РефератыИностранный языкEdEdgar Allan Poe 2 Essay Research Paper

Edgar Allan Poe 2 Essay Research Paper

Edgar Allan Poe 2 Essay, Research Paper


Edgar Allan Poe


Many authors have made great contributions to the world of


literature. One of these is Edgar Allan Poe. Poe is known as the father of


the American short story, as well as the father of the detective story. But


who was Edgar Allan Poe? What was the man himself actually like?


These questions may be answered in part, but the whole truth of Edgar


Allan Poe s life can never be known for sure, and maybe this is exactly


how he wanted it. The brilliance of his work, however is indisputable, and


Edgar Allan Poe is known throughout the world for his works. By his use


of horror, humor, darkness, sarcasm, and the ridiculous he has been the


inspiration of many famous authors, and this surly will continue to for


many years to come.


Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809, to David


and Elizabeth Poe. He had one brother, William, born on January 30,


1807, and one sister, Rosalie, born on December 20, 1810. Shortly after


the birth of Rosalie, David Poe abandoned his young wife and children.


Suffering from tuberculosis, Mrs. Poe came to Richmond with her two


youngest children. The oldest boy, William, had been left with relatives


in Baltimore. Shortly after her arrival in Richmond, Elizabeth Poe died.


Edgar, known for being a handsome little boy, was taken in by Mr. and


Mrs. John Allan. Rosalie was taken by another family. Mrs. Allan soon


became very attached to Edgar and wanted to formally adopt him, but her


husband refused to take this step. It has been said that his disapproval of


actors and the acting profession (both of Poe s parents were in the theater)


was the reason for his not wanting to adopt Poe.


At the age of six, Edgar moved with his foster family to England,


where they lived for about five years. At this time, the Allans and Poe


returned to Richmond, where they remained until Poe went away to


college. The reckless activities of Poe while in college angered his foster


father so much that he refused to pay for any more of Poe s schooling.


Poe returned home for a short time and then enlisted in the army. Poe at


first did very well in the military and was promoted several times. He


began to become unhappy in the Army, and was eventually able to


persuade his foster father to give him money which with he was able to


purchase his way out of the military. Not long after leaving the Army, Poe


gained entrance to West Point. He decided he didn t like this style of


military life much sooner than before and misbehaved so badly that he


was thrown out of West Point. Unfortunately, this was around this same


time that Poe s foster mother died. Since she was the only one who was


able to bridge the huge gap between Poe and Mr. Allan, it was now that


almost all contact between the two ceased. When Mr. Allan died he left


no mention whatsoever of Poe in his will.


At this point in his life Poe decided to make a career of writing, and


publishes Al Aaraf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems in Baltimore in 1829.


In 1831 Poe submits several of his works to a contest. He doesn t win,


but they publish several of his stories without his name. He was finally


successful in winning a contest in 1833. He won $50.00 for his story,


MS. Found in a Bottle. After moving to Richmond, Poe became editor


of the Southern Literary Messenger. He remained here for about a year.


In 1836, Poe took his newlywed wife, Virginia, and his Aunt Clemm with


him to New York. (Virginia was his Aunt Clemm s daughter, so therefore


she was his cousin as well.) After a short time in New York, Poe again


moved his family, this time to Philadelphia. It was here in Philadelphia


that Poe started to become known for his literary work. He won several


prizes for his work and became the editor of certain papers. In 1846, Poe


moved his family back to New York. Here Poe s wife Virginia dies of


tuberculosis in 1847. The death of his wife was supposedly very hard on


Poe. After her death he moved back to Richmond for a short time. It


was near this time that he was finally beginning to be recognized and


applauded for his work. Sadly this lasted for a very brief time, because


Edgar Allan Poe s life ended in Baltimore on October 7, 1849.


