Main Body
Edgar Allen Poe conveys a fatalistic view of the real world through his narrators, using the motif of dreams, in his poetry. In Dreams he accepts the fact that though they were in themselves pleasant, which can be shown from his exclamation in the first line “Oh! That my young life were a lasting dream!”, but that “cold reality” would never compare to them which made them a dangerous thing as they warp one’s perception of reality. Extensions to this point can be seen throughout his poetry and indeed this poem. That he thinks it is “folly still to hope for” the realization of dreams or as he thinks of it for a “higher heaven” then what is in a mundane world around us provides. He adds that in young boyhood it is normal to think your life is a “dream eternally continuing” and that it can even be counted as a good thing but that in a grown man it is ridiculous. In the last stanza Poe takes this idea further still suggesting that dreams can bring “to the delirious eye...paradise and love”, which means that only craziness or deliriousness could lead a grown up person to believe in dreams and in doing so the beautiful things in life, such as love, which don’t truly exist or are, at the very least, as evanescent as dreams. In A Dream, the first stanza refers to a “waking dream” that “left [him] broken-hearted”, which is to say that real life broke his heart where as in dreams only “joy departed” causing no permanent damage which seems to be in accord with Dreams in the statement that reality is just greater of two evils, though in the first poem dreams in themselves are good and in the second they are almost as bad as reality. However, A Dream also has its 3rd stanza devoted to the idea of a “holy dream”, which was like a “spirit guiding” him and cheering him on, unlike in life where people just laughed at him and did not take him seriously. With this he shows that people are much happier in dreams then they are awake.
Poe conveys very similar sentiments through his short stories and poetry. One device he uses to create the image of dreams and surrealism, using them to affect his story, is using an unknown first person speaker. The Fall of the House of Usher, for example, uses an unknown first person narrative by the protagonist that witnesses the fall. This is shown through the constant beginnings of phrases with “I” , which is maintained throughout even to the end, where “I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder” relating to the physical ghoulish collapse of the house as the inhabitants died as if the soul passed on with the bodies. This re-telling of a fantastical story by an unknown person who himself does not understand the entirety of what he saw holds a structure of a classic dream having the effect of changing the reading of the story into the retelling of a nightmare thus making it more frightening to the reader. This exact effect is repeated in The Pit and the Pendulum, where the protagonist is the only real solid character throughout the book and at the same time the least defined. Though it is a first person narrative by the protagonist, his name is not revealed and neither is the reason behind his imprisonment, although his saviors and condemners are both stated as the French army and the inquisition respectively. In his poetry Poe seems to use a similar method where the poem is narrated in the first person. Through all three poems this is followed through. In Dreams the speaker repeats the phrase “I have been happy” and in A Dream, similarly “I have dreamed”, where both examples use this misty speaker to emphasize the dream-like qualities of the poems as a finger cannot be put down on the name or sex of speaker just his emotions. This in turn creates an uneasiness in the reader as it underlines just how evanescent life is through the eyes of the narrator.
Attributing the qualities of human beings to non-living things is a technique Poe uses extensively in his poetry as well as in his short stories. This is due to the fact that giving stationary objects life adds to the fantastical nature of the situations he describes to create the image of a dream, which in turn emphasizes his main points in the poetry or story. The first dreamlike but unshakeable conviction of the protagonist in The Fall of The House of Usher, that the house and grounds are “insufferable” and “sorrowful”, is a prime example of just this technique. The image of a sorrowful mansion and grounds makes the story dreamlike and serves as a preliminary indication of the role of the house as the soul of the Usher family. The effect this has is to cause the first stirrings of fear within the reader. Later on in the story, the smaller non-living objects within the house take on living characteristics as well. The “phantasmagoric armorial trophies”, are seen by the protagonist as he walks down the hall to his friend’s room. Old armor in itself gives a vivid image of an old and spooky corridor but the use of an adjective like “phantasmagoric”, ironically, gives them life, as they are not suits of armor but now things that were once alive that have left their living essence in their dead forms. This again is used by Poe as a device that serves to create fear in the reader at the abnormality. In The Pit and the Pendulum, the protagonist feels that “the sudden extinction of life” was not in the “most horrible plan” of the pit and what it contains. This gives the surreal sensation that the pit is capable of cruel thought and is, in essence, alive. In addition, this “horrible plan” of the pit creates of the image of it, not only being sentient, but as having a distinct and cruel personality as it obviously wants to draw out the death of the protagonist and torture him. This use of surrealism, like in The Fall of The House of Usher, is used to terrify the reader as it emphasizes how madness overtook those imprisoned by the inquisition; a main point of the short story. The candles in the judgment room are also given faces, first of “white slender angels” of forgiveness and then transform into “meaningless specters”, another blurry, dream-like transition from one image to another which gives the idea of the protagonist hallucinating, or dreaming. This use of surreal imaging has the effect of letting the reader know how the protagonist’s emotions in the judging room transform from a hope that he may be found innocent and set free to the terror and hopelessness that he finds himself convicted and condemned to death. This image at the beginning of the story, has the effect of taking the reader straight into viewing the protagonist’s view of reality.
