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Poe's theme of dying
The tell tale heart and the black cat comparisons
The tell tale heart and the black cat comparisons
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Edgar Allan Poe, is one of the most brilliant literary writers in history. He wrote many poems and short stories throughout his rather short lifetime, most of which encompassed such themes as death, destruction, and madness. These intriguing, and often frightening tales, as well as his clever use of a multitude of literary tactics, is what set him apart from the rest, and what makes him so popular still today. Reading his work, one is sure to wonder where these ideas came from. However, a little research into past will certainly open the doors to a better understanding of his writing.
Abandoned as an infant by his father, Poe lost his mother to tuberculosis at the age of three, and was sent to live with foster parents. There he was raised but never adopted. Also, his relationship with his foster father was quite tumultuous. Shortly after their death, he married his cousin Virginia Clemm, who also ended up contracting tuberculosis and died after a long hard battle with the disease. This had a very hard impact on Poe. Furthermore, it is known that Poe also had a serious problem with alcohol, as well as there are reports that he likely suffered from a mental illness, as evidenced by a letter he wrote stating that he had tried to commit suicide (Quinn 1998). Also, throughout his life, Poe struggled to be a writer, though his ways always ended up keeping him from achieving, while he was alive, what he was capable of. As one can see, Poe lived a life that was defined by death, hardship, and his own possible insanity. This makes it much more clear as to why he chose such dark themes for his works.
The two stories that will be discussed in this paper are “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat,” which were both published in 1843 in T...
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...her, it is the eye of the cat, which he gouges out (Piggush 2010).
These themes of untimely death, blood, and insanity are prevalent throughout his works. Even some of the works that are about love, involve some sort of twisted necromancy, such as in “Annabel Lee.” His focus on death was extreme, as he explored all aspects of it including the act itself, the burial (sometimes premature), and the subsequent mourning thereafter. Much of this likely had to do with the unfortunate and often tragic losses he dealt with throughout his life, and just as many of his characters often face the loss of their sanity, so does it seem to be the case with Poe.
Works Cited
Piggush, Yvette, Edgar Allen Poe, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography,18, 2,
2010.
Quinn, Arthur, Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography, Baltimore, Maryland: John
Hopkins University Press, 1998.
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.
Poe was seen to have an unstable life as his mother died at and early
Edgar Allan Poe is an author who wrote many dark poems and stories. The dark sides of people intrigued him. This was evident in his literature. The author creates an eerie tone using personification which contributes to the theme of death in his writing.
Edgar Allan Poe is one of America's most influential writers. His stories and poems have touched the lives of countless people. His works, however, are influenced by his own life. The events of his life led him down the dark road of depression and morbidity.
Of all the amazing stories that comprise this anthology, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Black Cat”, and “The Pit and the Pendulum” are the best three in the compendium. Written by Edgar Allen Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart” is a thrilling story about a man who commits an atrocious deed. With an illness infecting his mind, the narrator plots and carries out the murder of his elderly neighbor and hides the body in the floorboards of the old man's bedroom. Later, when the police show up, the narrator persuades the cops that he is merely taking care of the house while the old man is away. Driven to insanity, convinced he can hear the old man's heart beating through the floorboards, and paranoid that the police can hear it as well, the narrator, ironically, gives himself up. Spine-tingling, gruesome, and with a surprise twist ending, “The Tell-Tale Heart” is a narrative that keeps the readers' eyes affixed to the page.
Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of actress Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe and actor David Poe, Jr. His father abandoned the family in 1810, and his mother died of tuberculosis when he was only two, so Poe was taken into the home of John Allan, a successful tobacco merchant in Richmond, Virginia. Although his middle name is often misspelled as "Allen," it is actually "Allan" after this family. After attending the Misses Duborg boarding school in London and Manor School in Stoke Newington, London, England, Poe moved back to Richmond, Virginia, with the Allans in 1820. Poe registered at the University of Virginia in 1826, but only stayed there for one year. He was estranged from his foster father at some point in this period over gambling debts Poe had acquired while trying to get more spending money, and so Poe enlisted in the United States Army as a private using the name Edgar A. Perry on May 26, 1827. That same year, he released his first book, Tamarlane and Other Poems. After serving for two years and attaining the rank of Sergeant-major, Poe was discharged. In 1829, Poe's foster mother Frances Allan died and he published his second book, Al Aaraf. As per his foster mother's deathwish, Poe reconciled with his foster father, who coordinated an appointment for him to the United States Military Academy at West Point. His time at West Point was ill-fated, however, as Poe supposedly deliberately disobeyed orders and was dismissed. After that, his foster father repudiated him until his death in March 27, 1834.
