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Gothic themes in the cask of amontillado
A thesis about psychological issues in the cask of amontillado by edgar allan poe
A thesis about psychological issues in the cask of amontillado by edgar allan poe
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Edgar Allan Poe is an American writer, poet, critic, and editor. He was born in 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts. When Poe was two, his mother passed away, and his father left him. Poe had to join a foster family, and he had to live with them until his college years. When Poe was seventeen, he enrolled in the University of Virginia, and he had to drop out due to an enormous amount of debt. At the age of twenty-one, Poe attended the West Point Academy. After he attended West Point, Poe decided to focus his career solely on writing. This shift from a military background and an unfortunate upbringing has molded Poe’s writing style into a new genre of horror. The gothic horror tale genre was created from Poe’s upbringing, and his experiences and social status has had a major effect on “A Cask of Amontillado,” as well as the majority of his writings. The underlying purpose of Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” is to describe how Montresor seeks to exact his revenge against Fortunato for an unnamed insult. This conflict stems from Poe’s experiences with social classes. Poe went to the University of Virginia, which was founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819. It had been the theory of Jefferson that there should be no restrictions on the students, other than the expectation that they would conduct themselves as …show more content…
Poe baffles his readers with stories that appeal to emotion and intrigue. Montresor opens the story with how he “must not only punish, but punish with impunity” (Poe 291). This opening is a brilliant way of taking a gothic tale to another level of horror. Tactics such as this draw in the reader to learn more about the characters, while also maintaining a certain standard of writing. However, a beautiful gothic horror story can not be complete with only dark writing and symbolism. This is where varying literary devices come into play in order to create a masterful
Edgar Allen Poe is known for his dark yet comedic approach toward the his theme of his stories. Likewise, Poe’s themes have gathered many fans due to his impression of reasoning in his stories. The author uses thinking and reasoning to portray the theme. Poe’s unique diction comprehends with the theme of the story. Poe has a brilliant way of taking gothic tales of mystery, and terror, and mixing them with variations of a romantic tale by shifting emphasis from, surface suspense and plot pattern to his symbolic play in language and various meanings of words.
One of the most famous authors in American history is Edgar Allen Poe, thanks to his intricate and unsettling short stories and poems. One of the strongest aspects of Poe’s writing style is the allure and complexity of the narrator of the story. These narrators, ranging from innocent bystanders to psychotic murderers, add depth to such a short story and really allow Poe to explore the themes of death and murder which he seems to have an unhealthy obsession towards. Furthermore, he uses these narrators to give a different perspective in each of his many works and to really unsettle the reader by what is occurring throughout the story. The narrators, whether an innocent witness of death as in "The Fall of the House of Usher" or a twisted murderer as in "The Cask of Amontillado" are used by Poe to discuss the themes of death and murder within these stories and, depending on their point of view, give a different take on such a despicable act such as murder.
Horror themed stories frighten, scare, or startle the reader by inducing feelings of terror and dread. In The Cask of Amontillado, Edgar Allen Poe tells the tale of Montresor, a disgruntled noble man who plots revenge on his adversary. Montresor declares that another noble man named Fortunato that has constantly battered him and insulted him. Montresor has plotted his revenge over time and has carefully constructed a plan to blatantly and consciously destroy Fortunato right before his very eyes. The most terrifying aspect of Montresor’s plan is the methodical nature in which he leads Fortunato to his doom. Poe continually builds terror in The Cask of Amontillado, masterfully utilizing plot, setting and symbolism to develop horror in his classic
Poe is most famous for creating an aura of suspense and terror in his stories including horrible crimes scenes. Montressor, one of Poe's characters, is a descend...
Edgar Allan Poe was an excellent horror, suspense, and mystery writer of the eighteenth century. His use of literary devices and different literary techniques makes this writer important to American literature. This paper will show how Edgar Allan Poe has made an impact on Society and American literature as well as how Edgar Allan Poe developed the short story. I will also discuss and analyze some of his works and techniques he uses in his short stories and poems.
