Edgar Allan Poe - Tales of Mystery and Imagination
[Everyman]
A
Brief Life of Edgar Allan Poe [Poe's house is now part of the national estate
in the US. This site is by the National Park Service there]
Some Questions to Begin Thinking About
Can you think of similarities between stories
as you read?
- Which stories appeal most to you? Why?
- What kind of 'society' is Poe describing?
- What does Poe seem like, from the kind of stories he writes; what
are his VIEWPOINTS? What does he VALUE?
- These stories are often described as 'gothic'; what does this mean?
Are they?
Poe's Language
One good way to discover the language is to look in
detail at one story and how it works. Fran wrote this when she did an oral presentation on
Poe's 'The Tell Tale Heart'
The Tell-Tale Heart - Notes by Fran
The Tell-Tale Heart is inclusive of many MANY features that are Tell-Tale of Poe's writing
style. The following is a list of these attributes and <where they can be found>:
* Punctuation: that is very descriptive of the tone it portrays. For example, the first
few sentences at the very start of the story are littered with exclamation marks, and
short spurted lines. Dashes, commas, question marks,italics, and repetition of words; all
encourage the reader to become anxious about the story to follow, and nervous just as the
story-teller is. <all through-out, in particular the first paragraph, and paragraph
16>
True! - nervous - very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am, but why will you say
that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses - not destroyed - not dulled
them.
* Time: Midnight, the dead of the night. Poe has chosen his beloved Witching
Hour in which to have the crux of the story occur. This contributes to the Gothic nature
of the tale, not to mention the horror of it. He utilises the darkness, and the silence.
Every night, about midnight, Every night, just at twelve, His room was as black as pitch
with the thick darkness, Dark as midnight .
And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, .
* The EYE: Surely a favourite object of Poe's that plays an important part in this story,
as with many others. The main character cannot explain his freakishly obsessive distaste
for the old man, except with the OCULUS that haunts him for absolutely no reason. Why, is
part of the mystery. is the fact that there is only one eye - one eye that haunts him
anyway. Perhaps the man only has one, perhaps only one is a glass one, as mutated as it is
described, or perhaps the narrator is discriminating against that one because he/she
is crazy, which is pretty obvious from the rest of the story anyway, so is not so
unlikely. <Paragraphs 2, 3 and 10>
Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged
me. He had never given me an insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye!
Yes, it was this!
* The HEART: Another object of Poe's affection, as it is present in most of his tales and
poems, even if only in a passing reference or simile. Adds suspense, works as background
horror music. A beating heart is a good choice, for not only is it an eerie sound, but it
indicates tension, a climax to come, and perhaps even hints at an end to that heart beat
in the pages to follow: death, murder. <paragraphs 9, 10, 16, and the final, crazy,
exclamation>
It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder ever instant.
"It is the beating of his hideous heart!"
* Verbosity: In descriptions, and every paragraph in
general. A characteristic of Poe that is prominent in this story, and indeed the vast
majority of his work. He relishes in big, impressive words, and strings of pedantic
sentences. At times, this can be seen to be exaggerated in length to create the mood of
the scene. Poe draws his reader into the atmosphere of his Witching Hour, describing every
sound and sight so that in turn, we can. Thus, creating a
build up and tension for the awaited climax. <Paragraphs 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.>
* Buried Alive?!: The notion of being buried alive is present in this short story,
alike to many others. Perhaps a fear of Poe's, and probably anyone's? However, it is
described as a foolish and troublesome phobia in that the narrator was crazy to have
believed the man was still alive (and crazy in general), and he was caught as a result of
the weakening to his conscience that had convinced him of such a silly idea.
* Apathetic description of grotesque acts: Poe has no trouble describing hideous acts such
as murder and decapitation with an apathy and moderate tone that is a bit troubling. While
pieces of a corpse and bloody limbs under floorboards are not highlighted with long,
verbose paragraphs, an eyeball and a beating heart are. Horror has quite obviously
changed. <Paragraphs 11 and
12>
First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs.
* Eccentric character: Obviously the narrator is crazy. Firstly, he passionate feelings of
hate for an eye?? Then he goes as far as to torment and kill an innocent and harmless old
man that he loves simply to rid the house of an eye?? He dismembers the corpse without a
second thought, and marvels at his clever act of catching the blood spilt in a bath?? He
watched him every night,
with ridiculous caution and care?? He is overly kind to the policemen, inviting them to
sit on the grave of the old man he has just killed because he is that confident that he
won't be caught, or that crazy (I think the latter!)?? He hear the dead man's heart and is
sure the officers can too and are laughing at his misery?? He turns himself in, rather
than listen to the imaginary beating of the heart for another few seconds??
[Thanks Fran; any typos are mine!]
The Black Cat - Notes by Rhianon
The Poeish characteristics of
this Gothic-tale:
# Story written in the first-person.
# Based on regular, 'ordinary' daily events
"My immediate purpose is to place before the world plainly, succinctly, and
without comment, a series of mere household events." - demonstrated in many other
stories - "The Spectacles", "The Oblong Box".
# Writes after the event, as he
usually does: "...grew with my growth, and, in my manhood, I derived from it one
of my principle sources of pleasures" - "I am detailing a chain of facts, and
wish to leave not even a possible link imperfect".
# Ask questions of humanity, and queries
the status and goodness of mankind. Refers to each member of society as a 'mere man'.
