Barnabás Kanik
Five short stories of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) pioneered many of the most enduring forms of American popular culture, including detective story and the Gothic or sensational tale. I will compare and contrast five short stories of Poe: The Gold-Bug, The Purloined Letter, “Thou Art the Man”, The Cask of Amontillado and The Pit and the Pendulum. The genre, the purpose and role of the narrator and the parallelism between all of the stories will be examined.
The five stories can be split up into two groups by their genre: detective story and gothic horror. The detective stories are The Gold-Bug, The Purloined Letter and “Thou Art the Man”; while the Gothic horrors are The Cask of Amontillado and The Pit and the Pendulum.
Poe gave birth to the detective stories we know today, still, before his works, there were detectives in literature, but no detection (there were investigators of crime in Lytton’s and Godwin’s works too, but not in the same meaning as Poe’s detective). Poe, instead of calling his writings detective stories, uses the term “tales of ratiocination”. According to the classical rules of detective fiction, three indispensable elements are necessary for success: the mystery, the detective and the solution/revelation. All these three can be found in his works. The Gold-Bug lacks the crime element, but still can be called a detective story because of the way of finding the pirate treasure, like the solving of a puzzle. Poe says detecting a crime is similar to a puzzle, because there is only one correct and perfect solution, which resembles a cryptogram. A cryptogram loses its interest when it has been solved. The detective characters are an image of Poe himself and all of them sh...
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... and other treasures, or escaping an immense pendulum with the help of hungry rats. The other similarity I noticed is the writing style of Poe. He holds back information in all the stories, we do not know from who was the letter stolen or why Montresor vowed revenge on Fortunato, nor why the names prisoner was sentenced to death by the Inquisition.
Edgar Allan Poe opened up many new ways in literature for the following generations, without him we probably would not have detective stories and Gothic tales in the same form as we have today.
Bibliography:
1. Bollobás Enikő. AZ AMERIKAI IRODALOM TÖRTÉNETE 2005
2. Buranelli, Vincent. Edgar Allan Poe 1961
3. Lauter, Paul. The Heath Anthology of American Literature Fifth Edition Volume B Early Nineteenth Century: 1800-1865 2006
4. Symons, Julian. THE TELL-TALE HEART The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe 1978
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most influential writers to date. His thrill filled tales of darkness and death helped people see a different side of romantic literature. Many believe that his isolated life and drinking problem helped influence his works. Poe showed his most prominent life accomplishment and disappointments through his life in his stories. He defined a lot of his life’s parallels through his works.
Edgar Allen Poe is known for his dark yet comedic approach toward the his theme of his stories. Likewise, Poe’s themes have gathered many fans due to his impression of reasoning in his stories. The author uses thinking and reasoning to portray the theme. Poe’s unique diction comprehends with the theme of the story. Poe has a brilliant way of taking gothic tales of mystery, and terror, and mixing them with variations of a romantic tale by shifting emphasis from, surface suspense and plot pattern to his symbolic play in language and various meanings of words.
Edgar Allan Poe is known for some of the most horrifying stories ever written through out time. He worked with the natural world, animals, and weather to create chilling literature. Two most notable thrillers are “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Poe was infatuated with death, disfigurement, and dark characteristics of the world. He could mix characters, setting, theme,and mood in a way that readers are automatically drawn into reading. Both of these short stories have the same major aspects in common.
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most celebrated literary authors of all time, known for writing very suspenseful, dramatic short stories and a poet; is considered as being a part of the American Romantic Movement, and a lesser known opinion is he is regarded as the inventor of the detective-fiction genre. Most recognized for his mystery and macabre, a journey into the dark, ghastly stories of death, deception and revenge is what makes up his reputation. The short story under analysis is a part of his latter works; “The Cask of Amontillado”, a story of revenge takes readers into the mind of the murderer.
Reading Edgar Allen Poe’s works such as “The Cask of Amontillado” and “Tell-Tale Heart” are both written around 1840’s and written in the gothic style. Poe displays his horror short stories, in which the reader can differentiate his signature style. Although many of Poe’s significant works may have a similar theme, the reader can distinguish the themes through the characters in “The Cask of Amontillado” and “Tell-Tale Heart.”
In Edgar Allan Poe’s works, there are many similarities between them and his life. There are plenty similarities to find when only focusing on two of his stories, The Tell Tale Heart and The Cask of Amontillado. When paying close attention, it is easy to notice the similarities and differences between Poe‘s life and his stories..
Edgar Allan Poe is one of America’s most celebrated classical authors, known for his unique dealings within the horror genre. Poe was a master at utilizing literary devices such as point of view and setting to enhance the mood and plot of his stories leading to his widespread appeal that remains intact to this day. His mastery of aforementioned devices is evident in two of his shorter works “The Black Cat” and “The Cask of Amontillado”.
Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809. He is considered a part of the American Romanticism period. He is best known for his works of mystery and psychological terror. Poe is recognized for his gothic tales of mystery, death, terror, puzzles, and psychological problems (poets.org). He has influenced many writers including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes series. Poe was different than other authors in that he was influenced by his own current life. He had endured many deaths and dark periods. His mother died of tuberculosis and so did his foster mother later on. His wife, Virginia Clemm, also died from this terrible disease. This especially was evident in his works. She influenced him in his works of “Annabel Lee” and “The Raven” (poets.org). Poe uses the themes of terror and the mystery of the mind to show that under the circumstances anything can happen to anyone. In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, “The Purloined Letter” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”, Edgar Allan Poe explores horror, the mystery of psychology and puzzles in order to show the depth of the human mind and the consequences of it.
Edgar Allan Poe was an excellent horror, suspense, and mystery writer of the eighteenth century. His use of literary devices and different literary techniques makes this writer important to American literature. This paper will show how Edgar Allan Poe has made an impact on Society and American literature as well as how Edgar Allan Poe developed the short story. I will also discuss and analyze some of his works and techniques he uses in his short stories and poems.
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.
American History Through Literature 1820-1870. Ed. Janet Gabler-Hover and Robert Sattelmeyer. Vol. 3.
A virtuoso of suspense and horror, Edgar Allan Poe is known for his Gothic writing style. His style is created through his use of punctuation, sentence structure, word choice, tone, and figurative language. Punctuation-wise; dashes, exclamation marks, semicolons, and commas are a favorite of Poe. His sentences vary greatly; their structures are influenced by punctuation. Much of his word choice set the tone of his works. Figurative language colors his writings with description. Such is observed in the similarities between two of his most well-known short stories, “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”
Works Cited “American Literature 1865-1914.” Baym 1271. Baym, Nina et al. Ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature.
In “The Purloined Letter,” Edgar Allan Poe’s use of complex literary devices reveals his unique writing style. These literary devices include: allusions, metaphors, irony, foreshadowing events, and a detailed exposition. In the very beginning of the short story, Poe provides the reader with information about the setting and timing of the story. This aids the reader to clearly identify what exactly takes place. Poe, known perhaps more for his grotesque and gothic short stories, wrote detective and mystery short stories as well. Within one of his most famous detective short stories, “The Purloined Letter,” Poe illustrates the theme of logic and cleverness to prove the essential nature of intelligence and detail.
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.