"There is no exquisite beauty without some
strangeness in the
proportions"
(Biography on Poe 8). Edgar Alan Poe
endured a very difficult
life and this is
evident in his literary style. He was
once titled the "master of
the
macabre." One of the aspects in his
life with which he struggled was
social
isolation. He used this as a topic in a
number of poems and short
stories. Poe's life was also filled with periods of
fear and irrationality. He
had a very
sensitive side when it came to the female gender, any woman he
was ever close to
died at an early age. Another of his major battles, actually
the only one he
really lost, was his struggle with alcoholism.
Of all these
topics, Poe's
favorites were the death of a beautiful woman, a feeling which
he knew all too
well, and the general topic of death.
During Poe's life, he experienced extreme
social isolation. These
feelings of
separation began when his father died or disappeared around the
time of the birth
of Poe's sister, Rosalie. The family
then moved and he was
separated from
his older brother, who was left with relatives in Baltimore.
During those
toddler years, Poe found his mother in the last stages of
tuberculosis. Upon her death, he was then separated from
his younger sister,
Rosalie. Another major low point in his life was the
death of his foster
mother, Mrs.
Frances Allan, and his foster father disowning him, all at one
time. The most significant set-back to Edgar Allan
Poe was the death of his
cousin/wife
Virginia Clemm. This single incident was
the cause of almost all
of his feelings
of isolation in his in his adulthood. He
felt as though anyone
he became close
to would die.
Poe wrote about isolation in many of his
most popular works. "A Dream
Within a
Dream" was not one of his more popular poems, but it discussed the
difficult process
of having to say good-bye to a loved one.
He also wrote,
"The
Raven," in which the narrator went insane talking to a bird about losing
his lost Lenore
and realizing he was all alone. A third
poem in which Poe
revealed to the
reader his feelings of loneliness was,
The Cask of
Amontillado. In this story, the main character Fortunato,
was left to die in a
tomb after being
tricked by his love's father. Lastly,
the poem, "Silence,"
strongly
suggested that he felt alone in the world, and was longing for
companionship.
Suffering through several periods of fear
and irrationality during his life,
Poe included
those experiences in many of his more famous works. One of
these periods
involved experiences in joining the army in order to get away
from his foster
father after the death of his foster mother.
Another of these
times was his
dismissal from the army which was actually on purpose; he
missed all of his
drills and was asked to leave immediately.
These periods of
fear and
irrationality were the cause of his misfortune and poor social status.
He was looked
down upon by his peers for these episodes.
" A constant theme of Edgar Allan
Poe was madness" ("Short Stories,"
1995, p. 1). Poe expressed this theme throughout almost
all of his short
stories and
poems. " Many of his stories
exhibited abnormal states of mind
and are constructed
in terms of a single mad obsession" (Hervey 1). His
insane ways made
his work stand out from the normal short story, or poem.
He was able to
twist his stories and poems around in a way that almost
seemed real, and
was definitely intriguing. An example of
this could be found
in the Black
Cat. The character took the eyes out of
the first cat and then
killed it. After that he proceeded to
"accidentally" kill his wife with an ax,
and bury her in a
wall. Another example of Poe's insanity
demonstrated
within his works
was located in The Tell Tale Heart, where Edgar stalked a
man and
eventually killed him. He then
dismembered the body, took out his
heart, and buried
the man under the house. He later
confessed to the police
because he
believed he could hear the heartbeat of the man.
Formed very early in his life, Edgar
Allan Poe had quite an attraction to
females. It began when his father left him at the age
of two and never
returned, thus he
never had a real father role in his life. A second
contribution to
his attraction to females evolved from his deep love for and
close
relationship with his foster mother whom he adored much more than his
foster
father. Poe's closest friend, Virginia
Clemm, was also his cousin and
his wife.
