Description Of Environments In Poe's Short Stories By Edgar Allan Poe

It is significant to note how certain words like “melancholy,” “dreary,” “oppressively,” and “dull, dark, and soundless” abet the fortification of this tenebrous environment that evokes such terror within the narrator. Likewise, the imagery present in the narrator’s description of “the atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn, a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaded-hued,” contributes to the ominous mood generated by these systematically chosen words (92). This mood remains throughout the story and offers a throbbing sense of anticipation and lingering fear. Another example of how Poe’s imagery achieves this effect occurs when the narrator briefly spies Madeline in the beginning of the story: “The lady Madeline passed slowly through the remote portion of the apartment and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared. A sensation of stupor oppressed me, and my eyes followed her retreating steps” (96). Images like these contribute to the perception

The setting of this story takes place in the Usher manor a creepy place located in a “dreary tract of country.” When the narrator first sees the estate he feels “an insufferable gloom” because of the manors horrible state. With its “eye-like windows” and “decayed trees...I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the afterdream of the reveler upon opium.” Poe establishes a Gothic setting through the narrator's point of view just like in “Young Goodman Brown.”

The main themes of Edgar Allan Poe’s works are death, perversity, revenge and destruction. The settings he employed in the given short stories, especially in The Fall of the House of Usher and The Black Cat are Gothic. Therefore, naturally the mood of these stories would be dark and sepulchral. However, this is not a trivial employment undertaken to put the reader in a certain kind of zone.

The city is described at night only, and we see nearly nothing of the hours of daylight. The onlooker is left with a murky and miserable image of the city. By providing this portrait of the city through the narrator, Poe automatically creates a depressing outlook on city life that pervades the story and provides the backdrop for the entire commentary.

Edgar Allan Poe was one of the greatest writers of the nineteenth century. Perhaps he is best know for is ominous short stories. Two of these stories were "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Raven." In these short stories Poe uses imagery in many different forms to enhance the mood and setting of the story. In my essay I will approach three aspects of Poe's use of imagery. These three are when Poe uses it to develop the setting, to develop the mood, and to develop suspense. Through out all of Poe's stories he uses imagery to develop the setting. If the setting is established well, you can understand the story better. Some examples of when Poe used imagery to develop the

A careful reading of Poe’s tales will quickly reveal the importance that landscape plays in the development of each literary work.  "Ragged Mountains" has both a surreal and realistic landscape allowing Poe to use both the mental and the physical environment to explain his tale.  This technique is also found in "The Fall of the House of Usher," "William Wilson," and "The Masque of the Red Death."  In these tales too the reader may tend to focus on the action at hand, and the psychological details, because that is what we are prone to do with Poe stories.  However, it is also important to understand that physical landscape as well.

One’s environment has a profound effect on the development of their overall psyche and the person that they ultimately become. Edgar Allan Poe is the perfect example of this. He is not a stranger to hardship, experiencing it from the age of two until the day he died. This constant struggle was quite evident in Poe’s writing, where he reflected upon them and expressed his feelings, no matter how dark. In fact, his most famous work, “The Raven,” is basically a cry of pain and agony based on events happening in his life at that time. Having written in the early seventeenth century, it was not abnormal for an author to express these emotions in their literature. The Dark Romanticism Era put Edgar Allan Poe through long periods of destitution and

In short stories, poems and novels, there is always a theme found somewhere in the story to relate to the reader. Sometimes it is a hidden clue that we ought to discover on our own and often it is given by the author. When hearing the name Edgar Allen Poe and his marvelous works, the common theme that we can associate with the majority of his work is death. While focusing on one of Poe’s poems, “The Haunted Palace,” it is revealed that the poem’s focus and theme is not entirely about death, but the transformation that occurs after the death of a king. Poe discusses the change that has occurred in the town and the palace after the death of the town’s monarch whose name is not revealed throughout the poem. The poem communicates exceptionally well with the readers to describe how the palace was before and after the death that occurs. After careful examination and Poe’s use of a variation of elements reveal, the death of the king brought a change in the town and the palace which the speaker is incredibly concerned about.

This essay will discuss the themes in Poe’s writing that mirror his personal life and, in addition, the fear and supernatural motivators for his characters. First, I will discuss Poe’s background and explore how he became best known as a poet for his tales of mystery and macabre.

World famous poet, Edgar Allan Poe, once wrote in one of his poems, “From childhood’s hour I have not been. As others were, I have not seen. As others saw, I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved, I loved alone.” In those lines, Poe demonstrates his love for being alone because his childhood was full of isolation, meaning that the writer grew used to the feeling. Since boyhood throughout his adult life, Edgar Allan Poe endured through a series of unfortunate events. From his parents dying, his animosity with his foster father, his consecutive poverty, to facing rejection from the public, the man’s life was as ominous as his fiction. This essay will discuss the reason behind the writing of one of Edgar Allan

There are two complex stories that are similar to one another. It revolves on two story lines, but have strong similarities to one another. First it was proven that poverty and life struggles with lack of great relationships to their loved ones was in fact true. Starting out Edgar Allen Poe was a known poet and writer, but lived a very sad life I believe. The difference between today’s society and back then is no different from the present. Growing up he became a child orphan whose father abandoned the family when he was much younger and sadly the mother died the following year due to an illness, and it became a critical moment in his life. He wrote a poem in related to his struggles with life and that’s how he

He was capable of writing angelic or weird poetry, with a supreme sense of rhythm and word appeal, or prose of sumptuous beauty and suggestiveness, with the apparent abandon of compelling inspiration; yet he would write down a problem of morbid psychology or the outlines of an unrelenting plot in a hard and dry style. In Poe’s masterpieces the double contents of his temper, of his mind, and of his art are fused into a oneness of tone, structure, and movement, the more effective, perhaps, as it is compounded of various elements. As a critic, Poe laid great stress upon correctness of language, metre, and structure. He formulated rules for the short story, in which he sought the ancient unities - the short story should relate a complete action and take place within one day in one place. To these unities he added that of mood or effect.

The setting presented in this story has a very dark and gloomy atmosphere which has been used as a technique to help outline the scene. It is set in the one location; a bedroom. Poe describes the room as being “black as pitch with the thick darkness,” which deepens the effect of terror. The night setting gives the text an eerie feel as it focuses on the horrors of night time. This horror creates a noticeable impact which is recognisable when the victim cried out “who’s there?” against the backdrop of frighteningly still silence. Ultimately, the way in which Poe’s story is set builds anxiety and fear in the reader.

As a master of short stories of horror, Edgar Allan Poe is knowledgeable, learned and imaginative. He could skillfully manipulate the words in his literary works to create everything people can think of. The masterful use of the symbols, objects intensify the readers’ nerve as the typical elements of horror in Poe’s short stories, and therefore it is also a feature which makes Poe 's stories different from other writers.

Poe’s works have received criticism as well as much praise, over the years. Numerous professionals who researched Poe’s life and his writings, knew that his writings were reflections of his real life situations. However,