Edgar Allan Poe's Impact On American Culture

IMPACT OF EDGAR ALLAN POE 1

The Impact of Edgar Allan Poe on American Culture

“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality” (Poe). Edgar Allan Poe’s lifetime took place during a time of change, involving the creation of continuous documents, movements, and conflicts. Society has influenced Poe’s eerie and dark style of writing. Throughout his lifetime, Poe witnessed 9 presidents come and go, starting with James Madison and ending with Zachary Taylor. He also experienced the War of 1812 when he was young, the Battle of the Alamo in 1836, and the Mexican War towards the end of his life in 1845. America continued to change when documents such as the Monroe Doctrine were formed and movements

such as the Seneca Falls, Women’s Rights Convention were established. America’s patriotism strengthened in this time as the creation of “The Star Spangled Banner” helped contribute. Along with America’s patriotism expanding, land was expanding from the Manifest Destiny.

Though this was a time of change and expansion for the United States, Poe continued to write about darkness, contrasting the positive factors happening in America and focusing on a more cynical point of view. As America’s society influenced Poe’s writing, Poe’s writing has influenced America’s culture as well. One of the most influential writers from the nineteenth century, Edgar Allan Poe, has a large impact on American culture today.

Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts. Before he was three years old, he became an orphan after his mother died from consumption and his father left him abandoned. In the article “Overview of Edgar Allan Poe,” it states that he was taken in by John Allan, but Poe was never legally adopted. His life with his new family was better since they had a stable income and he went to expensive schools and gained a better education. The article “Edgar Allan Poe” claims that he lived in Richmond, Virginia with John and his wife Frances. The same article explains that as Poe grew older, his relationship with John Allan suffered. Even though they were wealthy, John saw

Poe as ungrateful and refused to help him with the financial costs of his entering of the University of Virginia. In order to make more money, Poe turned to gambling but ended up with even more debt so he left his family and moved to Boston. He enlisted in the Army for five years and published Tamerlane and Other Poems but it was not successful. Shortly after, Poe was regimental sergeant major but honorably discharged from the army. As he continued to write stories and poems, he started to become acknowledged and make some money. Also from the article “Overview of Edgar Allan Poe,” it claims that he supported himself by being an editor for Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, Graham’s Magazine, and Broadway Journal. During this time, he published more famous works such as “The Fall of the House of Usher” and Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. In 1836, Poe married his cousin virginia but her health began to decline. As his wife got ill Poe went off into forming bad drinking habits, causing him to become ill, mentally and physically, as well. In 1844 the publishing of “The Raven” brought him more fame. Virginia died on January 30, 1847 from tuberculosis and Poe though suffered he continued writing works, publishing Eureka. Though Poe was planning on being married to another widow, he was found on October 3, 1849 and died in the hospital four days later. As Poe continued to write his stories throughout his life, his works became very successful.
Edgar Allan Poe wrote many stories and poems during his career, most of which are still very popular and studied today. One of his well known works is “The Black Cat,” which is a story about a man who abuses his cat and kills it, but the cat haunts the man, causing him to go insane and kill his wife. “The Cask of Amontillado” is a story also very well known about seeking revenge through trickery. More popular works from Poe are “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” and “Ligeia.” These stories are often told by a first-person narrator and use foreshadowing and symbolism to create suspense (Overview of Edgar Allan Poe, 2003). His works are known for being mysterious and macabre and reflect his inner imagination and subconscious. Most of his influence is from his own mind and writes from a cynical point of view, mostly about the loss of something and one’s sanity. Many of these stories have a twisted plot or disturbing ending. For example, in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” a brother and sister were married as the whole family only married within the family line, and it also ends in the brother burying the sister alive. “The Cask of Amontillado” also ends in someone who is buried alive. Even by only looking at a few of Poe’s stories, one can tell he is famous for writing gruesome storylines. While Poe has an abundance of famous works, he has a few that are his most well known today.
One of Poe’s most well known works is “The Raven.” The Raven is about a man who loses his sanity due to a raven who keeps visiting him.

The man is mourning his lost love and is visited by the raven. While the man starts asking the raven questions it replies with “Nevermore.” As time goes by the questions continue to get more and more personal and by the end the man loses his sanity listening to the raven only reply with “nevermore” (Overview of Edgar Allan Poe, 2003). The tone is desperate and depressing as it shows the loss of one’s mind. Poe expresses how emotionally tormented humans can be after a heartbreak and how one can lose his or her mind over the simplest of things. The article “The Philosophy of Composition, 2006) explains how the use of “nevermore” was used to create the “utmost conceivable amount of sorrow and despair.” Poe’s gloomy expression about heartbreak reflects his struggle with his then dying wife. Poe claims “the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world” (The Philosophy of Composition, 2006). “The Raven” has caused lots of controversial views about its heavily emotional and exaggerated storyline but has become one of the most talked about and well studied pieces of Poe’s works. While Poe creates “The Raven” to represent a dim and depressing mood, he uses more morbid language and terror in the poem “The Tell-Tale

Heart.”
Another one of Poe’s most famous works is the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart.” The story is about an insane narrator who kills an elderly man over his blue eye. Poe uses morbid details in the story such as when the narrator cuts up the man’s dead body and hides him under the floor. The grim vocabulary and imagery reflect Poe’s cynical style of writing. The mood is eerie and dark, along with many of his other works, and Poe uses the “character’s psyche” to create more suspense.(Overview of Edgar Allan Poe, 2003). The repeating theme in Poe’s stories go along with insanity and gruesome murder or actions, which creates a unique twist on horror and fiction. This story was very well studied because Poe creates the unnamed narrator to go insane over a small factor such as a eye color, creating more depth to the horror of the story. These two works along with many of Poe’s others have greatly influenced American culture.
Poe’s stories and poems have a lasting impact on other authors and the “horror” style of writing itself. Authors have taken his different and eerie view of literature and used it in their works. He has inspired writers such as H.P. Lovecraft, who is a horror fiction writer, Charles Baudelaire, who is a poet, Robert Louis Stevenson, who is the author of Treasure Island and Kidnapped, and many others. Poe has marked the change from the standard horror genre to a more creative, more emotional and more disturbing horror genre. Many writers from the twentieth century valued Poe’s bizarre style and imagination. (Edgar Allan Poe ,1998). Poe has made a lasting impact many authors styles of writing. His use of words makes the audience think about the meaning deeper. By looking at the influence Poe’s style had on authors, it is evident that his impact on American literature is large.
Edgar Allan Poe proves to be influential to American culture through his style of writing and horror techniques. Today, Poe is recognized as one of most important and influential authors of modern literature. His influence on American culture continues to grow as more authors choose to write more emotional and dramatic poems, horror stories, and mystery novels. Poe’s writing has caused many controversial perspectives but has made a lasting impact on American literature and has changed how authors write horror or fiction by adding more creative imagination and depth to literature. The depth in Poe’s writing creates a suspenseful and unique storyline that leaves a stronger impact on the reader than a normal story would. His works will always be associated with the sense of misery, strangeness, and insanity. He is still known for being one of the first writers to develop the genre of both detective fiction and horror and has noticeably changed literature forever. Poe writes, “All we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”