Comparing Poe And Avi's Short Stories

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The character Poe in, the novel, The Man Who Was Poe, is quite similar to the actual Edgar Allan Poe. Likewise, the story written by Avi is much like a few short stories written by Poe himself. The novel and short stories share settings, themes, and characters that closely resemble one another, both with a chilling mood, theme of death, and characters that are utterly insane. Though these tales were not written by the same author, the two have almost identical writing styles. This leads to distinct storylines with the same underlying characteristics. First off, the mood set in the beginning of Avi’s and Poe’s stories is eerie. After the prologue, Avi’s story begins with, “The old city ay dark and cold. A raw wind whipped the Street lamps …show more content…

The two themes that Poe often times uses, death and insanity, can be seen in Avi’s writing as well. First Poe’s major theme of death is included all throughout the mystery in The Man Who Was Poe. It includes Auntie’s death and Poe’s attempted murder of Sis. Avi also uses quotes to involve the theme, “‘It would make a perfect tomb, now wouldn't it?’” (Avi 78). This is used to describe the bank vault that once contained the gold that had been stolen. After Poe hears this he faints, introducing the next theme of Avi’s book: secret fears, ‘Evil is only the name we give...our secret fears’’’. Poe’s secret fear in the novel was being buried alive, which is why he fainted at the idea of a perfect tomb, and the idea of being buried alive is used in his stories too, The Cask of Amontillado and The Black Cat. Again, in his stories, death is usually a central theme, this is also done in Avi’s book, which includes the concept of Poe’s secret fears as well. Avi not only focuses in on Poe’s obsession with death but also his pure insanity. He shows how insanity can drastically change a focused man into a total mess and a shadow of his former self, and he shows this by having Poe state it himself, “‘I’m no longer Auguste Dupin. I am the man who is Edgar-Allan-Poe’” (Avi 161). While this displays a sliver of Poe’s character this mainly focuses in on how central the change in Poe relates to the theme distinctly used by …show more content…

In the beginning of the story, he tells Edmund he is “Dupin”, a character that he includes in his own works. The major similarity between Poe in Avi’s novel and the characters in Poe’s stories is they share a common trait, insanity. In the novel Poe appears to be sensible, but it doesn’t take long for the reader to see his true self, “Dizzy, confused, Dupin leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. It was crisscrossed with cracked lines, alive as a nest of vipers, creating fantastical shapes and ghastly configurations. In one such nest of lines he saw a death's-head. In another, a pool of blood. In a third, a grave. Wincing, Dupin turned away to stare at the equally marred walls. No image is there, just words” (Avi 35). This tells of Poe’s visions and what crazy things go on in his mind, as it later goes on to talk about his obsession with death in his thoughts, “Death. Always death!” (Avi 35). The characters in his short stories can also relate to this. In The Cask of Amontillado, Montresor goes insane and buries Fortunato alive, just to get his perfect revenge, and in The Black Cat, the man becomes psychotic after cutting out a cat’s eye, hanging a cat, murdering his wife, hiding his wife’s corpse within the walls, and then burying another cat

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