Analysis Of Edgar Allan Poe 's Writing

One of the most influential authors of all time, Edgar Allan Poe, uses dark imagery and complex syntax to make his short stories and poems dark and mysterious. Poe’s dark, tragic backstory contributes to his dark writing style. His father left him when he was young, and his mother died when he was only three. He then went on writing poems, and after he finished his school, he found his fiance cheating on him, so he moved to Boston to get away from everything he knew. He then married his cousin when she was only 13, but she died 11 years after. Annabel Lee was likely based off of his wife's death, having wrote it shortly after her death. Overall, Poe used his dark imagery and complex syntax to write his gothic short stories and poems such as Annabel Lee and Fall of the House of Usher.

Edgar Allen Poe was a very troubled man throughout his life, but all these events affected his writing deeply and uniquely. Poe lost the people near and dear to his heart which of course made him very depressed. Poe was battling alcoholism during the middle years of his life, a hard battle for him to fight in his situation of poverty.

Poe often used depressed tones and imagery to create a dark kind of feeling to his work. The death of Edgar Allen Poe’s young wife put a bitter resentment in the writer. He felt like he was cursed and that the heavens stole his joy and claimed that the angel envied their happiness. Poe was accused of rumors and scandals his whole life, afflicted with depression, pinned down by phobias and horrific fantasies, and his writing reflects the madness in every lover’s heart. (Harris 60) In many of Edgar Allen Poe’s writings, he used gothic elements to express his pain and revealed the darker side of human nature.

Poe is a very complicated author. His literary works are perplexed, disturbing, and even grotesque. His frequent illnesses may have provoked his engrossment in such things. In 1842 Dr. John W. Francis diagnosed Poe with sympathetic heart trouble as well as brain congestion. He also noted Poe's inability to withstand stimulants such as drugs and alcohol (Phillips 1508). These factors may have motivated him to write The Tell-Tale-Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, and The Black Cat. All of these stories are written in or around 1843, shortly after Poe became afflicted. His writing helped him to cope with his troubles and explore new territory in literature. Poe's interest in the supernatural, retribution, and perverse cause them to be included

Poe Style Analysis Essay “The Raven”, “The Cast of the Amontillado”, “The Tell-Tale Heart” these are all amazing pieces that Edgar Allan Poe made. All these stories have something in common, something so bland that it is unique to Edgar Allan Poe. In his stories Poe uses three techniques that let you know you are reading something made by Poe, mood, imagery, and point of view all of these combined make the reader feel anxiety and sorrow. One that I believe he works the best is imagery. Imagery, such a simple concept that many people get wrong, but not Poe he does this excellent. Poe uses imagery to the max he makes the readers see what is happening, like if the book was a movie. Imagery plays a big part in “The Tale-Tell Heart”; you can clearly

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”

Edgar Allan Poe had writings that have been widely used in literature for centuries. However, in his writings, you can also see his own personal struggles. Poe’s life could be considered to many depressing and could be the inspiration behind his dark stories. For example, like the narrator “Montresor” in the Cask of Amontillado, he struggles with the desire for revenge. In this short story, the narrator “Montresor” appears not to have a valid a motive for committing murder other than the fact Fortunato dislikes him. In this short story, you can see how Edgar Alan Poe could have the same struggles in his life.

Edgar Allen Poe never knew his parents, his mother passed away when he was only three year old, nor was His father part of his life. Poe had two other siblings one named William whom was a poet himself before he passed and another sibling, Rosalie who worked as a penmanship at a all girls school. When Poe was a little after three his mother and father passed.

    Edgar Allan Poe once said, “With me, poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.” When stressed, writing was his coping mechanism, and through observation, many grasp how much death encompassed Poe. Although not appreciated during his era, he revolutionized mystery with mesmerizing story plots that yield suspense, but also makes readers question his stability. Most importantly, unlike those famous during his lifetime who are now forgotten, Poe’s legacy will live on forever. Moreover, throughout life, Poe experienced catastrophe, and because of this, writing became his creative outlet.

Poe used the literary device of setting to create a dark, threatening tone by using time of day, elapsed time, man made geography, and population.

Edgar Allan Poe’s writing differed from most writers during his time period. He was often critical of his contemporaries, as most writers wrote with the purpose to teach or instruct readers or make a religious or political statement. Poe believed literature was to be simply for the reader’s amusement. Due to his dislike for this didactic style of writing, he preferred writing horror short stories with the use of his imagination, which would impact the future of literature. Because Poe did not write like most of his contemporaries, he failed to have his work highly regarded by established literary people of his day.

A theme that has brought much criticism upon Poe is his Classicist aspect of writing. Poe was very clear and detailed when he wrote in prose. This way of writing proved him to be somewhat of a rebel and veered off the beaten path when it comes to form. In Poe’s time the Gothic style was not well appreciated, yet when writing prose fiction Poe was highly dependent on his Gothic trappings. Poe also used a lot of Gothic machinery in order to symbolize the states of minds of characters (Unrue 113-114). What Darlene Harbour Unrue is trying to get across is that Poe was an outcast when it came to literature because he was so far of the grid of popular writing. He held true to his Classic and Gothic viewpoints that shaped the plot, setting and outcomes of his works. Darlene Harbour describes Poe to be a man who was “miserable in solitariness, indifferent to primitivism and nature, and disliked the limits of subjective perspective” (113-114). This statement alone supports the idea that Poe was not like the common, mainstream writers and had a different view on the way of writing in his day and age.

When looking at a piece of literature through a psychological approach it is easy to apply Sigmund Freud’s theories of the id, ego, and superego, which focus on conscious and unconscious behavior. When analyzing many of Poe’s works, critics tend to look through a psychological lens. Specifically in Poe’s The Black Cat. Some critics believe that Poe’s alcoholism is reflected in the piece, but many, such as James W. Gargano “advised the tales readers to avoid the biographical pitfall of seeing Poe and the first-person narrator of The Black Cat as ‘identical literary twins’” (Piacentino 1). It is due to his childhood that Poe’s narrator in The Black Cat subconsciously places animals before humans, thus leading to him to murder his wife.

The Portable Edgar Allen Poe, edited by J. Gerald Kennedy, is a phenomenal compilation of works from one of America's greatest writers of the nineteenth century. Published in 2006, the book contains short stories, poems, and letters, written by Edgar Allen Poe. Full of lies, hope, revenge, and guilt, the stories in this assemblage are suspenseful and convey powerful messages.

In 1836 Poe married his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemms. Much of his early work went unnoticed and it took until 1840 before Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque was published in two volumes. This included the famous story The Fall of the House of Usher. Plans for starting his own magazine did not lead too much and he continued to work as a magazine editor for various publications. His Tales and The Raven and Other Poems, published in 1845, did bring him some recognition but unfortunately it was not enough to sustain his family financially. Mrs. Clemms and Poe's wife Virginia nearly starved to death one winter. After his wife's death in 1847 Poe became increasingly unstable and his dependence on tempted suicide in 1848 and tragically died in 1849, five days after being found in a delirious and semi-conscious condition in Baltimore.