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The Life and Writings of Edgar Allan Poe

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Edgar Allan Poe, is one of the most brilliant literary writers in history. He wrote many poems and short stories throughout his rather short lifetime, most of which encompassed such themes as death, destruction, and madness. These intriguing, and often frightening tales, as well as his clever use of a multitude of literary tactics, is what set him apart from the rest, and what makes him so popular still today. Reading his work, one is sure to wonder where these ideas came from. However, a little research into past will certainly open the doors to a better understanding of his writing. Abandoned as an infant by his father, Poe lost his mother to tuberculosis at the age of three, and was sent to live with foster parents. There he was …show more content…

In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” again, the narrator is secure in his hiding of the bodies and helps the police search his house, and just like how in the other story, the narrator taps on the exact spot where is wife is buried, so does the narrator in this story situate the chairs directly over the spot in which he buried the old man’s body. In this situation, however, the narrator begins to think he, and the police, can hear the dead man’s heartbeat, so he ends up confessing. Another similarity is in the use of animals and the number 4. In one story, the target of the narrator’s madness is a cat, and in the other story it is his roommate’s eye, which he refers to as the “vulture eye.” Also, in one story the police show up on the fourth day, and in the other, the police show up at four in the morning. Also, in both “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” the narrators speak of being unable to control the urges to commit these violent acts, even though in one the murder is meticulously carried out, and in the other it happens almost all of a sudden. Finally, in both stories, an eye becomes the literal target of the narrator’s violent rage and insanity. In one, it is the eye of his roommate, and in the other, it is the eye of the cat, which he gouges out (Piggush 2010). These themes of untimely death, blood, and insanity are prevalent throughout his works. Even some of the works that are about love, involve some sort of twisted necromancy, such as in “Annabel Lee.”

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