Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

The literary style of Edgar Allan Poe is very dark and has many supernatural connotations. He showed this style in the stories that he wrote such as: The Raven, The Black Cat, and The Tell-Tale Heart. He also wrote many other stories that showed his dark style of writing; however I felt that these stories portrayed his style the best. Many sources think that the reason Poe had such a dark literary style was because of the events that occurred in his life. Some of these events included his father dying, and soon after that his mother died. Many more loved ones deaths preceded. This put Poe into a state of mind that made him very depressed and some believe that this is where he got his inspiration for his writing.

In The Raven, Poe starts off the story with “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary.”(Complete 7) This shows how he sets up the setting for the story. This sentence makes you think of a dark lonely night. This is a good example of how Poe’s literary style is dark. Poe also wrote “Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, and each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow;---vainly I had sought to borrow from books surcease of sorrow---sorrow for the lost Lenore---for the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore---nameless here for evermore” (Complete 7). This is a dark poem of lost love. Whether he was referring to his mother, father or perhaps another loved one is unknown. In the fourth stanza Poe speaks of “Darkness there, and nothing more”(Complete 8) which allows us to see how alone he must have felt. Later in the story he refers to a bird that is sitting above his chamber door. He talks to the bird and gets frustrated with it because all it will ever say to him is “Nevermore.” You can tell that the narrator is dying to have some kind of social interaction with someone or something but not even the bird will give it to him. He tries to get the bird to leave him alone, but all that the bird does is sit there and continue to say “Nevermore” (Complete 10). This frustrates him and he says “Leave my loneliness unbroken! ---quit the bust above the door! Take thy beak out of my heart, and take thy form from off my door! Quoth the Raven, Nevermore.”(Complete 13) He wants to feel sorry for himself and he is sick of the bird repeating to him “Nevermore” which reminds him of the lost love of Lenore (Complete).

In The Black Cat Poe tells about his love for his animals, especially a black cat named Pluto. His wife refers to the cat as a witch in disguise. This shows the darkness that Poe had for every living thing. He loved this cat in the beginning and then he ended up killing the cat. He just became more moody, more irritable, and cared less and less about the feelings of others. He started to neglect all of his animals, even Pluto. His problem was that he was an alcoholic and he eventually turned on Pluto and cut his eye out of his socket. Poe then stated, “ The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fiber of my frame.”(DiYanni 132) This introduces the supernatural writing that Poe did. This was another aspect of Poe’s dark writing style (pambytes 2). His supernatural writing usually referred to witchcraft and devil worship (eapoe 1). Poe continued the story with even more hatred for the cat. Eventually he ended up killing the cat by hanging it from a tree. In the story Poe explains it very vividly “One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree;---hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart;---hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offense;---hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin---a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it---if such a thing were possible---even beyond the