Edgar Allan Poe is known for his many works that are dark and mysterious. He became known as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe had a dark, troubled life growing up. Both his biological parents died when he was a young boy and was separated from his siblings when another family adopted him. His foster father was in the tobacco industry, but Poe did not want to be involved in that business. He wanted to write. He went to college with very little money. He was so embarrassed by his poverty that he came back home, only to find that his fiancée got engaged to someone else in his absence. He left again, before finding out that the only mother he had ever known was dying of tuberculosis. By the time he returned she had already been buried. Allan, his foster father, helped Poe get into the United States Military Academy at West Point. Allan remarried and did not invite Poe. Poe was angry and wrote Allan detailing all the wrongs Allan had committed against him and threatened to get himself kicked out of the academy. Poe’s wife got tuberculosis, which had already taken the lives of his mother, brother, and foster mother.Because Poe had such a dark, difficult life, he used his poems to reflect his life.
Every poem of Edgar Allan Poe’s has some common literary elements, such as themes, symbols, motifs, and moods. Poe often uses similar themes throughout his poems. For instance, revenge is a common them and is used in the “Cask of Amontillado” and “ Hop Frog.” Another them he uses quite frequently is death. In almost every poem, death is mentioned. In the “Cask of Amontillado,” Montresor kills Fortunato. In “Premature Burial,” it has documentaries of people who have died. In “Tell Tale Heart,” a man his killed. Dea...
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...ing of Fortunato, the reader does not know how he will be killed. It makes the reader wonder what Montresor will do to gain his revenge. Because most of his stories involve death, the mood is often sad and depressing. In the “Masque of the Red Death,” many people die from the plaque. Although the ones in the house are trying to escape death, no one can. Just like in Poe’s real life, everyone dies and most of them were from a disease. It cannot be controlled.
Edgar Allan Poe is a popular all around the world. He is seen as a dark, mysterious writer. Looking into his life experiences, it explains why his stories are so dark. Readers who do not know his background stories may think he is a crazy, mentally unstable man. But to really understand the depth of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories, it is important and useful to look into the reasoning of why the stories are so dark.
Edgar Allan Poe, an often misinterpreted literary mastermind, known predominantly by his extraordinary tales of horror, forbidden love, madness, and mystery, is more than meets the eye. Though his genres of expertise may indicate otherwise, Poe was a very social person, a gentleman by trade, and he possessed more hands-on military experience than any other major American author in history. As a writer, Poe gained a great deal of his inspiration from his surroundings. His enlistment in the army contributed significantly to his repertoire, and inspired some of his greatest works, including “’The Gold Bug;’ ’The Man Who Was Used Up,’ a satire of southern frontier politics; ‘The Balloon Hoax,’ set along the mid-Atlantic Carolinas coast; ‘The Oblong Box,’ involving a voyage out of Charleston harbor; [and] ‘The Cask of Amontillado,’ possibly based on a Fort Independence/Castle Island Legend”(Beidler, Soldier 342). The death of his mother and his unfortunate love life played another major role in his authoring, giving him the ability to write about “. . . the intense symbiosis between love and hatred . . . [illustrating that] love is seldom as simple or as happy as popularly hoped” (Hoffman 81). Poe’s chilling tales remain popular today, and have a long history of providing inspiration for major books and other cultural staples of entertainment.
Edgar Allen Poe is known for his dark yet comedic approach toward the his theme of his stories. Likewise, Poe’s themes have gathered many fans due to his impression of reasoning in his stories. The author uses thinking and reasoning to portray the theme. Poe’s unique diction comprehends with the theme of the story. Poe has a brilliant way of taking gothic tales of mystery, and terror, and mixing them with variations of a romantic tale by shifting emphasis from, surface suspense and plot pattern to his symbolic play in language and various meanings of words.
In much of Poe’s Work, the presence of revenge and death seem to precede each other. In both stories, if someone dies, then revenge follows. If someone commits revenge, death seems to find that person. With the death of the commoners in "The Masque of the Red Death", revenge seems to follow the prince who abandoned them. When Fortunato betrays Montresor in "The Cask of Amontillado", death follows shortly after. In the end of the stories the characters come full circle with fate, whether it fortune or misfortune.
Edgar Allen Poe was born on January 19, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts. His mother and father where both actors, David and Elizabeth Arnold. They had financial difficulties, which soon caused the father to abandon the family. Poe's mother soon had another child; however, she was having physical conditions causing her death on December 8, 1811. Becoming orphans, both Poe and his sister were split up in family friend’s houses. Poe went to live with the Allan's. As Poe grew up he started having problems with his John Allan, his foster father, which caused future problems. Poe's first step to start a career was attending the University of Virginia in 1826. "Allan failed to provide Poe with enough money for necessities such as furniture and books and Poe soon ran up a tremendous gambling debt and began drinking, despite his very low tolerance for alcohol" (Loveday 2). After a time he moved to Boston, "The Great Literature Capital." What was helping Poe start of his career, where the big hopes of one day becoming a writer despite the harsh life he had since he was little. Poe's work has had an impact on literature. Throughout his most famous pieces of literature, "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Raven," and "The Cast of Amontillado," we see common factors that influenced these types of works through his plots and characters. "Madness, alienation, and mankind's long love affair with morbidity were the his subjects, and he didn't mind admitting to being more to being more than half in love with easeful death, to mangle a line from his favorite poet, Tennyson," (Allen 2).
