The Haunted Palace, By Edgar Allen Poe

Written by Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven” is a famous short poem known for the dark fantasy that it portrays. From the mindset of a first person narrative, one may experience the tale through the eyes of a haunted man who is in mourning for the death of his beloved Lenore. As this man sits in his chamber, within a dark and dreary December night, a “raven of the saintly days of yore” visits him. The raven is no ordinary bird, for it is like a ghost, silent, yet it answers every inquiry the man presents in it’s own personal way. This dark and tragic tale grabs one’s attention through the rhythmic, yet melancholy verses, through the classic references, and through the dark imagery that all play a critical role within this poem.

Romanticism is an intellectual, spiritual, and literary movement that begins at the start of the nineteenth century and concludes at the beginning of the twentieth century. Of the many characteristics that are associated with Romanticism, the characteristics that are most evident in literature from this period are the characteristics of individuality and imagination. The author Edgar Allen Poe exhibits these characteristics in his works “The Black Cat”, and the “The Raven”.

“But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch’s high estate;” Poe’s palace has suddenly been invaded by the “evil things,” that can easily stand for macabre thoughts and unpure desires. He then pauses to “mourn” over the “desolate” landscape that’s never to return to its once “stately” place in the first stanza. The “glory” soon disappears from the palace, that is now nothing more than an old past memory that is “entombed.” The mind has now become troubled and amoral to the narrator a place that can never regain its past life.

When writing “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe used the setting outside of the mansion to illustrate the theme of the fear of death. From the outset, the Rodrick Usher’s home is portrayed in a way that gives the reader a feeling of alarm. For example, the narrator mentions the house gives him a feeling of “insufferable gloom” (Usher 1). By pointing this out, the reader begins to feel on edge as the connotation of “gloom” is unwelcoming and distressing. The home is also said to have “vacant eye like windows” (Usher 1) which make the narrator

In this story, Edgar Allan Poe (such as in many of his works) uses the setting to create a dark image inside our minds. He makes this specially through darkness, therefore the character makes a connection with death. “The physical setting oppresses him in the visions of his graveyard” (1).

Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, sets a tone that is dark, gloomy, and threatening. His inclusion of highly descriptive words and various forms of figurative language enhance the story’s evil nature, giving the house and its inhabitants eerie and “supernatural” qualities. Poe’s effective use of personification, symbolism, foreshadowing, and doubling create a morbid tale leading to, and ultimately causing, the fall of (the house of) Usher.

The deaths of his parents, sister and brother, all taken by tuberculosis, lead to Edgar Allan Poe’s obsession around the subject of death. This obsession enterprises historically ingenious writings, that did not just scare the reading population by inducing a death at the climax or tying in a death to create a gasp worthy ending. Poe’s historic greatness was his ability to use death as a catalyst, not an end. His stories, specifically short stories, strengthened the idea that the end of a life, has so much more meaning, than just the end. This precision was formed by how Poe ingeniously used the knowledge to not only comprise stories involving the subject of death, but used the stories to create deep ideas of the phantom of fatality. The short stories “The Black Cat,” “The Facts in the Case of M.Valdemar,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” all feature the inventive writing skills of Poe, that have enthralled populations since their publications.

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.

Death is an important theme in Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories, “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Masque of the Red Death”.

Even if one feels they may have 'gotten away ' with a crime, the weight of a person’s conscience cannot be concealed. In someone’s life, too much power and control combined with a person’s conscience in a person’s life can and will lead to an imbalance and perhaps insanity as in the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Edgar Allan Poe demonstrates how the narrator in this story goes through the greed and need for control, leading to his insanity that results in extreme guilt.

    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.

The Deeper Meaning of Edgar Allan Poe Born January 19, 1809, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. American short-story writer, poet, critic, and editor Edgar Allan Poe's tales of mystery and horror initiated the modern detective story, and the atmosphere in his tales of horror is unrivaled in American fiction ("Edgar Allan Poe. " Bio). Poe’s works all have one commonality, the narrator searching for self-identity and/or self-knowledge. Edgar Allan Poe’s works are deeper than what is on the surface.

He is concerned for Irene, asking her if she is afraid of being in this place. He wonders why she is dreaming in this place, and of what. The speaker says that she must be from a far away land, because even the trees are left to wonder about her. He comments on the peculiarity of how white her skin is, how strangely she is dressed, as well as the length of her hair is off setting to him. He is addressing her as if she will respond to him, which is another use of apostrophe. He is seemingly disoriented by her lack of courteousness; she will not answer his questions. The introduction to Irene being placed in the second stanza is important because it allows for a mood to be created, for the poem to establish an emotional investment for the speaker; we must first get a vivid image of the external surroundings. Poe constructs a mystical setting for his poem which conveys the music in the speaker’s soul. He does this by using alliteration in the first stanza, “And, Softly, dripping, drop by drop. The sensuality of these descriptions conveys how he feels about Irene. Once we are introduced to the slumbering beauty we can see he is concerned for her soul. His probing questions with an expectation of an answer haunt us into the realization that his love transcends through the confines of death. Poe uses iambic tetrameter in this poem, which allows the flow of the poem to captivate the reader into this fantastic setting. The rhyme scheme of

Life is a mysterious course with unanswerable questions. When Edgar Allan Poe was alive, he probably thought of this when facing the immense misfortunes of his life. Filled with pain, he placed pieces of his suffering through writing. These pieces are connected to the images found in his famous literary works. In the Tell-Tale Heart, the images of the vulture eye and time present the theft of Poe’s happiness and the lives of his dear loved ones.

This paper is being written to fully understand different parts of this poem. This paper is being written to help the reader to better understand this poem. Poems can be somewhat confusing and hard to understand. This paper is showing how Poe shows more than one meaning to his poetry; Poe tends to interpret more than one meaning in his poems. The theme of the poem is a graveyard, and someone having