Edgar Allen Poe: Delving into a Madman's’ Mind Griswold remarks in his obituary that Poe was an “drunken, womanizing madman with no morals and no friends.” Maybe Griswold was jealous, envious, or pain hateful and evil towards Poe? Could it be that maybe Griswold was true about the claims that he stated or that Poe is actually a genius that was misjudged by the world and its views of poetry and short stories of that era! Poe created the first horror, and mystery poems. Poe also captured the imagination and interests of the world around him into his poetry, and short stories along with his own inner demons.
Entering into life, Poe lost his parents when he was two years old, his dad walked out of his life, and his mother died when he was two
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He would often channel his dark emotions into his poetry and short stories, and create dark masterpieces. Two poems that Poe created were toward his mother figure and his wife so he could remember them, even after they had passed away. Poe’s literary work, of his poem and short stories are that of a gothic, dark, nature. Another one of his influences is that of his dreams, and ambitions that created “El Dorado” for his ambition/dream to become famous and rich. Influenced by Nancy Richmond by his “idealized and platonic love for her,” gaveway to one of his greatest poetry that he ever created” “For Anna”. One of his greatest critics Rufus Griswold said about him was that he was a “drunken, womanizing madman with no morals and no …show more content…
This is how Edger Allen Poe poems and short stories are influenced and why they are so dark and why they have so much horror. Edgar Allen maybe was insane at the end of his life because of all the lost family members and his wife death did weigh down on him and tortured him. This is also how he made the first detective, horror stories and mystery poems and short stories. So maybe before people judge a person, they should read his life and see what kind of hell did he go throughout his
Edgar Allan Poe, an often misinterpreted literary mastermind, known predominantly by his extraordinary tales of horror, forbidden love, madness, and mystery, is more than meets the eye. Though his genres of expertise may indicate otherwise, Poe was a very social person, a gentleman by trade, and he possessed more hands-on military experience than any other major American author in history. As a writer, Poe gained a great deal of his inspiration from his surroundings. His enlistment in the army contributed significantly to his repertoire, and inspired some of his greatest works, including “’The Gold Bug;’ ’The Man Who Was Used Up,’ a satire of southern frontier politics; ‘The Balloon Hoax,’ set along the mid-Atlantic Carolinas coast; ‘The Oblong Box,’ involving a voyage out of Charleston harbor; [and] ‘The Cask of Amontillado,’ possibly based on a Fort Independence/Castle Island Legend”(Beidler, Soldier 342). The death of his mother and his unfortunate love life played another major role in his authoring, giving him the ability to write about “. . . the intense symbiosis between love and hatred . . . [illustrating that] love is seldom as simple or as happy as popularly hoped” (Hoffman 81). Poe’s chilling tales remain popular today, and have a long history of providing inspiration for major books and other cultural staples of entertainment.
Poe is a very complicated author. His literary works are perplexed, disturbing, and even grotesque. His frequent illnesses may have provoked his engrossment in such things. In 1842 Dr. John W. Francis diagnosed Poe with sympathetic heart trouble as well as brain congestion. He also noted Poe's inability to withstand stimulants such as drugs and alcohol (Phillips 1508). These factors may have motivated him to write The Tell-Tale-Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, and The Black Cat. All of these stories are written in or around 1843, shortly after Poe became afflicted. His writing helped him to cope with his troubles and explore new territory in literature. Poe's interest in the supernatural, retribution, and perverse cause them to be included in his burial motifs; therefore sustaining his interest. There is a common thread laced through each subject, but there is variation in degrees of the impact. The supernatural is the phenomena of the unexplained. With this comes an aura of mystery and arousal of fear. Death in itself is the supreme mystery. No living human being can be certain of what happens to the soul when one dies. It is because of this uncertainty that death is feared by many. These types of perplexing questions cause a reader to come to a point of indifference within one of Poe's burial motifs. One is uncertain of how the events can unfold, because a greater force dictates them. Reincarnation in The Black Cat is a supernatural force at work. There is some sort of orthodox witchcraft-taking place. The whole story revolves around the cat, Pluto, coming back to avenge its death. One can not be sure how Pluto's rebirth takes place, but it is certain that something of a greater force has taken hold. The cat's appearance is altered when the narrator comes across it the second time. There is a white spot on the chest "by slow degrees, degrees nearly imperceptible…it had, at length, assumed a rigorous distinct outline…of the GALLOWS" (Poe 4). Foretelling the narrator's fate a confinement tool appears on the cat's chest. This also foreshadows the cat's confinement in the tomb. It reappears like a disease to take vengeance on a man that has committed horrid crimes. "I was answered by a voice within the tomb! --By a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and quickly swelling into one long, loud and continuous scream, utterly anomalous an...
Edgar Allan Poe is one of America's most influential writers. His stories and poems have touched the lives of countless people. His works, however, are influenced by his own life. The events of his life led him down the dark road of depression and morbidity.
Throughout time, Edgar Allan Poe has been recognized as a famous writer that wrote about his tragedy of a life. Just thinking of his name, Poe, makes one think about his dark felt Poems. Most people believe that Poe had to be depressed or even evil to write his historic writings. He had to deal with a numerous amount of death of love ones throughout his lifetime. Though he had to deal with death and depression he became one of the United States famous authors of all times.
Edgar Allan Poe uses what can be considered a disturbed type of writing. The reason why Edgar Allan Poe became famous was due to the fact that he wrote stories related to horror and mystery. In the story “Tell-Tale Heart”, Poe used time, location, and mood and atmosphere, among others. Poe was considered to be insane, but to what extent did his insanity go, and where does his real ability to use setting as a way to set a dark tone begin?
