Edgar_Allen_Poe's_Life_and_Work

Cassie Lloyd DeHaven January 28, 2010 Lost in His Own Mind Edgar Allen Poe’s Life and Work Edgar Allen Poe is known for his dark short stories and poetry. What was it that caused him to view life in such a tragic and hopeless light' In his short life of 40 years, what was it that made him so deeply disturbed' His writing conveys truly grotesque and haunting stories about tortured characters who rarely if ever meet a pleasant fate. He seems to have accepted life as something wholly unhappy and the cause of all of man’s suffering. His childhood innocence ended abruptly at the age of three with the death of his mother. His father had abandoned his family shortly after his birth, which left him orphaned. He was taken in by John Allen and his wife, but was never formally adopted and never treated as a true member of the family. He became engaged at the age of 17 before leaving to attend the University of Virginia. He lost contact with his foster father and his fiancé while at school. Poe and John Allen fought often and Poe did not want to return home and face Allen. After dropping out of school a year later due to gambling debts he moved to Boston. He decided to move to escape his foster family. He learned that his fiancé married someone else in his absence believing him to have abandoned her. This was Poe’s first experience with love and heartbreak. The idea of lost lovers is often brought up in his work. Around this time, he published his first book which proved to be a failure. Only fifty copies were printed. His book received very little press and he had was seen as just another unknown author. Two years later he moved in with his aunt to be with his brother who’s health was failing. There, he fell in love again; this time with his 13 year old cousin, Virginia Clemm. He felt abandoned by his family when his brother died but Virginia was able to comfort him through the ordeal. They married when Poe was 27 and Virginia was still only 13. Even though his life was improving, his writing remained dark and gruesome. His only completed novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, was published two years after his marriage and depicted murder and cannibalism. Poe’s popularity soared in 1845 with the publication of his collection of poetry entitled The Raven and Other Poems. He was still greatly influenced by the loss experienced in his earlier years. He seemed preoccupied with the idea that people are taken away too early which translates into stories such as The Fall of the House of Usher, The Premature Burial, and The Cask of Amontillado which all convey his fascination with and fear of being buried while still alive. Poe developed this fear due to the tragic early deaths of those he was close to in his childhood such as his mother and brother. In the Fall of the House of Usher the narrator goes to visit his friend to comfort him because his friend’s sister’s health is failing. While he is there, the sister dies and is buried in a tomb resembling a dungeon rather than a final resting place. After the burial, the narrator’s friend becomes increasingly nervous and restless, “His ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected or forgotten. He roamed chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and objectless step…There were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly agitated mindwas laboring with some oppressive secret…”(The Fall of the House of Usher). The story concludes with the return of the presumably dead sister who then kills her brother in revenge for burying her alive and causes the house to collapse leading to “the fall of the house of Usher” both this literal and figurative collapse because the Usher family bloodline has ended with the death of the siblings. The sister spent days breaking out of her tomb to extract her revenge on her brother and then dies due to the ordeal. The Premature Burial lists examples of fictional people who have been presumed dead and were buried but were in fact alive. Poe describes their agony and terror as the attempt to escape their horrible fate. “To be buried while alive is beyond question, the most terrific of (all) extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality.”(The Premature Burial). The narrator of the story is so terrified of being buried alive that he takes every precaution he can imagine to prevent such an occurrence. He awakens to find himself in a wooden box and assumes that he was buried while traveling and therefore unable to escape through his prepared means in his family tomb. In his panic he discovers that he is not buried in a grave but instead in a small shelter he had found to escape a storm. What he thought to be a horrible death was in fact nothing. His fear was a reflection of Poe’s own fear of being buried alive. It illustrates how all logic is disregarded in the face of death. The Cask of Amontillado tells the tale of a man who achieves his revenge on another man by luring him into the catacombs and walling him into a small room which will serve as his tomb. The man is left chained to a wall without light, food, or water. He cannot escape and must face his fate; that he will die by being buried alive with no hope of escape from impending doom. Poe so feared being buried too early that he felt compelled to express his fears in his writing. He could not stand the idea of being unable to control his own fate. Another source of inspiration for Poe was the idea of one’s descent into insanity. He explored this idea in stories such as, Bernice, The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether, and The Tell-Tale Heart. Each of these stories describes seeming mentally healthy people as they slip into insanity. Their disease becomes more and more apparent as the story continues until their transformation is complete at the end of the story. In Bernice, a young man falls in love with a woman as she wastes away due to a disease she has had her whole life. On the eve of their marriage, she smiles at him and he becomes obsessed with her teeth. The next morning Bernice is discovered dead and the reader slowly learns that she did not die of her disease, but instead by the hand of her fiancé who decided to pull her teeth out in his madness. The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof, Fether begins with a visitor at a successful asylum who notices the workers of the asylum to be somewhat odd but accepts it as a side effect of their profession. As the evening continues the employees become increasingly strange. Near the end of the night, the patients escape and the visitor learns that the patients are the original employees who had been captured and locked up by the patients who now have been assuming roles as employees. As panic spreads, the “employees” revert back to their original mental state and chaos ensues. The Tell-Tale Heart is a disturbing story about a man who murders his neighbor because he is so obsessed with the man’s eye that he can not stop thinking about it. He buries the man under his floor but he can hear the man’s heart continue to beat and it eats away at him until he becomes so paranoid that he confesses to his crime. I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides… but the noise increased. Oh God! What could I do' I foamed—I raved—I swore!...but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder—louder—louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not' Almighty God—no, no! They heard!—they suspected!—they knew!—they were making a mockery of my horror!... I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt I must scream or die!—and now—again!—hark! Louder! Louder! Louder!— “Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed'—tear up the planks!—here, here!—it is the beating of his hideous heart!” -The Tell-Tale Heart Poe is both repelled and drawn to the idea of insanity. He explores the concept through his writings. His stories involving insanity are the most suspenseful and surprising because the truth of the matter is not revealed until the very end. His characters, though insane, are able to pass as sane people which only adds to the excitement felt by the reader when the truth is realized. Poe was fascinated by the thin line between sanity and insanity. He describes this thought in better detail by saying: “ A lunatic may be ‘soothed,’ as it is called, for a time, but, in the end, he is very apt to become obstreperous. He is cunning, too is proverbial and great. If he has a project in view, he conceals his design with a marvelous wisdom, and the dexterity with which he counterfeits sanity, presents, to the metaphysician, one of the most singular problems in the study of mind. When a madman appears thoroughly sane, indeed, it is high time to put him in a straight jacket.” -The System of Dr. Fether and Prof. Tarr He feels that he can never truly know to which category he belongs. This realization frightens him. Poe’s fears of loss and death developed early in his life and evolved to consume his thoughts and work as he grew. His writings are so dark and hopeless because he is unable to escape from his own mind. Had he led a normal childhood, Poe would never have been able to create such thrilling and unique stories.