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Literary analysis of poe
Works on the black cat by edgar allan poe
Works on the black cat by edgar allan poe
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The Romantic Era of the 18th century was filled with writers and critics, such as Edgar Allan Poe. His work is known for its gothic horror and suspenseful outlook, which is considered to be Dark Romanticism. Literature in this time period was influenced by Transcendentalism and the ideas of mankind, nature, and divinity, but did not directly embrace it. Poe was a Dark Romantic because his writing presented individuals prone to sin and self-destruction, rather than a soul born with goodness and perfection. There are many ways Poe's work represented Dark Romanticism. He took on this style of writing because he experienced many hardships growing up and he chose to write about them in a dark, mysterious way. His writing developed as Dark Romanticism …show more content…
The purpose of Poe's work was to affect the reader in an erratic way. He did this as he exemplified ¨the deepest divisions of the self: the conflict of beautiful ideals and dark impulses¨ (Poe). His subject matter would be the most frightening experiences and horrific scenes, which the readers could have never even imagined before. In one of his most famous pieces, The Fall of the House of Usher, his most mysterious side is shown as he tells a story of a childhood friend named Roger and his haunted house. Fear is a major theme in the story and exists within Roger as he faces physical and emotional unstableness. He says, ¨I feel the time will soon arrive when I must lose my life, and my mind, and my soul, together, in some last battle with that horrible enemy: Fear!¨ (Poe 25). Dark Romantic authors like Poe believe in the idea that humans are born evil and struggle their whole lives to keep this evil from overtaking them. In the story, Roger battles against evil and faces fear of death. As this evil continues to grow inside of him, the narrator sees no hope. Poe states, ¨I saw more clearly the usefulness of all attempts to bring happiness to a mind from which only darkness came, spreading upon all objects in the world its never-ending gloom¨ (Poe 27). The Romantic
During the American Renaissance, writers were put into one of two categories. The categories were the Dark Romantics and the Transcendentalists. Some Dark Romantics include Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Washington Irving. The Dark Romantics stories included creepy symbols, horrific themes, and psychological effects of guilt and sin. The Devil and Tom Walker by Washington Irving gives a few examples as to why life is meaningless to some people.Humans are not all good, there are some cruel people in this world. The Pit and the Pendulum tells you exactly why.
In Poe literature readers will see an abundance of suspense, symbolism, and gothic elements used mostly to create gloomy atmospheres. In "Fall of the House of Usher" Poe uses suspense, symbolism, and gothic elements to create a chilling tone of fear, loneliness, and oppression.
Throughout the history of literature there have been various authors who have taken their genre style and enhanced it. An author who was well known for this in the 1800s was the American writer Edgar Allan Poe. Poe is celebrated for his works like The Fall of the House of Usher and The Raven. In writing these poems and tales, he took the horror and romanticism genre and began to add more supernatural themes as well as emotional themes. This not only created a more interesting story, it also began to evolve into what is now known as the dark or gothic romanticism genre. Although the romanticism genre started in Europe, the American side of the genre was more focused on the hidden part of the individual exaggerate themes like the grave and death. Also, the more macabre aspects of American works would sometimes take a backseat to the beauty of the world around them. Poe did not
Edgar Allan Poe is the skilled author of The Fall of the House of Usher, a story that especially emphasizes mood and has the theme that fear is your worst enemy. He brings a feeling of mystery and eeriness to his readers by describing with colorful words the location and condition of the the House of Usher, the narrator’s thoughts, Usher’s strange disposition, and the peculiar circumstances under which the narrator decides to visit him. Poe’s use of mood follows the Gothic Romantic way of exploring the darker side of human nature.
Edgar Allan Poe primarily authored stories dealing with Gothic literature; the stories were often quite dreary. Poe possessed a very sorrowful view of the world and he expressed this throughout his literary works. His goal was to leave an impression with every detail that he included in his stories. Although Poe’s stories seem very wretched and lackluster they all convey a certain idea. A trademark of Poe’s is his use of very long complex sentences. For instance, in his work The Fall of the House of Usher, Poe tried to ensure that every detail was as relevant as possible by integrating a wide variety of emotion. In the third paragraph, of page two hundred ninety-seven, Poe wrote, “Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around…” This sentence illustrates the descriptiveness and complexity that Edgar Allan Poe’s works consisted of. The tormented cognizance of Poe led him to use a very gloomy diction throughout his writing. Edgar Allan Poe’s use of symbols and the way he conveyed his writing expr...
In conclusion Poe excellent use of characterization and imagery to depict fear and darkness, truly make The Fall of the House of Usher a story of the battles the we must face our fears in order to free our mind.
