Poe's ability to write literature was the window for him to express his feelings. All of Poe’s tragic losses affected the way he wrote. Poe used his life experiences to make his writing a lot more interesting. Poe’s writing is remarkably interesting. The poem “The Raven” showed how Poe erected a crazed state of mind, as the poem shows how the loss or a loved one drove a person crazy. This poem was possibly created for his wife that he had lost. While reading the poem it seems as if the stresses of the life of Poe, and his thoughts and feelings were all put into this poem.
Throughout Poe's life, many factors have contributed and influenced his writing style. He lived a difficult life, because he was raised in a dysfunctional household. But the final product of Poe's mind is printed in his short stories and poems. Poe's stories all have similar motifs and composition that would suggest suppressed emotions from life experiences are being discharged through his writings.
The most prominent feature of Poe's writing is his obsession with death. Poe's writing does more than entertain the reader. It can be an insight into the dark and somber world of Edgar Allan Poe. One does not understand the meaning of Poe if one reads at the superficial level. One has to read into Poe, and understand the hardships of his life and how he maintained them that way. He knew that death was an inevitable part of life, it is the price of life, but he tried to fight it as if it was an unnatural part of life. He was an extremely intriguing man from all viewpoints, and he was and is, the dark side of all of us.
It is difficult not to link Poe’s fictional stories with his real life. Evidence shows that Poe had a heart condition during his later years in life. Could “The Tell Tale Heart” be his own fear of the disease? Who knows? Could Poe have been expressing his fears that his alcoholic rages may cause him to hurt the one’s he loved most in his tale “The Black Cat”? Finally, was “the Pit and the Pendulum” an allegory of his life? Did he find himself caught “between the pendulum of financial adversity and the pit of degradation of death”? Poe made the reader feel as if the reader were there, in the story, struggling with the same terrors of the characters. All his famous mystery thriller works give the reader a sense of nervousness, a sense of fear, and a sense of evil, by making our five senses awaken by reading every word.
Critics say that Poe did not merely imitate the Gothic tales, but he also “enriched them by preserving a central action while adding philosophical speculations and lore that deepened the impressions of the tales”. As a result of the traumas he endured, Poe was “unafraid of taking his readers for a walk on the dark side, where lines between life and death were sometimes blurred”. His ability to tap into humankind’s deepest fears and his consistency in portraying such intriguing and captivating themes is what has kept the work of Poe timeless.
In short, Edgar Allan Poe has created many great stories for us. He liked to illustrate the dissolution of an individual's mind and body, as he had suffered it himself for quite a long time. He thought death is unavoidable, because he experienced keenly deaths all around him and its threat on his own life. He was obsessed by the loss of love of ideal women, for he had the same experience in life. Now, we can understand why Poe had a tendency of choosing such themes. Poe is an author of the inner world and his writings are his psychological autobiography to some extent. In this respect, Poe pioneered a new field in literature. He is the first one who focused on man's mental and spiritual activities, and his writings have deep influence on many of later writers.
WORKS CITED
Poe, Edgar Allan. Introductory Notes and Editor’s preface by Phillip van Doren Stern. In Selected Tales and Poems. The Viking Portal Library, Penguin Books, 1993.
Moore, R. “The Tell-Tale Heart: Discussion.” 2002.Online. Internet. 11 November 2002. Available WWW: http://www.allpoe.com
Murphy, Sally. “Poe’s Poetry.” 2002.Online. Internet. 12 November 2002. Available WWW: http://www.allpoe.com
Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe His Life and Legacy. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1992.
Peters, James. “Edgar Allan Poe.” April 1, 2002.http://www.island-of-freedom.com/POE.HTM
Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: A Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991.
Death of Edgar Allan Poe. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998
