Edgar Allan Poe Nemesis

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic best known for his poetry and short stories of mystery and horror. He is regarded as the creator of the detective fiction genre and was a major contributor to the early development of science fiction. Throughout his short stories and poems Poe expresses a wide range of messages and ideas; however, one common theme expressed in Poe’s stories is the concept of a nemesis appearing as a doppelganger or counterpart to another living person. In his writing, Poe’s protagonist closely identifies with the antagonist and vice versa. The idea of a protagonist going up against their counterpart occurs in stories such as “The Tell-Tale Heart,” The Purloined Letter,” and “The Fall of the

House of Usher.” The pattern of doppelgangers found in Poe’s writing has led critics to believe that the battles represent Poe’s attempt to work out his own inner conflicts and psychological struggles through his writing.
During the late-medieval times, a new form of writing emerged known as Gothic literature or as it more commonly referred to as Gothic horror. This new form of writing combines fiction and horror, death, and sometimes romance. “Critics date its inception to 1764, when English statesman and writer Horace Walpoe published The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story” ("Southern Gothic Literature" 1). During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Gothic literature became quite popular and thrived in countries such as England, Germany, and the United States. Due to its popularity, writers during this time primarily wrote stories of horror and death; however, no one did it better than Edgar Allan Poe. His ability to narrate his stories in first person, create eerie and compelling atmospheres, and develop twisted characters really makes Poe’s writing some of the best in Gothic literature.
We first identify the protagonist’s doppelganger counterpart in the story “The Tell-Tale Heart.” The narrator has no ulterior motive for wanting to murder the old man; in fact, he states the old man has never wronged him, he does not want his fortune, and that he actually loves him. The main character claims to know exactly what the old man is feeling. He even goes as far as to say that he fully understands the groans and moans of the old man as he lies awake at night for he too had experienced the fearful restlessness first hand. This puts the old man and narrator on equal ground making them almost the same person. However, the protagonist never actually points out why the old man’s pale blue eye bothers him so much. “Critic Charles E. May interprets the ‘eye’ not as an organ of vision but as the homonym of ‘I’” (Chua 1). Therefore, what the narrator ultimately wants to erase is the self, and when once he can no longer contain his overwhelming sense of guilt, he surrenders to this urge.
The idea of knowing and understanding the antagonist so well recurs in Poe’s “The Purloined Letter,” a story of two long-time nemeses, Minister D and Dupin.

In the story, Mr. D, a political opponent of the French Queen, steals a letter from the queen and uses it to blackmail her to reach his political needs. The queen and her people know Mr.D has stolen the letter but refrain from taking it back openly out of fear that the contents of the letter may be revealed to the public. The Minister hides the letter in his apartment confident no one will ever find it. However, Dupin is able to discover the location of the letter in no time at all because he understands just how Minister D’s mind works and thinks. After finding the letter, Dupin replaces the original with a replica, endangering the Ministers life whenever he uses the fake letter to blackmail the queen. When asked how he was able to find the letters whereabouts Dupin responds “given his knowledge of the Minister and his ways of thinking, after the Prefect's first visit with Dupin, he had deduced that the letter must, in fact, be hidden in plain sight (“Overview: 'The Purloined” 1). Ultimately, Dupin accomplishes all this because he shares the same intellect and interests as the Minister and possesses the same poetic

mind.
Lastly, the idea of the nemesis as twin reappears in “The Fall of the House of Usher.” The siblings Roderick and Madeline Usher share a very special bond, they are so close in fact; that it is rumored they share a consciousness.

In the story, the narrator visits Roderick who announces that Madeline has passed and he has entombed her in a coffin down in the basement. However, the narrative hints that Madeline is still alive as she expresses a “faith blush” just as they close the lid to her coffin. It appears as though she is suffering from catalepsy; a medical condition that places the body in a trance like state and slows bodily functions such as breathing, which simulates death. After entombing his sister, Roderick becomes fearful, wild, and agitated; he claims to hear sounds coming from the tomb down in the basement. The narrator pays no attention to him, but late one night “in a final cry, Roderick screams, ‘Madman! I tell you she now stands without the door!’ Madeline appears when the door is blown open. She lunges toward him and they fall to the floor, dead” (Mowery 1). The links and similarities between Roderick and Madeline are too obvious to ignore, there are strong psychological and sexual links between the two. For one, their birth and death occurred at the same time, both emitted feelings of gloom and doom, and they are able to detect each other’s presence. When Roderick announces that Madeline has come for him, she appears just as he predicted. In the end, the

elimination of one twin spells out the end of the other.
In conclusion, critics who have studied Poe’s works suggest that his characters resemble him not only temperamentally, but physically as well. For example, resemblances can be seen between Roderick Usher’s large luminous eyes and pale face and photographs of Edgar Allan Poe. The grim financial and emotional relationship between Poe and his foster father, John Allan, can be described through the conflicts among the protagonists and antagonists in Poe’s works. The struggles of the protagonist against the doppelganger along with the overpowering natural forces embody the banishment of Poe’s own inner demons and psychological struggles.