Poe also uses his poetry to convey dreams in the sense of their finite attributes and in doing so creates a sense of fear in the reader. In A Dream Within A Dream he associates dreams, as well as life, as un-graspable as “grains of golden sands”, showing a daunting lack of control that one has in dreams. He calls life, in all it’s wayward forms, “a dream within a dream” to describe the eerie sensation that life is not real but made up of evanescent feelings and images that themselves are part of something as fleeting. Poe uses dreams to show how people live once “hope has flown away”, that once it is gone they believe in nothing, a frightening concept as if there is nothing to believe there is nothing to live for. It is a foggy image that he explains using many metaphors through the poem such as the image of “a surf-tormented shore”, which, again, gives the picture of life as an unstable environment because the sea shore is never stable as the sands keep changing. In contrast to this, in Dreams he refers to them as “eternally continuing” in youth, so as to say that as a child dreams are not unstable but even more stable than life which hardly exists, another notion that is uncomfortable to think about. Despite this mention of childhood stability of dreams Poe also hastens to mention that as an adult the dreams were “as that night-wind-” and so highly unstable since the wind is unpredictable in the amount it blows, if at all. Also, for him his fleeting dreams only occur at night leaving the rest of his time in “cold reality”. He refers to dreams as “misty strife of semblance with reality” which shows that there are vague connections of dreams to one’s reality, although they were many times difficult to discern due to the vagueness as well as the fleetingness of the dream. In another twist, Poe adds that though the dreams may now be fleeting the “remembrance [of childhood joy] shall not pass” so that the ghost of infinity remains as a memory even as one is trapped in the true finite values of dreams and life. This is portrayed as one of the few perks of being alive, something worrying because one likes to regard that living in the present is much better than living in one’s childhood.
As can be seen from the last paragraph, Poe often used poetry as a contrast to or in conjunction with reality. These fluctuations between two states of being are a major theme in his works and generally serve to mirror the narrator’s image of reality. In A Dream he refers to life as “a waking dream”, which connects dreams as the same as reality for him. It appreciates the fact that dreams can have a strong an effect on how people live their reality, as well as that reality can be vague and tenuous. In the same vein he also says that reality is “a dream by day” for those who look in the past for today’s world. This holds a further opinion that the past is not reality but, like dreams, malleable and fluctuating. In Dreams Poe contrasts reality and dreams by wishing his life were an “everlasting dream” with connotations that dreams are good and reality is filled with sorrow but that is one of the only facts separating the two. The fact that he prefers a dream “of hopeless sorrow” to reality shows that sorrow in a dream passes, where as the burden of real pain and hurt stays permanently. The significance between dreams and reality can also signify the difference between a lie and the truth in the reality of the narrator. It says he has “been happy, tho’ in a dream”, which shows that living without the truth can make a man happier than living with it, although it was “folly” to think to live completely in a lie, it is the easier and more pleasant thing to do then face harsh truths. The Last comparison of this poem from dream to reality actually links the two when it mentions that dreams have “a semblance with reality” or that they actually resemble reality but with rose-tinted glasses, so to say. This means that dreams depict a sweeter, nicer and happier version of what is reality for the narrator. A Dream Within A Dream sends a completely different message to the two other poems. Here he states within the title what he believes reality is, “a dream within a dream”. This means that reality is dreamed and our dreams are just further imaginings in our faux reality, a rather frightening concept. He uses this image to explain that reality is not fixed but has a flowing changing quality to it that can “creep through [his] fingers”. Comparing real life to sand and waves also shows its instability and fluctuation further linking them to dreams which are known throughout to fluctuate and change. Another common concern he feels between the two concepts is that the “tighter clasp” you keep on either the more it will slip away from you. This underlines the narrator’s view that the harder you try to cling to reality the more it will fade away and a similar situation will occur in dreams.
