Edgar Allan Poe’s loss of those he cared for throughout his life, Poe’s obsession with death is evident in his works of “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Black Cat”, and “The Fall of the House of Usher”, in which in all three death is used to produce guilt.
In the story “The Fall of the House of Usher”, Poe presents the history of the end of an illustrious family. As with many of Poe’s stories, setting and mood contribute greatly to the overall tale. Poe’s descriptions of the house itself as well as the inhabitants thereof invoke in the reader a feeling of gloom and terror. This can best be seen first by considering Poe’s description of the house and then comparing it to his description of its inhabitants, Roderick and Madeline Usher.
Edgar Allan Poe uses setting to create a melancholy and gloomy mood in the story. The story starts off with an unnamed narrator who is traveling on a “dull, dark and soundless day” (Poe 1). The story already has gloomy mood, without mention of the house of Usher. Before the narrator enters the house, he describes it as “inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows” (Poe 2). The house of Usher looks run down, scary, and gloomy, like a haunted house. The setting in the first two pages creates this sad and scary mood throughout the rest of the story. Poe uses words such as “black, vacant, decayed, gray, gothic and sluggish” to create the atmosphere. This creates a very effective atmosphere in the entire story and the story revolves around the atmosphere in its entirety, showing that this is no ordinary house and there is evil involved.
Montresor sinisterly tricks Fortunato into believing Montresor has an expensive cask of Amontillado to lead him into the catacombs. He foolishly falls for Montresor’s devious plan and gets led into a dead end in the catacombs, where Montresor leaves him behind a wall suffocating on smoke. The author uses imagery well to capture the all of the scenes and he also uses it to create the mood. The description of the catacombs where precise with every word as the author states, “...exposed by the displacing of bones, we perceived a still interior recess...backed by one of their circumcision walls of solid granite.” The imagery made the pages come alive. The sentence structure was helpful to this story as well. As the beginning was long and flowy sentences, they began to get shorter as they went into the catacombs. The description, although, was in long, flowy, mysterious sentences to create the feel of suspicion. The verbal irony in this story backed up the conflict. Montresor says, “And I to your long life,” as they toasted. Montresor knew how Fortunato was going to end up but Montresor still toasted with irony at the tip of his tongue. The conflict was expressed at the beginning of the story when Montresor vows revenge on Fortunato because Fortunato insults Montresor. This story created a mysterious feel with all of the