"After reading all that has been written, and after thinking all that can be thought, on the topics of God and the soul, the man who has a right to say that he thinks at all, will find himself face to face with the conclusion that, on these topics, the most profound thought is that which can be the least easily distinguished from the most superficial sentiment" (Poe). This quote shows how Edgar Allan Poe’s perspective was very different compared to other writers during that time. Poe was an American short story writer, poet, critic, and editor who was famous for his cultivation in mystery and macabre. His success in his works may or may not have been because of his emotional and mental problems. Edgar Allan Poe was a writer whose works represent his own unique style, how his emotional instability affected him, and what happened in his life.
The chronicler reveals his insanity by admitting he stalks his martyr every night, “And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it --oh so gently! And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed, closed, that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my head.” His obsession indicates he has a mental illness that goes beyond physical wellness. The character seems to struggle with his own passing thoughts and his difficulty in deciphering reality and paranoia of his tale of the past. Storyteller denies his madness, “Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded --with what caution --with what
... though, he was not loved nor recognized much for his talents during his lifetime. It wasn’t until he died and his literature rival begin dishing dirt on him, that people started recognizing Poe and his talents. Throughout Poe’s life, it seemed like writing was his way of letting out some of the pain that life had brought down upon him; a way to keep himself sane it almost seemed. It reflects his difficult childhood, his devastating love life, and his depressing views on life. That concludes Edgar Allan Poe and his literature.
Throughout history, there have been genius minds that have changed our lives, whether we know it or not. These masterminds, such as Isaac Newton, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Albert Einstein, have all contributed to society with their vast knowledge on different subjects. Some genius minds are not recognized for their effect on society until well after their lives have ended. One of the individuals in particular goes by the name of Edgar Allan Poe. Most people when asked what they know of the man conjure up images of horror and darkness that they have learned to associate with the man. Many thought of him as a tortured alcoholic and drug addict, but so much more is to be said of the man who single handedly created so much literary success, though he did not reap many benefits from it. He was ahead of his time with his inspiring looks into the human experience, delving into the world of dreams and the mind's eye and opening up a whole new world for readers. He was a literary genius, but that genius was a blessing and a curse. From his tortured life of loss through his constant failures, it has been said that he lived a mysterious life that led to an even more mysterious death. The story of Edgar Allan Poe can be
The life of Edgar Allan Poe, was stuffed with tragedies that all affected his art. From the very start of his writing career, he adored writing poems for the ladies in his life. When he reached adulthood and came to the realization of how harsh life could be, his writing grew to be darker and more disturbing, possibly as a result of his intense experimenting with opium and alcohol. His stories continue to be some of the most frightening stories ever composed, because of this, some have considered this to be the reason behind these themes. Many historians and literature enthusiasts have presumed his volatile love life as the source while others have credited it to his substance abuse. The influence of his one-of-a-kind writing is more than likely a combination of both theories; but the main factor is the death of many of his loved ones and the abuse which he endured. This, not surprisingly, darkened his perspective considerably.
Edgar Allan Poe was not your typical poet. He had a very depressing life, and that has influenced the majority of his works. He was in the military, had his wife die prematurely, and had the constant struggles of life crashing down on him. Edgar Allan Poe was a great writer who used mystery and lost love as popular themes to intrigue many readers to pose questions regarding death and romance. His parents supported him, allowing him to be educated, but that would eventually lead to failure.
Edgar Allan Poe’s haunting poems and morbid stories will be read by countless generations of people from many different countries, a fact which would have undoubtedly provided some source of comfort for this troubled, talented yet tormented man. His dark past continued to torture him until his own death. These torturous feelings were shown in many of his works. A tragic past, consisting of a lack of true parents and the death of his wife, made Edgar Allan Poe the famous writer he is today, but it also led to his demise and unpopularity.
Edgar Allan Poe was a depressed man with a drinking problem and a family history of alcoholism. His sadness and fascination with death and all things macabre can be clearly seen through his writing. He was argumentative, irritable, anxious, professionally and romantically unsuccessful, and lacked self control and discipline. These personality traits, coupled with his own alcoholism in addition to his family history of alcoholism, directly point to a personality that is high in neuroticism and low in agreeableness and conscientiousness.
The works of Edgar Allan Poe are well known to be a rather dark style of writing. Many of the man’s stories and poems tend to revolve around the thought of death. His inspiration for his dark works could have come from the type of life Edgar Allan Poe lived. The author Edgar Allan Poe has a very dark writing style as shown in his works such as “The Raven” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”.
His stories had an immense importance among authors such as Stephen King, along with helping to establish the genres of science fiction and the detective story, which got him the named father of the detective story. When writing his work “Poe was concerned above all with the “effect” of his tale on the reader. This effect, he thought, should be single and unified. When readers finished the story, they ought to be left with a totality of impression, and every element of the story--character, style, tone, plot and so forth--should contribute to this effect” (Wright). So Poe sought to give his readers emotional and aesthetic pleasure, but also to get them to believe that his stories had a reality of their own. Poe’s early career path had him harboring two aspirations, one was writing and the other the army. The army aspiration didn’t last long and Poe began to focuses solely on writing full time. Poe began working for a magazine, writing reviews of his contemporaries and developed a reputation as a cutthroat critic, but while working for the magazine he also published some of his own works in it. In later years Poe worked as an editor, a poet, a critic and would publish several poems, short stories, and collections of stories. Poe was one of the more famous Dark Romantic writers, leading his works to have Dark Romantic elements such