Term Paper Edgar Allan Poe's Infatuation with Death

In the Premature Burial written by Edgar Allan Poe, he explains the frightening fear and terror of being buried alive by using descriptive imagery to appeal to his audience which gives off an eerie feeling. Then later on, the narrator explains his experience with fear. The theme is not letting your fears define who you are. The entire story was based on overcoming your fears or learning to deal with your fears. It’s realizing the problem and driving yourself to fix them. In the story, the main theme is being able to overcome your fears if you face them and don’t let your fears consume you as a whole.

Edgar Allan Poe is known for some of the most horrifying stories ever written through out time. He worked with the natural world, animals, and weather to create chilling literature. Two most notable thrillers are “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Poe was infatuated with death, disfigurement, and dark characteristics of the world. He could mix characters, setting, theme,and mood in a way that readers are automatically drawn into reading. Both of these short stories have the same major aspects in common.

There are many theories of how Edgar Allan Poe died. One of the theories is alcohol. Poe was a heavy drinker as a young man so it is possible. Another theory is rabies. This is also a possible theory because of the symptoms he had in the hospital.

The life of Edgar Allan Poe is not a tale of ease. Poe’s life was full of personal and fiscal disaster. These disasters help to mold some of the most ominous and intellectually challenging poetry ever written. For the short duration of Poe’s life, he was seen as a literary critic rather than an author. To the modern generation his unbeknown status seems bafflingly inconceivable, considering his now acclaimed publications. Edgar Allan Poe’s writing was very much dictated by his life. The mournful tone of Edgar Allan Poe’s life created his literature; death and all his friends narrated Poe’s life. Edgar Allan Poe shows his life’s constant despair through his poetry and short story writings.

Edgar Allan Poe is a famous well known writer known for his dark and gothic horror stories such as “The Tell-Tale Heart” and many others. The well-known author had a rough life which dealt with a lot of death, so most of his stories revolve around this idea. In “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Masque of the Red Death” Poe uses similar themes or darkness to convey tone and conflict throughout the story. His writing style is dark and revolves around one main concept: death. Edgar Allan Poe uses diction and syntax, setting and conflict, and characterization in his writing style to develop his stories.

According to the CDC, over 88,000 people die every year due to the excessive use of alcohol in the United States. Now this proves that alcoholism is a very serious and common issue in our country. Poe’s death to this day has been thought of as a great mystery, most believing he died from either alcohol or rabies. According to several sources saying that Poe was sent to the hospital after being to drunk, not being able to tell doctors the names of his family members/where he lived, and the fact that his cat, Caterina, was proven to not have rabies, I believe he died from alcohol.

Edgar Allan Poe is the most morbid of all American authors. Poe made his impact in Gothic fiction, especially for the tales of the macabre of which he is so renowned for. “How can so strange & so fine a genius & so sad a life, be exprest [sic] & comprest in on line — would it not be best to say of Poe in a reverential spirit simply Requiescat in Pace [?]” — (Alfred Lord Tennyson’s reply to the Poe Memorial committee, February 18, 1876). Poe’s own life story sheds light on the darkness of his writings.

The mystery of how the famous poet and writer Edgar Allen Poe died is still unsolved; until now. Many theories have been proposed on how Poe died: alchohol poisoning, mercury poisoning, cooping, and many more. While all those ideas are well thought out, Edgar Allen Poe died because of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Edgar Allan Poe is an American poet/ author of many poems and short stories. A few of his most popular include “The Raven,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” All of these stories have a few things in common. Edgar Allan Poe is very famous for using classical allusion in ‘The Cask of Amontillado,” when he references the Masons group. Allusion is an implied or indirect reference especially in literature.(Merriam Webster Dictionary) Poe uses this piece of literary language very explicitly in many of his poems and short stories. Poe also almost always writes about death, or loss of a loved one in his poems or short stories. His most famous poem about death is “The Raven,” where the narrator loses his beloved Lenore.

Death is something that Poe talks about a lot. He has an obsession with it which is evident if you read his poems. He said “The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? ”(brainyquote 1) A common theme in his poems is death, and his death is a controversial topic. There are many conspiracies about his death, from suicide to rabies, and they will be the basis of this essay.

the Red Death shows the futile attempts by a prince and his guests of a party,

Edgar Allan Poe is considered to be one of the greatest American writers of all time. His writing is dark and sinister. He wrote of death, murder, psychosis, and obsession. One could only imagine what would bring a person to write such morbid stories. Perhaps, it may be attributed to Poe’s childhood, a past that was sad and far from average. Both of his parents died when he was only three years of age (Shelley). The death of his parents caused a separation from his siblings and he moved to live with his relatives (Shelley). In later years, Poe endured poverty and the loss of his wife-to-be to another man (Clark). Possibly, without those troubling experiences, Poe couldn’t have imagined such eerie and enthralling tales. Some of his most

The narrator 's desire for complete control, particularly of the old man and his evil eye which bothers him so much it leads him to commit his evil deed. He says that he did not have a motive for killing the old man other than his disgust at the man 's pale blue filmy eye. He describes the eye as "the eye of a vulture" and an "Evil Eye" and he confesses that it frightened him; once he got it into his head to kill the man, he could think of nothing else (Bouchard). “Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees - very gradually- I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever” (Poe 1). He believes that the elimination of the old man, and the successful dismemberment and hiding of the corpse, will ease his extreme nervousness and his madness that will give him complete control over his life within the house. Poe’s interest is less in external forms of power than

    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.

“[He] attended a lot of funerals. When he wasn’t going to funerals, he wrote stories about dead people (or soon-to-be-dead people) living in torture chambers, haunted houses, and other creepy locales with zero chance of escape….” an author writes in Edgar Allan Poe's biography. Poe is an author who has experienced multiple catastrophic events could have done this. With much experience in death, Edgar Allan Poe had a brutal, devastating, and depressing life. Authors often write what they feel and experience in life. Surrounded by death most his stories too were about death. In the story The Tell-Tale Heart Poe writes about a man is killed because he has a hideous eye. One of his bestsellers, the Raven, is about a man who believes that a bird