Egar allen poe
"The boundaries which divide Life and Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where one ends, and where the other begins?" Edgar Allan Poe, The Premature Burial (Bartlett, 642). To venture into the world of Edgar Allan Poe is to embark on a journey to a land filled with perversities of the mind, soul, and body. The joyless existence carved out by his writings is one of lost love, mental anguish, and the premature withering of his subjects. Poe wrote in a style that characterized the sufferings he endured throughout in his pitiful life. From the death of his parents while he was still a child, to the repeated frailty of his love life, to the neuroses of his later years, his life was a ceaseless continuum of one mind-warping tragedy after another. From the very dawning of his existence, Edgar Allan Poe lived a life of hardship; a quality which was reflected in his writings. Poe was born the son of a pair of traveling actors. His father, David, was at best a mediocre a!ctor who soon deserted his wife and son. His mother Elizabeth, on the contrary, was a charming woman and talented actress. His life, no doubt, would have been much different were it not for the fact that she died of tuberculosis in 1811 when Poe was not qu
s truly terrified in his heart, or if he was merely a mystifier who wrote what he felt the public wanted to read. Poe's attitude towards his writings is much more complex than is commonly realized. He never allows himself to be fully taken in by his vivid imagination. The frantic insanity is always accompanied by a certain amount of reason. The fear invoked is oftentimes tinged with skepticism - but his skepticism is also tinged with fear. However, for all the skepticism and exaggeration, fear always prevails. ite three. This event scarred him for life, for he would always remember "his mother vomiting blood and being carried away from him forever by sinister men dressed in black." (Asselineau, 409). After the traumatic passing of his parents, Poe was placed into the custody of John and Frances Allan - hence his middle name. The childless couple reared him as their own son, even though they would never officially adopt him. He never got along with his foster father, but grew alarmingly close to his foster mother in a classic "Oedipal" relationship. Poe was shuttled off to live and attend school in England. He never fit in with his classmates, but he fell in love with the young mother of one of his friends, Mrs. Jane Stanard, the me! Allen, Henry. Poe, Edgar Allan. Dictionary of American Biography VIII. Ed. Dumas Malone. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1963: 19-28. Asselineau, Roger. "Edgar Allan Poe." American Writers Vol. III. Ed. Leonard Unger. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1974: 409-432. Bartlett, John. Famous Quotations Fourteenth Edition. Ed. Emily Morison Beck. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1968: 641-644. Bleiler, E.F. "Edgar Allan Poe." Supernatural Fiction Writers: Fantasy and Horror Vol. II. Ed. E.F. Bleiler. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1985: 697-705. Poe Reference, The Definitive. http://www.gothic.net/poe/ Woodbury, George E. Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Chelsea House. 1980. mory of whom inspired his poem, "To Helen." When this relationship proved to be implausible, he turned to someone his own age, Sarah Elmira Royster (Asselineau, 410). This relationship too was doomed, as her parents did not approve of his lack of social standing. The tale of his scholastic tenure is one of repeated expulsions, gambling debts, and, eventualy, drinking. This is not to say that Poe was a poor student. The exact opposite is the case. Poe was almost always near the top of his class no matter what institution he was currently enrolled in. His problem was that he either became bored or allowed debts from both drinking and gambling to pile up until he was forced to pay or leave. He repeatedly made attempts to coerce his foster father into honoring his debts with no success. The end result was that Poe never got settled into one specific institution, with but one exception, the military. There was only one thing (other than writing) at which Poe seemed to excel while h! e was of school age. In 1827 he enlisted in the army at Boston under the pseudonym of Edgar A. Perry. He was stationed at Sullivan's Island in Charleston Harbor, which he would describe as the setting of his story "The Gold Bug." He rose in rank rather quickly for a man of his age and experience, attaining the rank of regimental sergeant major, the highest noncommissioned rank for an officer in the army. He soon grew tired of the daily routine of army life and sought admittance to West Point, which he gained through the assistance of his foster father. "During this period of nearly perfect social adaptation he must have cherished thoughts of an entirely different kind." (Asselineau, 410). He began writing tales in the morbid and grotesque style which we know him for today. He produced his first compendium, Tamerlane and Other Poems which, sadly, went virtually unnoticed by the literary world. Though a failure, he did not allow his first experience in publishing to discourage h! structive romantic artist and the self-control of the conscious a
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Approximate Word count = 3262
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page double spaced)
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