Edgar Allan Poe: life, works, and literary legacy

Terror in the Life of Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston on 19 January 19 in 1809. Poe's mother died when he was still an infant and Poe found himself separated from his brother and sister when he went to live with John and Frances Allan. Allan was "as strict and unemotional as his wife was overindulgent" (Carlson), according to Eric Carlson E.F. Bleilel writes Poe's "early life was conditioned by his quarrels with Allan, and instead of being heir to one of the wealthiest men in America, he eventually found himself a penniless, half-trained intellectual with no means of livelihood" (Bleilel 697). Husband and wife travelled abroad while Poe was educated in private academies, where he excelled in "Latin, in writing verse, and declamation" (Carlson). Poe entered the University of Virginia in 1826, where he "excelled in Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian" (Carlson). Allan withdrew Poe from the university when he failed to pay his debts. Poe moved to Baltimore in 1827, later moved to Boston, where he enlisted in the United States Army. Poe served in the U.S. Military for two years. Poe made a "scanty living as a free-lance writer, journalist, and editor" (Bleilel 697). Poe's talent was not recognized and it is worth mentioning that he experienced "severe personality problems" (697), including "fits of depression, from which alcohol relieved him, and gradually became an alcoholic" (697). Poe was affected by his drinking and was an "impossible person" (697), that lost "job after job and opportunity after opportunity" (697). We may see these elements of failure but the troubling circumstances helped Poe create fantastic stories. Jack Sullivan writes that Poe used the body as a "conduit to the soul" (Sullivan 325), which explains so many of Poe's tragic characters. Sullivan writes, "the mutilation, the decay, the body's subordination to death were, to Poe, the world" (325). We see examples of this in "The Masque of the Red Death," "The Tell-tale Heart," and "The Cask of Amontillado."

We find inspiration anywhere. Tony Magstreale believes that life gives us most of the inspriation we will ever need to create art. He thinks Poe "understood that untainted by dream or drug, the world we normally inhabit is a decidedly unpoetic one" (Magstreale 261). Poe certainly had tragic moments in his life that would make for interesting fiction. Poe's foster mother and wife died from tuberculosis and their deathswere "prolonged and particularly gruesome; their graphic images of death and dying probably would have been enough to animate a lifetime of night mares for anyone. For Poe, they would translate into obsessive components of his work" (263). Poe knew all about pain, fear, and loneliness at an early age. That his characters are "troubled and highly motivated by subjective demons" (263) is no surprise. Poe's past experiences and his "Romantic predilection is further evinced by the manner in which his art was shaped by the distressing events of his personal life" (263), says Magstreale. Poe "not only created art from the essence of his own personal suffering but also came to define himself through this suffering" (263). This is a sorrowful assessment but we can certainly see how Magstreale comes to this conclusion. Terror was not fiction in Poe's world; it was real and it pushed the pen on the paper. Poe took on what some artists might shy away from and that is death. Many of his characters die tragic and gruesome deaths but they are deaths we remember. An example of the power of death is in "The Masque of the Red Death." This tale is unique in that no one manages to escape the grip of death. This is oddly much like the individuals in Poe's life. Nothing could save them from their fate. Humanity's helplessness is demonstrated with Prospero's "strong and lofty wall" (Poe the Masque of the Red Death 614). Nothing could stop death. Poe describes death with detail, telling us his "vesture is dabbled in blood -- and his braod brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror" (Poe 617). This character reveals itself to those in the castle slowly, as they begin to murmur and then become surprised of "terror, of horror, and of disgust" (616). Death moves "slow and solemn" and "stalked to and fro among the waltzers" (617). All of this happening while the "Time that flies" (615)is ever present in the back of our minds. Death and how it takes people by surprise when they least expect it is conniving and dreadful.