Edgar Allan Poe's Obsession with Death

Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1809, and lived a depressed life until dying in Baltimore in 1849 after being found unconscious in the street. Following the death of his mother, Poe moved to Baltimore to live with his aunt and young cousin. His young cousin would become his wife at age 13. Marrying her was one of the highest points in his life, because it was one of the few times he was not suffering from serious depression(Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore). In fact, Poe was a man whose life was run by many tragedies.

It is no wonder that Edgar Allan Poe developed depression as a result of the many emotionally draining events in his life. At a very young age, Poe lost his father to tuberculosis and he lost his mother to a building fire at the theater his parents performed at. His siblings were discouraging figures as well. His brother died at twenty-six as a man of lost potential, and his sister is described as being “so hopelessly dull that she could never attain proficiency in anything at school” (Pruette 371). Edgar Allan Poe saw the atrocious qualities his blood relatives possessed and probably thought that those qualities were innate for him as well.

Edgar Allan Poe was born in 1809 and was found barely conscious two years after his wife death on a Baltimore street in 1949; three days later, he was dead at age forty. Just like the way he live his life and died, many of his stories and poems were a mystery. Two of his most famous works “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Raven” were dark and mysterious fictions with dark characters and mysterious plots. “The Cask of Amontillado” was a story about the dark act of satanic pursuit of revenge, unlike “The Raven”, which invited us into the soul of a grieving man. Both stories were essential and gave meaning to what Poe was going through during those years of his life.

Then in 1833 he moved in with his Aunt Maria Clemm. John Allan died a year later. He then married his cousin Virginia three years later. Virginia then died in 1842 (Anderson 9-64). Poe was introduced to death and betrayal throughout his young life leaving him in a very depressed state, and these traits are present throughout his short stories and poems.

When he brutally murders the old man, he dismembers his body and puts it under the floorboard. A neighbor heard screams and sent the police over to see what the problem was and the narrator claimed he screamed in his sleep and the old man was out of town. The police believed nothing was wrong, but the narrator’s guilt consumed him, and he told on himself, causing him to be arrested. In conclusion, I believe that Edgar Allan Poe’s life was full of sorrow and loneliness. Though his life was one problem after another, this pushed him and inspired him to be the writer was.

Once again, death appears in act 4 with the suicide of Ophelia, the demand for Hamlet's execution and the gravedigger scene. All of these situations tie back with how death is all around Hamlet and feeds his obsession with it. Finally in act 5, Hamlet meets his own death, as his obsession to know leads to the death of himself. Hamlet's obsession with death also fuels his desire for revenge, for instance when he revisits the ghost and he explains how he died. Hamlet, saying, "O my prophetic soul!

Slavery was banned in England in 1833 and a year later, The Spanish Inquisition ends in 1834 .During Poe’s short life of forty years; writers such as James Fenimore Cooper, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Charles Dickens published works. There was an influx of great writers during his time. Worldly influences such as wars, lack of proper health for illness such as tuberculosis and the popularity of stories with horror and monsters most certainly influence how Poe wrote. The biggest influence on Poe’s writing was his personal life; gambling, drinking, loss of love, and lack of money, greatly influenced what he wrote. Poe's life started tragically, when his father deserted his family and his mother died of tuberculosis (Bloom 1999).

He marries his very young cousin Virginia Clemm when she was 13yrs old; she dies in 1847 from a long and hard battle with tuberculosis. After one year of his beloved wife death, he tries to commit suicide and has more of a weakness to drink. He was known to be unable to take even a little alcohol without a change of personality. Furthermore in the poem “the raven” the story is basically about a poor guy whose wife died, and who goes insane, accompanied by the hallucination of a raven that comes through the window, sits above the door and crows “nevermore”. Considering the poem the raven was published in January of 1845 and his wife died in 1847 so the poem couldn’t be talking about her death and how he feels.

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Edgar Allan Poe had married his fourteen year-old cousin, whom died ten years later at the age of twenty four, from Tuberculosis (Ljungquist N.P.). After Virginia died, Poe became lost, alcoholic, drug addicted, and debauchery (Szumski 20). “Under the adroit cover of the special mechanism he had constructed, Poe could unveil his inner, introverted self before a callous extroverted public. There he could occupy himself incessantly with his core-preoccupation, that death-yearning which was his inmost secret, that longing for the peace which he had never known.”(“Poe” N.P.). Poe challenged the literary world, by having people read his works and understand where he comes from.