Why Does Edgar Allan Poe Use Figurative Language

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Futile Fear
Fear can help us run away from our nightmares, but it can also cause us to obsess over them. Fear can paralyze us in the most difficult times, causing our lives to stop. We can try to resolve fear by isolating ourselves or denying that our fear is even there, but then that fear will come to take advantage of us. . In Edgar Allen Poe’s stories, every main character experiences fear and they find different ways to deal with it. Through his use of symbolism, irony, and figurative language, Edgar Allen Poe warns us that we shouldn’t fear death, because it will dissolve the line between our deepest horrors and reality.
Fear can cause us to hallucinate and feel like our imagination has come to life. The killer in “The Tell-Tale heart” …show more content…

Poe writes,”The wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts.”(Page 57) The prince isolates himself in his castle to avoid the death. He locks himself and his friends in the castle so that nothing can get in, but nothing can get out either. He does all of this to avoid death but it gets in and terrorizes the prince. Death is always going to get in no matter how many bolts are welded inside of us. We shouldn’t fear death because death will always accept us in the end of our journey. Unlike Prince Prospero, the narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” faces death and still has hope. He says that he “might have had courage to end my misery at once by a plunge into one of these abysses” but he remembers that the pit would only put him in extreme pain and not kill him. The narrator almost gives up but he then regains hope. Even when a razor is swinging above his head, hope is filling his soul. Hope is usually not found inside a dungeon, but that is what saves the narrator’s life. Hope helps him think about the possibilities, not his fate. The narrator uses the things that he is given to get himself out of the prison. We have to use our hope to get us out of the darkest of times. We have the ponder instead of panicking and use the tools around us to help us get out of our situations. Avoiding or trying to fight our fears will only harm us; we have to face our fears and overcome

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