Throughout the human history, there have been writers that have altered the way society thinks about certain occurrences. Edgar Allan Poe, one of the most prominent writers of the English literature, has the honor of being the one, who smartly linked societal and individual distress to fiction. Poe, because of being the pioneer of the detective fiction, is seen as an influential writer of the nineteenth century. Poe's writing was mostly influenced by his childhood and the societal happenings of the time. Poe's writing was close to reality because his writings were extracted from his own experiences. The paper will discuss the extent to which Poe's writings reflected the horrific events of his own life and it will also serve to establish that he incorporated fear and insanity in his writing only because he had experienced them.
Poe led an eventful yet terrible life. His movement from one country to another influenced the way he wrote fiction. It was because of this movement that Poe was able to realize the harshness of the world. It is imperative to note that Poe's personality and his writing style was evidently influenced by the terrible events of his childhood. “Poe is unique among the great American writers of his generation in having spent a portion of his childhood in England. This period of his life is important because for the first time we are able to trace a definite influence in his later fiction from the scenes in which he moved and thought and felt” (Quinn, 65). Quinn is of the belief that his father's abandonment of his mother and her death influenced his mind like no other thing.
Poe's childhood was full of hardships that he had to witness even when Jon France Allan adopted him. Apart from the dilemmas of...
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...acters. Poe is found in every character that he shaped for his write-ups. In the concluding lines, it can be said that Poe reflected in his writings what he knew. He was unfamiliar to the concept of happiness and peace because all he had witnessed was misery and insanity in his life.
Works Cited
Kremser, Felix. Edgar Allan Poe's Literary Theory and Its Application in "the Fall of the House of Usher". München: GRIN Verlag GmbH, 2010. Print
Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography, Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York, 1941. Print
Sova, Dawn B. Critical Companion to Edgar Allan Poe: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts on File, 2007. Print
Streissguth, Thomas. Edgar Allan Poe. Minneapolis, MN: Lerner Publ, 2007. Print
Zimmerman, Brett. Edgar Allan Poe: Rhetoric and Style. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005. Print
Poe’s frightening stories acts as helpful inspiration for entertainment in the present, and for many years to come. The timeless relevance of his work, and its merciless scrutiny of the human condition, solidifies its place in history and its position of high admiration. In conclusion, the extraordinary-fleeting-tragic life of Edgar Allan Poe will forever remain on record as the tale of an orphan, a gentleman, a soldier, and one of the most prominent literary figures in American history.
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Fall of the House of Usher. 8th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 702-714. Print.
Meyers, J. (1992). Edgar Allan Poe: his life and legacy. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons Frank, F. S. (1997). The Poe encyclopedia. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press..
Gothic literature uses twisted themes of insanity, murder, sin, and guilt to create captivating stories that question the natural integrity of humans. Edgar Allan Poe is just one of the many gothic writers who turns Romanticism into a dark study of the human mind. The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe contemplates the effects of insanity on a family that is already suffering tremendously. Poe’s short story illustrates a mysterious tone when both the setting and the plot are analyzed.
Edgar Allan Poe’s haunting poems and morbid stories will be read by countless generations of people from many different countries, a fact which would have undoubtedly provided some source of comfort for this troubled, talented yet tormented man. His dark past continued to torture him until his own death. These torturous feelings were shown in many of his works. A tragic past, consisting of a lack of true parents and the death of his wife, made Edgar Allan Poe the famous writer he is today, but it also led to his demise and unpopularity.
Patterson, Arthur. "The Fall of the House of Usher." Notes presentation of the Folio Club 1996 Online. Google Online. Retrived on April 5th 2005. http://www.watershedonline.ca/literature/Poe/pousher.html.
The term gothic is often portrayed as dark, mysterious, horrific, and suspenseful. During the eighteenth and nineteenth century gothic writing became a successful genre in the world of fiction. Many fictional works during this time period were gothic and known for being dark and creepy leaving the reader in a state of pleasing terror. Edgar Allan Poe became one of the most popular gothic poets of his time, and mostly known for the unusual and disturbing themes throughout his poems. A common theme throughout his two works, “The Raven” and “The Cask of Amontillado”, was sanity and where the narrator lacked thereof. “The Raven” begins with a man being disturbed by a knock at his door and is eventually driven mad by a raven who can only recite the word “nevermore”. Likewise, Montresor is narrating a murder he committed fifty years previous in “The Cask of Amontillado.” Each of these works, written by Poe, has a dark underlying theme.
Kennedy, Gerald J. A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2001
Poe went through many hardships during his life that helped inspire his literary works. Many of his works seem pretty normal at first but then you realize there is an underlying tone of tragedy in his works, just like in his life. Many of his poems are inspired by his friends, family and real life experiences. This supports my thesis because it shows that the people and experiences in his life influenced his choices, his works and his outlook on things.
Most of Edgar Allan Poe’s work is centered on death and tragic events. In some of Poe’s poems and stories there is the tragic death of a young woman, which corresponds to the loss of women in Poe’s life. It can be inferred that he also suffered from some mental illnesses like many of the characters in his stories. Edgar Allan Poe was a great writer; however his life was full of tragedy and despair, which shaped his writing.
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.
Edgar Allan Poe, renowned as the foremost master of the short-story form of writing, chiefly tales of the mysterious and macabre, has established his short stories as leading proponents of “Gothic” literature. Although the term “Gothic” originally referred only to literature set in the Gothic (or medieval) period, its meaning has since been extended to include a particular style of writing. In order for literature to be “Gothic,” it must fulfill some specific requirements. Firstly, it must set a tone that is dark, somber, and foreboding. Next, throughout the development of the story, the events that occur must be strange, melodramatic, or often sinister. Poe’s short stories are considered Gothic literature because of their eerie atmosphere and atypical plot developments. Consequently, in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe is distinguished as an author of unique, albeit grotesque ingenuity in addition to superb plot construction via his frequent use of the ominous setting to enhance the plot’s progression and his thematic exploration of science versus superstition.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” The American Tradition in Literature. Ed. George Perkins and Barbara Perkins. ___________________: McGraw Hill., 2008. Pg-pg. Print.
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.
Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991. book.