One thing that can be said for certain about Edgar Allan Poe is that


almost nothing can be said for certain about Edgar Allan Poe. In the


researching of this paper I came across so many different accounts of his


life, so many discrepancies in dates, and so many different descriptions of


his personality that I began to get very confused, and began to despair of


ever being able to write a through and accurate account of his life and


work. Eventually I realized that no one could write a complete and factual


account of the life of Edgar Allan Poe. After I accepted this fact I was


able to continue in my exploration of him.


There is a great deal of information about Poe, but very few


verifiable facts. Everything about him is controversial, literally from the


place and date of his birth to the exact location and date of his burial.


(Poe Society, Biography, p. 1) Some of the many disputed facts and


rumors about Poe s life include; the exact date of his birth, the legitimacy


of his younger sister, the date of the death of his mother, his birthplace,


the reason for his leaving college, his reasons for leaving certain jobs, his


use of alcohol and drugs, and of course the most widely disputed area of


his life, his death.


Everyone agrees that Poe was found on a street in Baltimore in a


very distressing condition. (Poe Society, Poe s Death, p. 2) It is also


widely agreed upon that his clothing had been changed from his usual


black, wool suit to very old, ragged, and stained clothing. From the


Baltimore street Poe was taken to Washington College Hospital were he


stayed until his death on October 7, 1849. How he came to be in the


condition he was found in, and what caused his death, is something that


no one can claim to be truly certain of. Why was Poe found in the street


in other clothing than his own? What was the reason for his delirium? It


has been said that Poe was reportedly ill at many different times in his life,


and wrote to Maria Clemm, on July, 1849 that I have been so ill – have


had the cholera, or spasms quite as bad, and can now hardly hold the


pen… (Ostrom, Letters, p. 452). The type of illnesses said to have


plagued Poe include; the overall effects of alcohol and drugs, lesions on


the brain, brain fever, heart disease, cholera, a rare enzyme disorder,


tuberculosis, epilepsy, diabetes, and, most recently, rabies. What exactly


happened to him in the hours prior to his being found on the street is


unknown as well. Some say that he was simply intoxicated, while others


claim that he was drunk as well as under the influence of opiu

m. Some


assert that Poe, after drinking more that he should have, was mugged and


beaten. Others say that he was bribed with alcohol and then forced


brutally to vote repeatedly. ( This means of getting extra votes for a


candidate was called cooping. ) Judging by the numerous different


accounts and lack of sufficient evidence, the mystery behind Edgar Allan


Poe s death may never be revealed. Ironically, it is my own, and many


other s opinion, that he would have wanted it no other way.


While reading Poe s work for the first time I was struck by how


familiar his writings were to many of the short stories included in Alfred


Hitchcock s Mystery Magazine. I had found several copies of this


magazine in a thrift store and happily read every one of the short stories


contained in them. The dates on the magazines ranged from April 1967


to June 1988. While the stories included in these magazines were written


by others, they had to be approved of by Hitchcock himself. Each of the


magazines had a small introduction in them written by Hitchcock as well.


The dry, slightly sarcastic, tone of Hitchcock s writings in relevance to the


strange and abnormal is very much the same as the style of Poe, and of


the many other authors who s names appear above Poe s works. The


influence Poe had on many of the mystery and detective short stories


included in Hitchcock s magazine are quite easily recognized. While his


style of writing, especially that of the deductive reasoning of a very keen


and observant detective, is often seen and some of his titles are borrowed


as well. In one magazine a story called The Purloined Letter is


included, and in another a story named The Tale-Tell Heart is featured.


Needless to say these stories are very reminiscent of Poe s stories by the


same names.


The influence of Edgar Allan Poe goes far beyond the genre of


mystery and detective stories. His works have been known to influence


the writers of science fiction, horror, and gothic stories as well. Some of


these include, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, and C.S. Lewis.


