The Ghastly Writings Of Poe Essays - Poetry By Edgar Allan Poe

The Ghastly Writings Of Poe Edgar Allen Poe makes tales of imagination and fantasies the irrefutable realms of fear. His tales and poems have influenced the literary schools of symbolismas well as the popular genres of detective and horror fiction (Stern xxxviii). However, as many of Poes tales and poems conjure terror and trepidation, they also penetrate the imagination with fantasy. Poe repeatedly attempts and succeeds at making his readers endure analogous feelings as those characters in his works. The most common realms Poe writes about are dreams, fantasies, the subconscious, and glimpses of the afterlife. These realms cannot be directly represented since individuals cannot directly comprehend them. Poe, acknowledged for his works involving the supernatural, masters tales involving a gothic atmosphere. Poes darker self troubles him, and in his tales of revenge and murder, his characters mirror the conflicts of his life. Poe has a grievance; he knows he possesses a fine intellect and extraordinary ability, although he never receives the rewards, which he feels entitled. Many of his colleagues say, there was a sadistic streak in him too, a malicious and wanton desire to hurt others for the perverse satisfaction it gave him (Stern 288). The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat deal with a murderer who commits a crime a successful crime and escapes the consequences. Then, the killer betrays himself and confesses through sheer perverseness. In some of Poes tales, the murderer and the murdered merge their identities into one (Myerson 287). The Tell-Tale Heart is one of Poes most compact and brilliantly executed tales. It does not carry the gothic trappings some of his tales use, causing this tale to read like a modern, tautly written psychological story (Stern 289). Poe favors death and terror over any other genre. Death remains Poe's favorite theme, his obsession; almost all of his tales and poems have variations of this theme. Poe inflicts death and the fear of the unknown on his audience. What lies beyond the grave or in the mind inspires Poe. Other than Poe, no American writer continuously deals on the subject, digs so deeply into it, and involves himself in the doings of death. Throughout Poes life, he makes a continuous decent into the Maelstr?m: a slow, relentless, downward spiral through the void which lay claim to him forty years into his life. In Poes tales, you cross wasted landsand you catch a sight of lugubrious feudal buildings suggestive of horrible and mysterious happenings (Unger 414). Usually, in his tales of terror and death, ghastly occurrences take place under the light of a blood-red moon. Fantasy, E.M. Forester has said, implies the supernatural, but need not express it (Stern 55). To many, the ultimate fantasy involves a ghost or some other apparition. Poe never writes a ghost story, oddly enough. A ghost, in the sense that we ordinarily think of one, never appears in Poes writings. Poes characters, are not spectral visions but the resuscitated dead who rise from the tomb to confront the living with theirflesh (Stern 55). Poe, nevertheless, creates characters that have no real existence. Poe has two main personalities: the hardworking editor, intellectual critic, the respectable citizen, and the disreputable fellow, who frequented low dives and who often wound up literally in the gutter (Stern 55). Poe makes present the outcome of the lifelong struggle between his two warring selves in William Wilson. In this story, William Wilson represents Poe. This tale tells the most about Poe and gives its audience the greatest insight into the workings of Poes mind. In Willia m Wilson Poe writes not a tale but a symbolic confession. Poe considers himself as a poet, although, he leaves only fifty poems to the world. Poe says of himself, with me poetry has not been a purpose but a passion (Stern 586). Poes poems concern his love, his inner-self, and above all death, the ending of things, and the melancholy associated with loss and bereavement (Stern 586). To some, Poe never achieves true fame, yet four years before his death, the life of his literary career climaxes. In 1845, The Raven appears in the Mirror, and in The Raven and Other Poems, his major volume of poems. In The Raven, Poe