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
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.
A mutual understanding towards many of Poe’s works is that the loss of a lover brings about insanity, but the truth is that in Poe’s works the loss of a young lover leads to depression. This is a theme that is played out in more than one of Poe’s works, but it is most prevalent in the depressing poem Annabel Lee. The speaker is conflicted with losing what is his whole world and his childhood lover. While all is well with both him and the girl alive, an insurmountable depression takes hold once the winds blow out to carry her to the grave. This is a theme that plays out often in his works and has been observed as one of his main inspirations. Within Peter Coviello’s research, he comes to the conclusion that “Within [Poe’s] world, only very young girls, who are not yet encumbered by the revulsions of adult femininity, seem capable of providing a site for stable heterosexual male desire in Poe.” Rather than using a full fledged adult as his lover, he engineered a child into his poem so the lover does not harness the potential to mutate into a monstros...
Poe, Edgar Allan, Andrew Barger, Harry Clarke and Gustave Dore´. Edgar Allan Poe. [Memphis, Tenn.]: BottleTree Books, 2008. 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.
The life of Edgar Allan Poe, was stuffed with tragedies that all affected his art. From the very start of his writing career, he adored writing poems for the ladies in his life. When he reached adulthood and came to the realization of how harsh life could be, his writing grew to be darker and more disturbing, possibly as a result of his intense experimenting with opium and alcohol. His stories continue to be some of the most frightening stories ever composed, because of this, some have considered this to be the reason behind these themes. Many historians and literature enthusiasts have presumed his volatile love life as the source while others have credited it to his substance abuse. The influence of his one-of-a-kind writing is more than likely a combination of both theories; but the main factor is the death of many of his loved ones and the abuse which he endured. This, not surprisingly, darkened his perspective considerably.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991. book.
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.
Technology has changed modern society drastically, both positively and negatively. Technology has influenced every aspect of our life, making it simpler but not necessarily better. Albert Einstein was concerned about the advancement of technology. "I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction."1 Undoubtedly, what has changed the most are communication, the spread of information, and how business is practiced. Consequently, practically everyone knows how to use a computer, connect to the Internet, or use a smartphone. This is demonstrated by the way the Internet is used daily by millions of people to communicate, to sell, advertise, retrieve, and share information. Thanks to the Internet, information from anywhere in the world is at our fingertips. As a result, the advancement of technology has changed our life in many ways including; sharing of information, communication, business, education, social interaction, simplifying everyday tasks, replacing basic skills and jobs.