Poe s influence on the writing s of C.S. Lewis is shown in the story,


MS. Found in a Bottle. This story contains an account of a boat sailing


into blackness and caught into a current that pulls it toward some


unknown, yet horrible fate. The feelings of foreboding and despair in this


passage are reflected in a very similar passage written in The Chronicles


of Narnia , by C.S. Lewis. In book three of the series much of the story is


written while the characters are at sea. In Lewis s story the main


characters boat sails into a dark, horror-filled, unknown place. All


onboard begin to experience dark, foreboding feelings, just like the


feelings of the narrator of MS. Found in a Bottle. In this tale, however,


the characters manage to find their way out, with a little help from Divine


Intervention. Poe s character, on the other hand was not so lucky. The


idea of the boat being pulled by a strange current is used throughout


Lewis s book as well.


The many works of Poe, while all excellent writings, vary greatly in


their content and style of writing. Maybe the pen names Poe used on


many of his more outlandish writings showed his own keen awareness of


his varying writing styles. The tone of Poe s writings moves along almost


the entire length of human emotions. In his stories, The Murder in the


Rue Morgue , The Purloined Letter , and The Gold Bug , Poe has


been said to have invented the modern day detective story. The


suspenseful and deliberate way that Poe leads us down his path to the


solution of the mysteries in these stories is a pattern for innumerable


mystery and detective writers. His excellent use of suspense and horror is


demonstrated in The Pit and the Pendulum , The Mask of Red


Death , Morella , and The Cask of Amontillado. He takes this use of


suspense and horror and with it weaves the mysteries of human nature


and the issue of guilt in such works as The Black Cat and The


Tell-Tale Heart. The dark and foreboding tones in The Imp of the


Perverse are almost ridiculed by Poe himself in The Sphinx. In Some


Words With a Mummy , Hop-Frog or The Eight Chained


Orang-Outangs , and The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar , Poe adds


touches of humor and pokes fun at most of the characters in these


explicit, and sometimes violent, horror stories. He combines this same


silly nature with suspense in The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether.


The total ridiculousness of the narrators in How to Write a Blackwood


Article , A predicament , and Why the Frenchman Wears His Arm in


a Sling is exposed in their vain, superficial, and ignorant manner of


telling their tales. The use of long, senseless words that, when


pronounced, say something, is used throughout The Devil In the Belfry.


(He does this as well in Some Words With a Mummy. The mummy s


name is Allamistakee ; in other words, all a mistake.) Poe shows his


romantic side in The Spectacles. This romance is combined with


sadness in The Oblong Box and Poe shows us that he is capable of a


happy ending in the romance Eleonora.


At the end of my writing about Edgar Allan Poe, I have come to the


conclusion that the best way to understand a little about Poe is to read his


works. Of the many online works I found that were written by Poe, I


downloaded almost all of his short stories and succeeded in reading


thirty-two of them. The wide range of his literary style and amazing ability


is clearly shown in his many works. Something else notable about Poe is


the prolificacy of his work. He managed to write an enormous amount of


detailed and intricate stories, not to mention all of his poetry, in a


relatively short lifetime. Writing a paper about Edgar Allan Poe can be in


some aspects very challenging because of the many conflicting views and


opinions of Poe and his life, but this difficulty is more than adequately


compensated for in the quality of his works.


Bibliography


The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, Inc.: Baltimore Maryland,


May 1, 1997, http://www.eapoe.org/


Lewis, C. S., The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, New York, New York:


Harpercollins Publishers, 1952.


Miller, John Carl, Building Poes Biography, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State


University Press, 1977.


Moran, Dr. John J., A Defense of Edgar Allan Poe, Washington D.C.:


W. F. Boogher, 1885.


Philips, Mary Elizabeth, Edgar Allan Poe, The Man, 2 Volumes, Chicago:


John C. Winston, 1926.


Quinn, Arthur Hobson, Edgar Allan Poe; A Critical Biography, New


York: D. Appleton Century Company, 1941.


Thomas, Dwight and David K. Jackson. The Poe Log. Boston: G.K. Hall


& Co, 1987.


Wagenknecht, Edward. Edgar Allan Poe: The Man Behind the Legend.


New York: Oxford University Press, 1963.

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