Questions our true nature: "Have we not a perpetual inclination...to violate that
which is law, merely because we understand it to be such?.. to offer violence to its own
nature - to do wrong for wrong's sake only?" In his questions, is he exposing his
accurate awareness of the nature of mankind, or is he trying to understand it even
further?
# The tale has a supernatural, mythical
undertone -"...all black cats are witches in disguise". Throughout the
story, it is suggested that the cat is responsible for his changing self: "I grew,
day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others."
These statements hint at the supernatural - pedestrian of the gothic genre.
# Uses language that is confronting,
startling, at times even disturbing: "violence", "neglected",
"ill-used", "maltreated", "ill-tempered".
# Adds to the effect of his explicit detail
of the atrocities divulged upon the 'black cat' - "...deliberately cut one of its
eyes from the socket!", "...I withdrew my arm from her grasp, and buried the axe
in her brain". Tries to scare the audience by graphically detailing such horror.
# Doesn't bring great emotion into his
stories. When his house burns down, simply says, "My entire worldly wealth was
swallowed up, and I resigned myself thence-forth to despair." Has an easy, lunt,
even at times detached manner of describing horrible events: "...having carefully
deposited the body against the inner wall, I propped it in that position..." - "I
had, at length, firmly resolved to put it to death."
# To convince the reader even further of the
bizarre and supernatural nature of this "chain of facts", tries to
logically explain events: "...which I attributed to its having been recently
spread" - "The falling of other walls had compressed the victim of my
cruelty into the substance of the freshly - spread plaster; the lime of which, with the
flames and the ammonia from the carcass, had then accomplished the portraiture as I saw
it". However, he contrasts such logic with words like - "wonder",
"apparition", "amazement", to make us aware of the unexplained
nature of the tale.
# Hints at destiny/fate: "...for
another pet of the same species, and of somewhat similar appearance, with which to supply
it's place. One night...my attention was suddenly drawn to some black object...".
Does Poe believe in destiny? Adds to the supernatural slant of the tale.
# The replacement cat is described as
phantom-like, mythical, appearing from nowhere: "..but this person made no claim
to it - knew nothing of it - had never seen it before". Even the splotch of white
covering the animals throat had changed over the years: "...this mark, although
large, had been originally veryindefinite; ...it was now, I say, the image of a
hideous...gallows". This cat, similar to the original that he killed, "...had
been deprived of one of its eyes". And also seemed to love him, as Pluto had, "...its
partiality for myself seemed to increase". These similarities are unusual,
unexplainable, hence add to the 'gothic' nature of the tale.
# The man's growing detest of the new-cat,
as had happened earlier: "by slow degrees, these feelings of disgust and annoyance
rose into the bitterness of hatred" - suggests Poe believes that a human is
unable to change his character - once evil, always evil.
# Close of the story has a twist -
unexpected. Typical of gothic genre - his decaying wife walled-up with the mythical cat.
Again, explicit: "The corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore".
"...one long, loud, and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman - a howl - a
wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of
hell, conjointly from the throats of the dammed in their agony...". Horrific
explanation - Poeish. Links the cat's discovery with the earlier referrals to it having a
single eye, and being involved in the fire: "solitary eye of fire" -
suggests that the cat is indeed responsible for the tiresome events of this man, now "consigned
to the hangman", unfortunate life.
Poe's Themes
One critic wrote:
'The major themes of Poe's work were pride, beauty,
love-and their conqueror-death. Poe is the originator of the American Gothic horror tale,
mystery, and science fiction. The gripping susoense and horror of Poe's style is found in
his greatest stories; "The Cask of Armontillado", "The Fall of the House of
Usher", "The Masque of the Red Death", and "The Pit and the
Pendulum" catapult the reader inro a horrible nightmare. "The Tell-Tale Heart is
the centerpiece of macabre literature. This supernatural tale is eerily gothic; it tells
the story of a man cursed by his own conscience after he murders his elderly employer and
buries the body beneath the floorboards. The man, at first delighted by his crime
gradually becomes horrified and is betrayed by his own madness'
Another very resource for Poe's themes is POE's Motifs, a two page summary
of the kind of symbols that we see recurring in many of his stories including the eye, the
heart, Poe's use of unnamed narrators, premature burials, vortex, dreams and nightmares,
mirrors, twins, duality, hours of the day and clocks, jesters, animals and supernatural
beauty.
Poe Internet Links
The Poe Decoder
They say: 'The Poe Decoder is a project started by a small
group of Poe enthusiasts to make criticism and information on Poe and his ork available on
the Internet. The growing collection of essays in the Poe Decoder is written by qualified
people with a great interest in Edgar Allan Poe. We want to provide you with accurate
facts on one of the greatest American writers ever, and once and for all put an end to all
the lies and rumors that surround his person.' It contains plenty of material including essays like this on the Fall of the
House of Usher
Annotated Hypertext version of the Fall of the House of Usher Quite a
good way to read the text, with all the difficult concepts hyperlinked.
Edgar
Allen Poe - Blood drips from the eerie title!
Poe's House of
Usher - The music alone is scarey enough! I've included it here. Don't be spooked!
Discussion
Questions on the House of Usher
Poe's Home
- A National Historic Site in the USA
The Unofficial Poe Site -
More scarey music, and eyes that follow you around!
A Poe
Cybertour - A guide to some of the best Poe sites on the net.
