Poe's Torments Revealed in His Writing

One only needs to look at Edgar Allan Poe's works to see how disturbed he truly was. Poe wrote about men being buried alive, a heart that would not stop beating even after it was taken from the body, a man being tortured by a swinging blade, and a tormented man being haunted by a raven. Why would a person write about such horrors? What demons did he seek to exorcise through his writings? What made him so tormented and cynical? Maybe for Poe it was because both his mother and his bride were snatched from him by tuberculosis. Or maybe it was because the world around him was surrounded by violence and death. Or maybe Poe was just that tortured, due to his broken upbringing.

Losing a loved one is tough. But to lose the two most prominent and influential female figures in a man's life to the same disease can have an enormous effect. Poe lost both his mother, Elizabeth, and his wife, Virginia, to tuberculosis. He had to watch both of them slowly waste away into nothing as the illness ravaged their bodies. He had to watch and hear them cough up blood, sometimes rolling them over so they would not suffocate. This could be where his inclination towards blood and all things macabre began. This might have frightened the young author and he dealt with it the only way he could, he included it in his stories. In his story "Ligeia" Ligeia dies of a nondescript illness. She is described as having, ."..Pale fingers became of the transparent waxen hue of the grave, and the blue veins upon the lofty forehead swelled and sank impetuously with the tides of the gentle emotion" (Poe 4). Tuberculosis often leaves the person very weak and withered looking ("Pulmonary tuberculosis"). The description of Ligeia could very well be a perso...

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... was 38 must have left an impression upon him. Just about everyone he seemed to care about died. Especially having his parents die at such a young age must have been horrible on him. Even in his story "Ligeia" he loses the woman he loves shortly after being married. "She died; -- and I, crushed into the very dust with sorrow, could no longer endure the lonely desolation of my dwelling in the dim and decaying city by the Rhine" (Poe 6). Poe is describing how he is so heartbroken that he had to leave the city where they lived together. He details his sorrow for his lost loved ones through the loss of the lovely Ligeia. He eventually found a home he could be happy in when he started to court his childhood sweetheart, Sarah Elmira Royster ("Edgar"). Unfortunately, he died on his way north to fetch Mrs. Clemm for the wedding, so Poe never did have a happy home.