Although his poems take dreams mostly in the literal sense of dreams, Poe’s highly acclaimed science fiction and horror looks at them much more in terms of delusions and madness even while containing the elements of surrealism frequently found in dreams or nightmares. The first sign of dream-like surrealism in The Fall of The House of Usher comes in the first two lines of quoted poetry “son coeur est un luth suspendu” by Béranger which translates to his heart is a suspended lute. This is a fantastical, and slightly alarming, image of a heart suspended in thin air with multiple strings in the centre ready to be plucked rather then the conventional lumps of muscle. This quote has the effect of setting the reader up for more unconventional comparisons further on in the story, and setting the chilling tone for the rest of it. The heart is evidently used by Poe to symbolize the house of Usher which is the heart of the family and a literal living thing that reverberates anything that happens to it’s owners. This in turn leads on to Poe’s most important use of dreams in the story, the image of the house as a living being. The house of Usher is first seen as such by the protagonist when he comes to visit and notices it’s “eye-like windows” and the very real sense of “unredeemed dreariness” emanating from the building itself, and which is later seen to be the primary emotion emanating from it’s owners. These effects serve throughout the story to create terror in the reader. Poe follows a similar style in his other horror short story known as The Pit and the Pendulum. The Latin Quatrain introducing the short story plays much the same role as the quoted poetry at the beginning of The Fall of the House of Usher. The words are used to describe the situation in which the protagonist is in and it’s words, as they are in Latin, do add a distant surreal touch to the story as it is not the common man’s language and so makes it indecipherable without a given translation to most people so connecting it to something vague and unreal like dreams. This has the effect of preparing the reader for the blurry nature of story as it reveals itself in glimpses and does not make complete sense until the end where the real situation is revealed. This withheld information adds to the horror of the situation considerably. The most important use of surrealism in this story by Poe are the images of the descending pendulum and the constant increase in the size of the pit. This, in addition to the shaky timeline by which the protagonist places himself is the core of his delusion and what essentially transforms this story into a horror until the final lines that snap back into the general reality of the situation that he is in: being held captive as a prisoner of the Spanish inquisition and then being rescued as the French “entered Toledo” victorious.
Another device used by Poe in his writing is echoes. This device can be prominently seen in his poetry, for example the constant repetition of the sentiment of past happiness in a dream in Dreams, but is also used extensively, albeit slightly less explicitly, in his short stories. An interesting echo is used in The Fall of the House of Usher in the moment of the waking of Usher’s sister. The echoes have a frightening effect as the way the descriptions given by the story of “Sir Launcelot” read aloud by Roderick Usher give way perfectly to the noises created by Madeline as she escapes from her tomb using the “superhuman energy” of the mad. The protagonist explains that “there came, indistinctly to my ears... the very cracking and ripping noise” previously described by Sir Launcelot in the book being read by Usher . Later this is used again a Madeline’s scream is an echo of metal being struck in the book. This surreal echo is used by Poe to create a sense of terror in the readers who do not yet know that Madeline was buried alive or that she is mad. In this story, the previous use of dream-like instances through the book make this climax even more terrifying, as the reader cannot place whether the story will stay dream-like causing the sister to return from the dead or even attributing the noises to the house responding to its master’s story. In turn, the surrealism makes the essentially more mundane and believable explanation, that the sister was trapped alive in the tomb and got out using the strength seen to be possessed by the mad, even more terrifying then it would have been if a setting of a real world had been used. In The Pit And The Pendulum, echoes are used to create a dreamlike situation in the sense of the constant fluctuations of the protagonist’s view of the reality of the walls of the room. At first he is exhausted and goes to sleep before he paces the room giving the sense of enormity. He then wakes up and finds he “had been greatly mistaken” and that the “walls did not exceed twenty-five yards”, meaning the circumference of the walls was shorter than he thought. In addition to this, there is an echo in the reassessment of the shape of the cell which he at first describes as angular and irregular and then changes his mind later and makes it a square. These constant fluctuations in the protagonist’s perceptions of what should be a stable structure adds an evanescent feeling to the foundation of the story making it dreamlike and having the further effect of terror on the reader as they are not sure what will happen to the protagonist nor whether he is hallucinating.