It is set during a carnival when a very unreliable narrator Montresor explains how he seeks to get revenge upon his enemy Fortunato, yet he never tells the audience what Fortunato has done to him. Montresor simply says, “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge (165). The reason why Montresor is so important as a narrator is because it leaves it up to the audience to decide if Montresor had a reason to kill Fortunato or not. This story was much darker than The Masque of the Red Death, because it told a story of a murder, but the narrator Montresor try’s to convince the readers that he is the good guy. Poe focuses more on theme and characters in this story, Fortunato meaning “fortunate one” is a very ironic name because throughout the story Fortunato expects nothing he simply thinks he is going to try a special type of wine. The catacombs were Montresor plans to kill Fortunato splits the two worlds, above there is live and drinking and fun but below there is something much darker about to take place. Edgar Allan Poe leaves a nice imagine in the readers mind of Fortunato being all chained and blocked into a room screaming “ For the love of God
The life of Edgar Allan Poe, was stuffed with tragedies that all affected his art. From the very start of his writing career, he adored writing poems for the ladies in his life. When he reached adulthood and came to the realization of how harsh life could be, his writing grew to be darker and more disturbing, possibly as a result of his intense experimenting with opium and alcohol. His stories continue to be some of the most frightening stories ever composed, because of this, some have considered this to be the reason behind these themes. Many historians and literature enthusiasts have presumed his volatile love life as the source while others have credited it to his substance abuse. The influence of his one-of-a-kind writing is more than likely a combination of both theories; but the main factor is the death of many of his loved ones and the abuse which he endured. This, not surprisingly, darkened his perspective considerably.
First one needs to know some background information on Edgar Allan Poe. Poe was born in Boston, Massachutes, to David Poe and Elizabeth Arnold. He lost both his father, who abandoned the family, and his mother, who died of tuberculosis, at a very young age. He was taken in by John Allan, a wealthy business man. As Poe aged, he and his father relationship became very strained. In 1826, while attending the University of Virginia, Poe and his father had a falling out over his supposed drinking and his gambling debts. In 1827, Poe enlisted in the U.S. Army. After two years of service, his father helped him get accepted into West Point Military Academy. It was only a few months before Poe was expelled from school and disowned by his father. In 1832 he moved to Baltimore to live with his aunt, Mrs. Clemm, and Cousin Virginia. Four years later Poe and his young cousin were married. She soon became very sick and suffered from repeated illness until she died in 1847.
Edgar Poe is the second of the three children of David Poe and Elizabeth (Arnold) Poe, both of whom were professional actors and members of a touring theatrical company. Mr. Placide’s Theatre Company in Boston employed Poe’s natural parents, David and Elizabeth Arnold Poe. They had been married in Richmond while on tour in 1806. Edgar Allan Poe was born January 19, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts, but he considered Richmond his home, and called himself "a Virginian," where his mother had been employed as an actress. David Poe, unknown due to his more famous wife, his own promising career ruined by alcoholism, Edgar’s father, deserted the family when Edgar was still an infant; nothing conclusive is known of his life thereafter. While appearing professionally in Richmond, Virginia, Poe's mother became ill and died on December 8, 1811, in Richmond at the age of twenty-four.
...clude the creepy setting of the story, the gruesome details, and the tragic death of a seemingly innocent man. Poe describes the walls of the basement being covered in white mineral that choke up Fortunato leaving a disturbing image in a reader’s mind. Then he depicts the family shield in grave details to make his point of the of Montresor’s dominance over Fortunato. The most disturbing part of the story is when Montresor takes pleasure in hearing Fortunato plead for mercy. Not only was Fortunato in altered state of mind from the amontillado; he was being murdered brick by brick of the enclosing wall. Mentall disturbed people such as Montresor take pleasure in pain, anxiety and any other negative emotions.
Edgar Allan Poe began his career as a poet, and collected or corrected poems throughout his career. A quality of enjoyable sounds can be found in poems that readers also consider serious. However, these elements can also exist with themes that are more typical of the Romantic Movement, such as dreams and nightmares Poe handled this through images designed to show undecided states of awareness represented as lakes, seas, waves, and vapors.
Edgar Allen Poe is known for his dark theme poems and short stories. When one does read one of Poe 's works the reader gets a glimpse of Poe 's reality. His uses of metaphors and dark themes have made him very popular. He writing style has Gothic themes as well as suspense and horror themes as well. His use of very dark metaphors cast a dark and gloomy presence that shows the reader the mind and world of the narrator telling the story. Edgar Allen Poe 's use of dark themes in “Black Cat” helped him convey the very dark nature of his works in which helped him shape the reality of the stories.
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.
Though an innumerable amount of interpretations of any given text might be drawn from a variety of perspectives, a structuralist analysis of two of Poe’s works help place their symbols within a theme related to myth and heroism.
Edgar Allan Poe is known for his masterful writing on all aspects of mortality, but his famous short story “The Masque of the Red Death” proves to be more than a simple story about death. While it is about death, Poe’s short story can be read and applied as a cautionary tale whose purpose is to illustrate a worthy way to live and die by portraying the opposite of both. This interpretation comes about when the story is viewed through the lens of New Criticism. This viewpoint shows how the story uses its formal elements converge to create one complex theme. Poe’s short story develops its theme through the use of paradox, tension, irony and ambiguity, all of which come together to identify
Edgar Allan Poe led a strange and unusually hard life, but through his experiences he produced many outstanding and wonderful works which have with out a doubt contributed to American Literature in several different areas. His stories are treasured by an immense readership. Although, Poe was quiet popular for his gothic tales, he was also well known for being and accomplished humorist, which is seen in many of his short stories. Poe was credited for singlehandedly inventing the detective story. No other played a more crucial role in shaping and developing the aesthetic theory, in the nineteenth-century, than Edgar Allan Poe. Thus, Poe remains a permanent fixture of our literary culture.