The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allen Poe is a short story told in the gothic genre. Although this story was written decades after the popularity of the genre, The gothic genre through its descriptions of the atmosphere as well as its use of grotesque and macabre imagery creates a sense of alienation, chaos, entrapment, uncertainty, and terror in the reader. Gothic literature often deals with themes of death, fears and anxieties, good vs evil, estrangement, and revenge. Furthermore, gothic literature often ends with a sense of moral closure and resolution. The Cask of Amontillado use of gothic conventions can be seen in its setting. However, the story’s unconventional use of irony and omission of moral closure adds to the psychological
In this article, Bennett, contributor to The Edgar Allan Poe Review, publishes scholarly essays geared towards scholars, students, and writers to provide an exchange of information on Poe’s life, work, and continuing influence. This article was produced to delve deeper into the traditions found in the American Gothic writing style and how Poe’s writings influenced the fundamentals found within the genre. The article highlights the didactic nature of the narrative, “by showing readers what is abnormal and wrong, it implicitly tells them what is normal and right”
A virtuoso of suspense and horror, Edgar Allan Poe is known for his Gothic writing style. His style is created through his use of punctuation, sentence structure, word choice, tone, and figurative language. Punctuation-wise; dashes, exclamation marks, semicolons, and commas are a favorite of Poe. His sentences vary greatly; their structures are influenced by punctuation. Much of his word choice set the tone of his works. Figurative language colors his writings with description. Such is observed in the similarities between two of his most well-known short stories, “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”
introduce and emphasize the notions of doubles and tangible abstractions without ever revealing the true identity of Wilson’s double. Finally, despite, culminating in the most direct and paramount manifestation of the abstraction of William Wilson’s conscience in the prank incident, the reader is still unaware of the story’s conclusion, but is well aware of the complications and notions that lead to the conclusion. In his book “Edgar Allan Poe: Rhetoric and Style”, Brett Zimmerman details the critique of other authors that Poe’s style “in his Gothic tales, stylistic qualities [are] considered excessive, obnoxious … [and that] Poe’s ‘writing smells of the thesaurus’ and that his ‘vocabulary tends to be abstract’” However, this outwardly excessive
Edgar Allan Poe has a unique writing style that uses several different elements of literary structure. He uses intrigue vocabulary, repetition, and imagery to better capture the reader’s attention and place them in the story. Edgar Allan Poe’s style is dark, and his is mysterious style of writing appeals to emotion and drama. What might be Poe’s greatest fictitious stories are gothic tend to have the same recurring theme of either death, lost love, or both. His choice of word draws the reader in to engage them to understand the author’s message more clearly. Authors who have a vague short lexicon tend to not engage the reader as much.
Gothic literature is known for captivating readers by bringing to light the dark side of humanity. The Gothic possesses many key elements such as paranoia, anxiety, death, etc. It strikes fear and suspense in the reader not by creating fictional monsters, but showing the reader the types of monsters that lurk within human beings. In “the Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe, various themes of the Gothic are present throughout the short story such as gloom and doom, darkness, and madness. These elements are used to enhance the central theme of the piece: revenge. I will argue that Poe uses a number of the Gothic elements to craft an intense dark tale of revenge: an unreliable narrator, madness, darkness, a haunted setting, and evil/devil
"Alone," the simple yet complex poem by Edgar Allan Poe, can be viewed to be born from many different origins. What we do know about the poem is that it is simply beautiful. Even though its beauty is known by the contrasting metaphors and what not, we do have to take notice in why he wrote such a thing. Was it as a basis of telling us his thoughts or was it just for our entertainment? To me, "Alone" is a direct view of Poe's life and his hardships that came from it. His constant struggles and losses geared him into what he was during his time and in this poem, he expresses that very same thing. He takes notice in the bad and the good of every event. "Alone" is the epitome of Poe's thinking and his view of himself in the eyes of the public.
There are many reasons why Poe’s poetry and short stories appeal to the reader. For instance, it may be that the reader can connect with Poe in the death of loved ones. It may be the plot of the story. Or it may be the psychological relationship that Poe creates between the reader and his literary works. Many people rarely like to talk about their “dark side”, but Poe embraces the dark side that every person has and taps into the feelings of hate, revenge, murder, and despair (Camila).
...s offers insight as well as agreeable viewpoints that help readers understand the themes as well as interpret their own viewpoints about the context of the story. The macabre is captivating and produces critical thoughts within the minds of its readers as well as a variety of emotions. I agree with Delaney, “Love can turn to hate and often does; but hate--- and certainly in Poe’s perverse world--- can turn to affection” (41). The feelings readers share with Montresor are feelings common not only in fictional literature, but also within the nonfictional lives that we lead.
Edgar Allan Poe was a great American writer. Poe was born on January 19th, 1809, and he died on October 7th, 1849. Poe’s life was filled with loss. Every woman he cared about passed away due to tuberculosis. Poe never had a good relationship with his fathers; both his biological father and his foster father abandoned Poe. Because of the terrible events in his life time Poe’s writing style was more dark and depressing than most writers. His life made his writings similar. There are many similarities in these three writings, “The Cask of Amontillado”, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, and “The Fall of the House of Usher”.