The Ghastly Writings of Poe

The Ghastly Writings of Poe

Edgar Allen Poe makes tales of imagination and fantasies the irrefutable realms of fear. His tales and poems “have influenced the literary schools of symbolism…as well as the popular genres of detective and horror fiction (Stern xxxviii). However, as many of Poe’s tales and poems conjure terror and trepidation, they also penetrate the imagination with fantasy. Poe repeatedly attempts and succeeds at making his readers endure analogous feelings as those characters in his works. The most common realms Poe writes about are dreams, fantasies, the subconscious, and glimpses of the afterlife. These realms cannot be directly represented since individuals cannot directly comprehend them. Poe, acknowledged for his works involving the supernatural, masters tales involving a gothic atmosphere.

Poe’s darker self troubles him, and in his tales of revenge and murder, his characters mirror the conflicts of his life. Poe has a grievance; he knows he possesses a fine intellect and extraordinary ability, although he never receives the rewards, which he feels entitled. Many of his colleagues say, “there was a sadistic streak in him too, a malicious and wanton desire to hurt others for the perverse satisfaction it gave him” (Stern 288). “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” deal with a murderer who commits a crime a successful crime and escapes the consequences. Then, the killer betrays himself and confesses through sheer perverseness. In some of Poe’s tales, “the murderer and the murdered merge their identities into one” (Myerson 287). “The Tell-Tale Heart” is one of Poe’s most compact and brilliantly executed tales. It does not carry the gothic trappings some of his tales use, causing this tale to “read like a modern, tautly written psychological story” (Stern 289).

Poe favors death and terror over any other genre. Death remains Poe's favorite theme, his obsession; almost all of his tales and poems have variations of this theme. Poe inflicts death and the fear of the unknown on his audience. What lies beyond the grave or in the mind inspires Poe. Other than Poe, no American writer continuously deals on the subject, digs so deeply into it, and involves himself in the doings of death. Throughout Poe’s life, he makes a continuous decent into the Maelström: a slow, relentless, downward spiral through the void which lay clai...

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...on,” Poe writes, “ ‘You have conquered, and I yield. Yet henceforward art thou also dead—dead to the World, to Heaven and to Hope! In me didst thou exist—and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself” (Poe 200). Critics say of Poe, “during a short life of poverty, anxiety, and fantastic tragedy Poe establishes more in literature than any other writer. Many consider Poe to be an extraordinary poet although he is an insane man.

Bibliography:

Bradley, Scully, Ed, et al. “Edgar Allen Poe.” The American Tradition in Literature. 2 vols. New York: Norton, 1961. 1: 737-892

Magill, Frank N., Ed. “Edgar Allen Poe.” Critical Survey of Poetry. 8 vols. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Salem, 1982. 5: 2239-2248.

Myerson, Joel, Ed. “Edgar Allen Poe.” Dictionary of Literary Biography. 201 vols. Detroit: Gale, 1977. 3: 249-297.

Poe, Edgar Allen. The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writings by Edgar Allen Poe. New York: Bantam, 1982.

Stern, Philip Van Doren. The Portable Poe. New York: Penguin, 1977.

Unger, Leonard, Ed. “Edgar Allen Poe.” American Writers. 4 vols. New York: Scribner, 1972. 3: 409-432.