Poe's works were greatly influenced by
his deep admiration for the female
gender. In "The Raven", the narrator was
extremely distressed over his lost
Lenore. In the poem, "Elizabeth," Poe had a
secret hidden message. The
message spelled
out the name "Elizabeth Rebecca" using the first letters of
each line moving
down, vertically. This poem was a
tribute to one of his lost
loves. A tribute to his foster mother was found in,
"To Her Whose Name is
Written
Below." In this poem, Edgar used
the second letter in each line to
spell out
"Frances Sergean Rosgood." He
also wrote a poem entitled,
"Lenore"
to his lost love, Virginia. This poem
spoke about how beautiful she
was, how young
she was when she died, and also how he mourned for her.
In, "Annabel
Lee," written to his beloved Virginia, Poe states, "This maiden
she lived by no
other thought than to love and be loved by me."
Edgar Allan Poe had a genetic tendency toward
alcohol. His cousin
viewed alcohol as
the "curse of the Poes'." Disregarding
much warning, he
began to drink as
a young man. His drinking became worse
when he attended
the University of
Virginia. His reason for drinking was to
escape the
drudgery and
disappointment of his life. According to
Thomas Poulter, Poe
stated:
I have
absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so
madly
indulge. It has not been in the pursuit
of pleasure that I have
periled
life and reputation and reason. It has
been the desperate attempt
to
escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable
loneliness, and a dread of some strange impending doom. (2)
Poe's drinking
had three major effects on his life: he lost his health, he lost his
jobs, and he lost
his dream of a magazine of his own.
"Poe was the first in a
long series of
American authors who felt a need to drink.
Alcohol ruined his
life. He had no
good jobs. He had no stable world. He had nothing to anchor
him to reality,
so he induced fantasies and drowned his fears with a bottle"
(Poulter 4).
Poe's works reflected what he thought about the
evil of drinking. Liquor
played a major
role in The Black Cat and The Cask of Amontillado. The
narrator of The
Black Cat was a chronic alcoholic who in a drunken stupor
gouged out his
cat's eyes because he thought it was avoiding him. In The
Cask of
Amontillado, Fortunato was lured by his love for wine to his death.
Poe attacked the
use of alcohol because it was overpowering and destructive.
The characters in
his works reflected his inability to enjoy the drug like most
people and his
regard for alcohol as an instrument of destruction.
The most defining factor in the path Edgar
Allan Poe chose for his
literature was
the death of a loved one. He experienced
death at a very young
age with his
biological mother and possibly his father passing away before he
turned
three. Another key loss was that of Virginia Clemm, his wife and
cousin, at a
young age. Probably the most devastating
loss in Poe's life was
his foster
mother, Mrs. Frances Allan.
One of the most popular topics for Edgar Allan
Poe was that of death.
According to
Steve Whitlatch, "Poe loved life, but his focus was mostly on
death"
(1). He wrote some of the most horrific
stories of all time including
The Murders in
Rue Morgue, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Black Cat, The
Masque of the Red
Death, and The Fall of the House of Usher.
The Murders
in Rue Morgue was
considered the first deductive mystery story about a
detective who
solved a series of murders in the Rue Morgue of Paris, France.
Another example
of death in one of his works was The Tell-Tale Heart. In
this book, Poe
spoke of a psycho who killed a man and buried him under the
floor. In his short story, The Black Cat, the main
character killed his cat for
avoiding him and
accidentally killed his wife with an ax.
A prime example of
his showcasing
death as the major theme is found in the allegory, The
Masque of the Red
Death. The main character, Fortunato,
attempted to avoid
the Red Death by
pinning himself and 1000 of his friends inside his castle
while the entire
town around them died. He soon realized
there was an
uninvited guest
who turned out to be the Red Death and in turn each of the
guests died.
Edgar Allan Poe's difficult life was reflected
in almost every work that
ever left his
pen. His collection portrayed encounters
of social isolation,
periods of fear
and irrationality, and extreme bouts with alcoholism. His
obsession with
the subject of death, particularly the death of a beautiful
woman, was
expressed in a majority of his works.
"The one thing certain is
that no American
writer of Poe's distinction ever died a more lonely or
pathetic
death" (Poulter 3).
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