Edgar Allan Poe was an excellent horror, suspense, and mystery writer of the eighteenth century. His use of literary devices and different literary techniques makes this writer important to American literature. This paper will show how Edgar Allan Poe has made an impact on Society and American literature as well as how Edgar Allan Poe developed the short story. I will also discuss and analyze some of his works and techniques he uses in his short stories and poems.
Poe lived in poverty all of his life, never seeing enough money from his writings to allow him to live comfortably, and never seeing his writing arrive at the famed status that it has today. Poe drank heavily throughout his life due to all of the downfalls he suffered. In between these drinking binges Poe had spurts of creativity, this is when he wrote his best material (E. A. Poe Society of Baltimore Inc. "Poe, Drugs and Alcohol" 1). Poe's sad and troubled life gave him the material he needed to create stories and poems that would capture his audience. Though Poe lived a hard life and was criticized by many for being evil and demonic, his stories and poems are still with us today as some of the greatest American literature ever published. Edgar Allan Poe's life experiences including the untimely death of his parents, his use of drugs and alcohol, the many other deaths in his life, and his unhealthy relationships with women influenced his tales and poems now famed for being dark and horrific in tone.
Before the age of three, Poe was already an orphan after his Mother dying and his Father walking out on them (Frank 56). Poe was too young to remember his Mother since her death occurred when he was very young, but later in his life he grew resentful for being raised as a foster child. After the loss of his Mother, Poe would go on to experience the death of many more loved ones. This became the source of the terrible fear Poe would associate with death and dying, a common theme in many of his works.
Poe, Edgar Allan, et al. The short fiction of Edgar Allan Poe: an annotated edition. University of Illinois Press, 1990.
Throughout Poe’s life there is a lot of indication, which can be seen in his writing, that he had a sad and dreary life. While most of his stories have vastly different plots and themes, one theme that prevails through all of his stories is the concept of death or morbidity. He has this disillusioned fear of life and success, that is prevalent in his own personal life, through constant alcoholism, self-sabotage of his career or life-goals, and negative reactions to his tragic life events. All of these events can be evidenced through popular writings such as The Tell-Tale Heart and The Cask of Amontillado and the commonalities shared between these two and even more of his other stories.
Edgar Allan Poe has a unique writing style that uses several different elements of literary structure. He uses intrigue vocabulary, repetition, and imagery to better capture the reader’s attention and place them in the story. Edgar Allan Poe’s style is dark, and his is mysterious style of writing appeals to emotion and drama. What might be Poe’s greatest fictitious stories are gothic tend to have the same recurring theme of either death, lost love, or both. His choice of word draws the reader in to engage them to understand the author’s message more clearly. Authors who have a vague short lexicon tend to not engage the reader as much.
...n with death. His fascination with death can be traced back to the death of those he loved in his life, including his mother, step-mother, and wife. Poe conveys his fixation through his narrators in short stories, whether they kill based on fear, hate, or anxiety. By including death in all his works, he frightens his audience and shows them that death is unavoidable and constantly chases us throughout our lives.
Edgar Allan Poe wrote many satires, though he’s best known for his mystery and macabre. Poe faced many difficulties during his lifetime, his biological father left him at an early age, his adoptive father never truly loved him, and his wife, brother, and mother all died from the same disease. It seems as though he took his pain out in his writing, he wrote many famous short stories such as The Raven, The Black Cat, and The Tell-Tale Heart. Poe use suspense, fear, and surprise as elements of horror.