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Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Works

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Edgar Allan Poe was born in Massachusetts in 1809 and was orphaned by the time by the age of 2 (Fisher ix). Edgar lived with his godparents, and excelled in school but he had an irascible temper and was prone to alcoholism (Fisher vi). He first began his writing career by entering several “fiction contests” that was being held by newspapers in New England, and went on to write and publish 1 novel, and several short stories and poems (Fisher vii). He married his 14 year old cousin in 1836 and supported his family as an editor for a few newspapers and magazines (Fisher vii). What probably motivated Edgar the most were the struggles that came with alcoholism, which many alcoholics refer to as their “demons.” Internal darkness can take ahold of people and break them, but Edgar used them to earn a living. In 1849, Edgar was found unconscious in a street in Baltimore and died a few days later from mysterious causes. Slide Two: Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart was published in 1843 in the United States Saturday Post (Fisher xiii). This story is the narration of a murder that the speaker committed in his house. The narrator was disgusted by his housemate’s (known as the old man) blind eye and created a plan to murder him so that he would not have to see the eye anymore. It took the narrator 8 days to finally kill him, and he dissected his body and buried him beneath the floor boards. The police came a while later due to a neighbor hearing a scream from his house and they searched the

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