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Themes in the Writing of Edgar Allan Poe that Mirror his Personal Life

Decent Essays

This essay will discuss the themes in Poe’s writing that mirror his personal life and, in addition, the fear and supernatural motivators for his characters. First, I will discuss Poe’s background and explore how he became best known as a poet for his tales of mystery and macabre. In retrospect he was born January 19, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts. His father an actor abandoned the family when he was one years old and his mother an actress died of tuberculosis when 2 yrs old. His foster parents cared for him as a young child and their last names were Allan. This is where his full name Edgar Allan Poe comes from. When he was in college he wrote all of his walls and came of gloomy and depressed to some classmates. He removed his self from …show more content…

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore.” In other words, Poe is asking if he will ever again be able to his wife. From a depressed person talking about another depressed person, everything takes on different meaning when someone is depressed. Pictures, places, smells, sounds, voices of loved ones; they all remind us constantly of what was lost and will never be found again. It feels like random occurrences happened just to remind, torture us of the pain. The narrator heard the raven say “nevermore” frequently and interpreted it differently until he settled on the belief that it was referring to Lenore. Perhaps the “raven” symbolizes how Poe must deal with the day to day realities of someone suffering a great loss.
In the poem the “Black Cat” the story is a symbol about Poe’s alcoholism and how you can feel like a completely different person, the more you drink the less and less the person who you truly are get pushed farther backed. This is where the doppelganger comes in; since Poe can't hold even a little bit of alcohol his another personality comes out which with every sip he loses control. The story appears to be about how within every person even the most gentle there is an instinct to destroy, to create chaos. The character cannot stop himself from hanging the cat, he cries as he does so, he can't resist feeling guilty. But as he lets go into this different person he begins to

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