FREE ESSAY ON THE GHASTLY WRITINGS OF 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 symbolism…as well as
the popular genres of detective and horror fiction (Stern xxxviii). However, as many of
Poe's 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. 
Poe's 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 Poe's tales, "the murderer and the
murdered merge their identities into one" (Myerson 287). "The Tell-Tale Heart" is one of
Poe's 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 Poe's
life, he makes a continuous decent into the Maelstrom: a slow, relentless, downward
spiral through the void which lay claim to him forty years into his life. In Poe's tales,
"you cross wasted lands…and 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 Poe's writings. Poe's characters, "…are not spectral
visions but the resuscitated dead who rise from the tomb to confront the living with
their…flesh" (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 Poe's mind. In "William 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). Poe's
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 writes of a man who yearns "for an
unattainable supernatural beauty" (Magill 2242). By beauty, Poe means something very
specific: "the pleasurable excitement of the soul as it reaches for a perfection beyond
this earth" (Magill 2242). The narrator of this melancholy poem losses a loved one,
"…the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—" (Poe 396). Then,
the narrator receives a visitor, "in there stepped a stately Raven…perched above my
chamber door—Perched, and sat, and nothing more" (Poe 396). This ebony bird, a
"…ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore," to some,
represents a great evil (Poe 397). To some, it represents a messenger from the narrators
long lost love.
In "Romance" Poe makes his point through imagery, not argument like so many other poets.
In "Romance" the contrast is not between poetry and science but between the ideal world
of the imagination and the painful world of everyday reality. In two stanzas, Poe shows a
"painted paroquet" of a young man's life. This paroquet, "hath been—a most familiar
bird—taught me my alphabet to say—to lisp my very earliest word—While
in the wild wood I did lie, a child—with a most knowing eye" (Poe 385). The
narrator only sees the reflection of this radiant bird in waters of "some shadowy lake"
(Poe 385). Since the bird can only be seen in the reflection, "Poe may be saying that
poetry cannot communicate truth directly, but only as it is comprehended…" (Magill
2243). In the second stanza, which contrasts directly to the first, Poe alludes to the
Andean vulture, noted for courage and ruthlessness (Bradley 741). The narrator has no
time—he must watch for the returning Condor. "Romance" becomes unmatched for the
way subtle changes in rhyme and iambic pentameter reinforce its emotional impact.
"Poe may be better known for his poems of longing for a lost love than for those on any
other subject" (Magill 2244). In "Ulalume" Poe most fully reveals this theme. In the
poem, it is autumn of an important year. The speaker "wanders with his soul through a
semireal, semi-imaginary landscape…" (Magill 2244). Poe, throughout the poem
becomes increasingly interested in emotional effect. When night advances on the land, two
bright figures appear in the sky, the moon and Venus. Venus rises to "lead the mourner to
a 'Lethean peace of the skies' " (Magill 2245). The speaker does not trust this goddess,
however, she coaxes him to "the end of a vista" (Poe 404). There the speaker stops at a
tomb. He finds Ulalume, the name of his love, chiseled into the door of the tomb. Then,
the speaker cries out, "…It was surely October, On this very night of last year,
That I journeyed down here…That I brought a dread burden down here—" (Poe
404). Through the speaker, Poe asks just one thing: 
"Ah, can it have been that the woodlandish ghouls…to bar up our way and to ban
it…from the secret…the thing that lies hidden in these wolds—Have drawn
up the spectre of a planet from the limbo of lunary souls—from the Hell of the
planetary souls" (404). The poem ends with a question not an answer.
Edgar Allen Poe, one of the greatest American writers, leaves to the world wonderful
works of literature. He writes tales and poems of ghastly creatures, long lost loves,
revenge, and death. Nearly all of his writings contain some macabre message, "William
Wilson", or sorrowful statement, "The Raven". In "William Wilson," Poe writes, " 'You
have conquered, and I yield. Yet henceforward art thou also dead—dead to the World,
to Heaven and to Hope! In me didst thou exist—and, in my death, see by this image,
which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself" (Poe 200). Critics say of
Poe, "during a short life of poverty, anxiety, and fantastic tragedy Poe establishes more
in literature than any other writer. Many consider Poe to be an extraordinary poet
although he is an insane man.
Bibliography
Bradley, Scully, Ed, et al. "Edgar Allen Poe." The American Tradition in Literature. 2
vols. New York: Norton, 1961. 1: 737-892
Magill, Frank N., Ed. "Edgar Allen Poe." Critical Survey of Poetry. 8 vols. Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Salem, 1982. 5: 2239-2248.
Myerson, Joel, Ed. "Edgar Allen Poe." Dictionary of Literary Biography. 201 vols.
Detroit: Gale, 1977. 3: 249-297.
Poe, Edgar Allen. The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writings by Edgar Allen Poe. New York:
Bantam, 1982.
Stern, Philip Van Doren. The Portable Poe. New York: Penguin, 1977.
Unger, Leonard, Ed. "Edgar Allen Poe." American Writers. 4 vols. New York: Scribner,
1972. 3: 409-432.