Poe: An Analysis of His Work

In “The Pit and the Pendulum”, the atmosphere is dark and unsettling. In addition to the setting and characters, there are various other factors that give the story a creepy feel to it. Furthermore, the narrator’s thoughts and descriptions add to the ominous mood of the story. For example, the tale states, “By long suffering my nerves had been unstrung, until I trembled at the sound of my own voice, and had become in every respect a fitting subject for the species of torture which awaited me” (Poe 5). At this point in the story, the narrator, falling into his torturers’ trap, tips on the verge of insanity and begins to lose hope. The reader can easily picture the narrator, cowering against the wall, eyes wide, flinching at the slightest of sounds. Therefore, along with the horrifying aspects of the torture chamber, the unstable narrator and his thoughts create a foreboding and macabre feeling characteristic to gothic

Fleming, Thomas. "Poe, Edgar Allan." ["Reader's Companion to American History"]. Reader's Companion to American History, Jan. 1991, p. 846. EBSCOhost, proxygsu-wgt1.galileo.usg.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=khh&AN=27829334&site=eds-live&scope=site.

Usually, fairy tales are in connection to big and illustrious happy endings. But in Edgar Allan Poe’s case, it is evident that they do not exist, for his stories more often than not bear a grotesque demeanor. His life was surrounded by death. All of the women in his life died young, including his mother, sister, and wife. By the age of three, he had experienced what most would not experience until nearly the middle or end of their lives. Living in such an atmosphere allowed Poe to reach deep into his emotions when writing. Edgar Allan Poe was known for his macabre metaphors. These metaphors challenged the reader to endeavor themselves into his simple words; coming to find the gothic elements portrayed. He most commonly portrayed love and death in his poems. Poe is even credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. Edgar Allan Poe utilizes symbolism and portrays an envious love tale, ending in tragedy to expose the speaker’s emotional state in the poem “Annabel Lee.”

The Spanish Inquisition was a holy and violent endeavor that was meant to convert non-Christians into Christians, but when some kind of rebellion or outburst took place, the rebel was meant with force and punished harshly. “The Pit and the Pendulum” by Edgar Allan Poe is undoubtedly a piece of gothic literature taking place during the Spanish Inquisition following the imprisonment of the narrator. Edgar Allan Poe has written many pieces about death and despair throughout his impressive career. “The Pit and the Pendulum” indeed no exception to this literary trend. This specific story takes place during the spanish inquisition and focuses on the narrator who is imprisoned and tortured in a mysterious room. “The Pit and the Pendulum” has many elements of gothic literature such as the setting and point of view, the aspect of fear within the novel, and the horrid presence of death throughout the story.

“The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allan Poe, is a petrifying short story. Poe incorporated a variety of literary elements to intimidate the reader. Personification, theme, and symbols are combined to create a suspenseful horror story.

Edgar Allen Poe was one of the great writers of this world. He created several poems and short stories of a dark and dreary setting. His imagination was incredible. Edgar Allen Poe did not have a normal life. Bad luck and heart ach seemed to follow him until his death. His writing style was very different than other writers' style. His most famous

    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.

In Annabel Lee, Edgar Allan Poe states, “We loved with a love that was more than love.” This saying is used by thousands of people everyday to their soul mate. The American Renaissance, which began in 1828 through 1865. Poe was an Anti-Transcendentalist, he wrote mostly about self-destruction (sin). Edgar Allan Poe enjoyed writing about death, sinful acts, and how others felt towards sin.

Edgar Allan Poe is famous for writing short stories that are themed particularly around death and the macabre. His writing includes horrific scenes with gruesome deaths and murders. Poe’s style of writing is very much on a podium of its own. He was a brilliant writer for his time period. His wicked works continue to grab the attention of readers with his dark and scary form of writing. His short stories are typical of describing the twisted events that led up to a murder. Some of his plots include a premature burial or the dismemberment of a body under the floorboards of a home. Adversity and mishap are two words that can greatly describe his short stories. Negativeness seemed to follow his literature, like a shadow, but he seemed to embrace it well. He has allowed readers to explore their deepest and most malicious thoughts through his vivid way of expressing his dark ideas and thoughts onto paper. Poe wrote some of the darkest stories in American literature history. Readers will find evidence of Poe’s dark, horrendous short stories in his literary works like, “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Black Cat,” “The Tell-Tale Heart”.

Growing up as a kid in Avondale located in Birmingham, Alabama reading and writing was not the most popular thing to do, it was just one of those things that people detest. Avondale was a place where life seems to have been sucked out, instead of grass mostly everybody had a yard full of dirt, there were gang symbols spray painted on nearly every wall/surface in sight, and everybody seemed to detest each other’s presence. It was just rough to grow up in Avondale, and the people that live in Avondale just did not see reading and writing as a skill or attribute they should try to enhance, Ideally I was already set to fail. But while I was attending Whatley elementary during the month of October as a 2nd grader my teacher decided to bend the rules for the first time and she introduce me and my fellow classmates to an author known as Edgar Allan Poe. Now Edgar Allan Poe, a complicated individual, was not an author you would present to a class of 2nd graders because most of his work is for a more mature audience. The book that she read to us was called “The Tell Tale Heart” and it was about a man who tries to exert to the audience that his actions of murder were completely sane, he murdered a old man with precise and clever methods, dismember his body and hides it within the old man floor, but in the end his guilt forced him to give himself away and confess his crime to the police. Since it was during the month of October her motive was to frighten us for the celebration of

The vision of the mind is easily portrayed through the art of literature, painting a picture with the stroke of words. The natural inspiration that influences the creation of these works is derived from the life and the experiences of the creator. For some, these tales become stories and those stories become novels, but for one man it meant so much more. The works of Edgar Allan Poe became his life; he expressed every feeling and every moment of his existence through ink and paper. Poe involved his entire life in his writing, leaving no element of the story untouched by his trademark of a past. His work became so unique and unorthodox, yet it did not lack the attention it deserved. The American critic, Curtis Hidden Page, suggested that

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.

When darkness creeps into the spotlight of a story you know it will be a great attention grabber. During Edgar Poe’s writing of “The Pit and the Pendulum” he takes a spin on his usual prints, maybe for the reason that it’s one of his earlier writings. The story begins with a person that is in severe peril contemplating the possibility of the death sentence. During this stressful time the character is falling in and out of conciseness, all the

Everyone suffers one point or another in their life. Some take it as a lesson to achieve greatness and try to avoid from suffering again. Others give up right then and there and accept that life. The life of always suffering and do nothing about it. One man took all his suffering and used it as strength. He took those suffering feelings and wrote it on paper. Since he knows how it feels to truly suffer, those words on paper felt true and real. That man is Edgar Allan Poe. Many people believe Edgar Allan Poe's past helped him develop his technique in writing. His suffering was like and inspiration to his gothic writing. Some say that in his poems it has to do with life events that occurred to him. And death was always near Poe and perhaps that's why he includes death in his works.

Edgar Allan Poe is an illustrious writer from the 19th century, notorious for his ominous, melancholic, and lugubrious writing style. The characters and situation in Poe’s story often depicted figures and events from his own life. In “The Pit and the Pendulum” the narrator has been captured by the Spanish Inquisition and sentenced to death. After numerous methods of torture and various obstacles, the narrator is rescued by General LaSalle of the French army. This reflects on the periods of depression Poe has gone through and how they have been alleviated by his romantic relationships. A common theme Poe wrote about was the doom of man. Poe’s ideology foreshadows certain infamous events such as World War I and World War II.