Conclusion
To conclude, it can be said that Edgar Allen Poe uses a cocktail of devices throughout his poetry and literature in order to use the concept of dreams to create an effect of fear and to mirror the narrator’s perception of reality. Poe uses a 1st person narration in both his short stories and his poetry, without giving an idea who the person is, nor making him omniscient. This creates a blurry, dreamy effect which, in turn, has the effect of creating a sense of fear. An example of this is the confused narration through The Pit and the Pendulum ends up emphasizing the torture that the prisoners of the Spanish inquisition were put through. His use of emotive diction in poetry is heavily relied on to extend the narrator’s perception of reality and dreams. This is shown extensively through his poetry such as in Dreams where he starts with an exclamation “Oh!”. Poe uses imagery, such as portraying the evanescence of dreams through the image of trying to clutch sand. It is shown that Poe uses dreams heavily as a contrast or as a comparison to reality to underline the narrator’s image of reality. This can be shown through the title of his poem A Dream Within A dream as here he feels that life is in reality nothing but a dream inside yet another dream. Poe’s short stories concentrate heavily on the concept of dreams as delusions, something referred to in his poetry as well, and how the surreal is used to create terror in his stories. Poe uses the personification of non-living objects to create a frightening dream-like scenario. This is illustrated by the vivid life brought to the house of Usher as well as the thoughts attributed to the pit in The Pit And The Pendulum. Finally he uses echoes extensively throughout his literature to bring out a sensation of fantasy which has the effect of producing a sense of horror in the reader, such as the terror inspired by the echoing to Madeline’s screams with the sounds in the story being read aloud in The Fall of The House of Usher.
Bibliography
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“The American Tradition in Literature, Third Edition, Volume 1”, Edited by Bradley, Beatty and Long, published by Grosset & Dunlap INC.
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“The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe: Marginalia. Eureka”, By Edgar Allen Poe, published by General Books LLC (8/08/2009)
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“Dreams”, “A Dream Within A Dream” and “A Dream” by Edgar Allen Poe, , opened 11/05/2009
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“Edgar Allen Poe And Other- Representative Short Stories Of The Nineteenth Century” , edited and introduced by Maurice Baudin Jr., published by Forum books
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“The Murders In The Rue Morgue And Other Stories”, Edgar Allen Poe, published by Könemann in 1995
Appendix
Poems used:
Dreams
Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!
My spirit not awakening, till the beam
Of an Eternity should bring the morrow.
Yes! tho' that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,
'Twere better than the cold reality
Of waking life, to him whose heart must be,
And hath been still, upon the lovely earth,
A chaos of deep passion, from his birth.
But should it be- that dream eternally
Continuing- as dreams have been to me
In my young boyhood- should it thus be given,
'Twere folly still to hope for higher Heaven.
For I have revell'd, when the sun was bright
I' the summer sky, in dreams of living light
And loveliness,- have left my very heart
In climes of my imagining, apart
From mine own home, with beings that have been
Of mine own thought- what more could I have seen?
'Twas once- and only once- and the wild hour
From my remembrance shall not pass- some power
Or spell had bound me- 'twas the chilly wind
Came o'er me in the night, and left behind
Its image on my spirit- or the moon
Shone on my slumbers in her lofty noon
Too coldly- or the stars- howe'er it was
That dream was as that night-wind- let it pass.
I have been happy, tho' in a dream.
I have been happy- and I love the theme:
Dreams! in their vivid coloring of life,
As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife
Of semblance with reality, which brings
To the delirious eye, more lovely things
Of Paradise and Love- and all our own!
Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.
Edgar Allan Poe
A Dream
In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed-
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.
Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?
That holy dream- that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.
What though that light, thro' storm and night,
So trembled from afar-
What could there be more purely bright
In Truth's day-star?
Edgar Allan Poe
A Dream Within A Dream
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
Edgar Allan Poe