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Edgar Allan Poe Essay

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Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was a bizarre and often scary writer. People throughout history have often wondered why his writings were so fantastically different and unusual. They were not the result of a diseased mind, as some think. Rather they came from a tense and miserable life. Edgar Allan Poe was not a happy man.
He was a victim of fate from the moment he was born to his death only forty years later. He died alone and unappreciated. It is quite obvious that his life affected his writings in a great way. In order to understand why, the historical background of Poe must be known. Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 19, 1809. His parents were touring actors and both died before he was three years old. After …show more content…

So, he did what most people do.
He found a way to escape. His method was writing. He found so much in common with his characters, that his life began to emulate theirs. Although it is probably the other way around. How tragic that the one thing that he was good at never seemed to do him any good. No matter what he wrote, he just kept sinking further and further into an abyss. This abyss could be called death or ultimate despair. When we read Poe's stories, we often find ourselves wondering how such a mind could function in society. This quotation from American Writers: A
Collection of Literary Biographies, very accurately describes the landscape of
Poe's stories: "The world of Poe's tales is a nightmarish universe. You cross wasted lands, silent, forsaken landscapes where both life and waters stagnate. Here and there you catch sight of lugubrious feudal buildings suggestive of horrible and mysterious happenings......The inside of these sinister buildings is just as disquieting as the outside. Everything is dark there, from the ebony furniture to the oaken ceiling. The walls are hung with heavy tapestries to which mysterious drafts constantly give 'a hideous and uneasy animation.' Even the windows are 'of a leaden hue,' so that the rays of either sun or moon passing through fall 'with a ghastly lustre on the objects

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