Research Paper On The Fall Of The House Of Usher

Psychoanalysis Essay

Few literary topics seem more conducive to psychological analysis than the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Throughout many of his stories appear the same irregular and fascinating themes: morbidity, powerful yet inexplicable anxiety, reanimation, and over acuteness of the senses. Many have endeavored to link the deviancy in Poe’s writing with the abnormality of Poe’s life, and have sought to explain the former in terms of the latter. In this essay it will explain the significance of how Edgar Allen Poe’s work of literature reveals important details about the author’s mind-state and life experiences, by choosing passages from stories/poems that shed light on Poe’s mind and/ or life experiences

One example of a similarity

In the stories such as, “Annabel Lee,” The Fall of the House of Usher,” etc, a young innocent women, full of life, dies in a strange and horrible way. The cause of the death is generally unusually and different. An example of this is from “The Fall of the House of Usher” on page 25 when Roderick says, “ We have put her living in the tomb!” In the story this is where even though Roderick claims death upon his sister because of her slowly and gradually wasting away disease, the madman actually killed his sister by burying her alive in a tomb, secured in a iron hinged cell and coppered vault. Another example of this theme is from the story Annabelle Lee. “Annabelle Lee is about a beautiful, painful memory. The narrator of the poem talks about his remembering of his long-lost love, Annabelle Lee. Even though the narrator and Annabelle lee were young, they were deeply in love. So in the the love that the angles in the heaven were jealous. Maybe it was a bad thing because the narrator claims the angles sent a wind from the clouds, which made Annabelle Lee sick and then eventually killed her. When this happened, her relatives came and took her away from the speaker, and shut her up in a tomb. Again this goes back to the note that he loved his foster mother and wife dearly, and they passed on before him. Virginia Poe’s wife, was very pretty and died at a young age, just like the characters in

According to score.addicid.com, “Edgar Allan Poe had a long problem with alcohol and said the stress and pain of his wife’s illness was the cause of both his alcoholism and his “insanity.” Towards the end of his days, Poe began to spiral into depression and madness. He drank more and more heavily. The stories he wrote in the last years of his life often included an alcoholic character. For instance, “The Black Cat” was published in 1845, four years before Poe died in 1849. In the story, the narrator attacks and wounds his cat while he is really drunk. He is overcome with the fiery demon of alcohol, much like Poe became before he died. In the story on page 116 the narrator says, “One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him... The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer... I took from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket!” This shows how the narrator was violent and often mad when he was intoxicated and may relate to Poe's behavior with alcohol himself. Poe also has many other stories that include themes of alcohol. Overall alcohol was a major problem in Poe's life and even many people believe it's what cause his death, but impacted his