Romanticism in Most of Edgar

Romanticism

In most of Edgar Allan Poe's stories, it is easy to see his fascination with the workings of the mind. His protagonists are usually driven by an emotion, such as anger, jealousy or guilt, and it very rare when their behaviors are clear-cut and easy to decipher. Literary critic Tony Magistrale (122) suggests that perhaps, "It is even possible to argue that many of Poe's individual characters contain and dramatize all at once the contradictory impulses of the human psyche." In fact, scholars still debate the psychological makeup of the characters in the two short stories, "The Black Cat," and "The Masque of the Red Death." In the end, the readers are left with questions to which they must supply the answers.

What made the narrator in "The Black Cat" suddenly strike out at his once beloved animals and actually try to kill the black cat? More importantly, what made him kill his wife instead of the cat? Was this act just a mistake in a moment of heated passion? Or was it pre-meditated, where something inside of him desired her death all along? These are questions that literary scholars have long had about Poe's story, "The Black Cat."

An article by Joseph Stark suggests that that perhaps Poe purposely made the narrator's psychological makeup and eventual motive for murder vague, in order to leave it up to the interpretation of the reader. "In other words, by depicting a motiveless murderer whose actions cannot be sufficiently explained, Poe 'place [d] before the world... without comment' difficulties in both scientific and religious thought and ironically upheld the mysterious nature of the human will in a time dominated by intellectual rationalism" (255).

As a result, says Stark, "Numerous critics have taken this puzzle as an invitation to discern the narrator's motive, with a wide range of suggestions..." Frushell comments on "the narrator's degeneration by stages into the condition of grotesque perversity" (43).

As in a split-personality, two sides of the narrator are fighting it out. "... The true 'animal' in him (his 'underworld,' the senses, appetites, affections, the non-rational) acts in at least two-thirds of the tale as his conscience, which longs to vex the aspiring, prideful half." At the end, says Frushell, the truth wins out, and in an act of self-betrayal the narrator admits to what he has done.

In order to determine motive, Piacentino analyzes the narrator's behavior from a psychobiography viewpoint: He says it is important to discern what happened to the narrator as a child, which traumatized him so much that he became an alcoholic and eventually turned to murder. Piacentino's suggestion: The narrator was laughed at as a child because of his "tenderness of heart" (possible homosexual leanings) and thus he internalized the personal hurt he felt from this ridicule. As Piancentino states: "While many of the critics of 'The Black Cat' prefer to see this murder as premeditated, I interpret the act as the culmination of deep-seated and suppressed anxieties that are contained in how the narrator retrospectively presents his childhood. As the narrator grew older, he denied this personal fault, until in 'the culmination of deep-seated and suppressed anxieties,' he killed his wife. Piacentino argues: "When anxiety and frustration threaten a person's security and self-esteem, as in the case of Poe's narrator, such a combination of repression-displacement -- though probably not to the extreme the narrator carries it -- may be regarded as a predictable natural reaction."

Other suggestions for the narrator's actions include the his temporary insanity, schizophrenia and the ultimate depravity of mankind. Is any one of these the true motive? No one knows, for sure. Perhaps, even Poe did not know when he wrote the story. Maybe writing his tales was his way of looking at the different types of human motivation leading to intended or unintended results.

A similar lack of information about motive occurs in "The Masque of Red Death." At first, the psychological motive of Prospero seems quite understandable. He is a selfish man who cares only about his well-being and nothing about others who are dying from the red death. However, there are also literary scholars who say that this story is much more than what it appears to be. Poe may have meant something quite different about Prospero's actions.

Says Canada, for example, while literary scholars have analyzed all of these aspects of Poe's work, they have studied many more, as well. "Of particular interest is Poe's fascination with psychology. An outspoken admirer of phrenology, a pseudoscience based on the premise that various functions are controlled by specific regions of the brain, he tirelessly explored subjects such as self-destruction, madness."

Some critics argue instead that Poe's story had a religious motive, because Poe is often seen as a philosophical-religious writer who expounds on the conditions of salvation and psychological reconciliation to the will of God (Wagenknecht, 217; May 102). Prince Prospero attempts to escape death by retreating into his abbey, "an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste" (Poe 130). Once everyone is inside, the gates are welded shut to make sure there is no "ingress or egress," and the prince says that "the external world could take care of itself" (Poe 131). However, by shutting himself away from the plague, Prince Prospero, is also shutting himself away from his life as a whole and from God. The result, in this case, is death.

May (102-103) also questions whether or not Prince Prospero is mad and unable to discern real from unreal. For the masquerade ball, he paints a patterned unreality: "There were delirious faces such as the madman fashions. There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact a multitude of dreams" (Poe 132).

This madness and ability to step in and out of reality is perhaps a way that Poe's characters can relate to the insane world around them, over which they do not have control. How can a rational human being who sees life in a perfect cause-and-effect manner deal with a world where thousands of people are dying for no apparent reason and where nothing can be done to stop the death and decay? Perhaps insanity and madness is the only way to adapt.