Some of his writings were much more personal for Poe such as “The Raven” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Even through both poems, reflect his personal life in some way “The Raven” portrays his own personal experiences. The death of his wife was one of the most influential deaths he had to deal with. Her death led to a period of hard drinking and staying up all hours to watch over her grave, sometimes even sleeping on her grave to be closer to her. During this period of hopelessness led to the writing of “The Raven.” The poem “The Raven” is about a man and his sorrow over the death of Lenore. The raven, which may symbolize the devil, forever hunting him and a living reminder of the death of his wife. In the poem, he shows the world of his pain of having his wife taken away from him and compares death to the raven. This shows us how the raven reminds him of what he suffered after the death of his wife. The Raven” gives us an idea of what Poe was dealing with during this time of depression. Poe knew this direct and individual experience well, unlike his other works. “The Raven” was a more personal experience to Poe because it talked about something that touched him deeply and affected his. “The Raven” was a poem about his own actual life. In this way “The Raven” is a prime example of the true Poe and how his life affected his
Edgar Allan Poe is forever identified with his eerie poem “The Raven” with his many gothic horror stories, and as the father of the detective story (Werlock1). Poe’s stories are known in America and Europe. Most of Poe’s stories are Gothic, which he describes them as “arabesque” a term that he felt best described as flowery (Wilson52). Poe proclaimed his writing a reaction to typical literature of the day, which he called “the heresy of the Didactic” for its tendency to preach (Wilson52). Some of Poe’s stories are also comedies. “The Fall of the House of Usher” was a nevertheless typical of Poe’s short stories in that it presents narrator thrust into a psychologically intense situation in which otherworldly forces conspire to drive at least one of the characters insane (Wilson53).Edgar Allan Poe had a difficult life after dropping out of college. He became a short story writer, one of his stories being “The Fall of the House of Usher”. “The Fall of the House of Usher” uses literary elements of symbols and settings to further the theme of evil.
These points classify Hawthorne as a dark romantic because he had a sad childhood and a stressful adulthood, and his obsession with common people. The years after college his silent and productive years were when Hawthorne became a transcendentalist and he started to write in the style of a dark romantic. His themes of sin, guilt, personal choices, and how individuals deal with the consequences on their decisions played many vital roles in his story helping classify him as a dark romantic.
Edgar Allan Poe is undoubtedly one of American Literature's legendary and prolific writers, and it is normal to say that his works touched on many aspects of the human psyche and personality. While he was no psychologist, he wrote about things that could evoke the reasons behind every person's character, whether flawed or not. Some would say his works are of the horror genre, succeeding in frightening his audience into trying to finish reading the book in one sitting, but making them think beyond the story and analyze it through imagery. The "Fall of the House of Usher" is one such tale that uses such frightening imagery that one can only sigh in relief that it is just a work of fiction. However, based on the biography of Poe, events that surrounded his life while he was working on his tales were enough to show the emotions he undoubtedly was experiencing during that time.
Edgar Allan Poe uses setting to create a melancholy and gloomy mood in the story. The story starts off with an unnamed narrator who is traveling on a “dull, dark and soundless day” (Poe 1). The story already has gloomy mood, without mention of the house of Usher. Before the narrator enters the house, he describes it as “inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows” (Poe 2). The house of Usher looks run down, scary, and gloomy, like a haunted house. The setting in the first two pages creates this sad and scary mood throughout the rest of the story. Poe uses words such as “black, vacant, decayed, gray, gothic and sluggish” to create the atmosphere. This creates a very effective atmosphere in the entire story and the story revolves around the atmosphere in its entirety, showing that this is no ordinary house and there is evil involved.
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
The misshapen, the ominous, and the gruesome; these are all words from the fascinating movement of Dark Romanticism which took place from 1828-1865. This movement embraced all of these irrational elements and shaped them into the most popular sub-genre of American literature. Life to the Dark Romantics was colorful, impulsive, and paradoxical. Unlike the Romantics, the Dark Romantics set their stories based on the wickedness of man and the repulsion of evil. The dark romantics believed that humans were equally capable of good or evil. While the Romantic’s tried to ignore the wickedness and immorality actions of man, the dark Romantics decided to remind people of the evil doings of man. Like the Romantics and Transcendentalists; however, the Dark Romantics valued instinct and feelings over judgment and rationale and saw symbols and signs in nature and everyday events. They also paid attention to the mysteries of life that were impossible to explain by reasoning. Although they did focus on the morbid and the dreadful, they were not cynical. Edgar Allen Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne were both associated with this movement and were both key figures in it.
Romanticism is elevation of the imagination over reason, intuition over facts. These type of writers are misleading because they tend to stretch and alter the truth. His word choice is both sophisticated and chock-full of terrifying connotations, or emotional meanings, and for this story in particular, those connotations evoke fear.Just like dark romanticism authors such as Edgar Allen Poe were basically born evil, he believed that humans must struggle their whole lives to keep their evil nature from overtaking us. In the story, “The Fall of the house of Usher”, Roderick is in a battle against the powers of “evil”( his psychological issues and his sister who is not in control of herself).
In The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allan Poe writes of a sickly brother and sister that live in an old estate, and a narrator’s account of the Ushers’ final days. The story is scary on two different levels. The first and most obvious that is noticed just by reading on the surface is the creepy atmosphere of the house and death of the main characters. Poe makes this level of scariness very accessible by the diction and imagery that he uses. The second level of scariness is the psychological aspect of the story. The themes of isolation, madness, and fear become terrifying because they are able to transcend the story; they are real, and they could quite possibly affect us.