The Battling Psyche

The Battling Psyche

The human psyche is a mysterious and unknown force that human beings have attempted to understand for centuries. It is understood that as human being we possess this psyche, however the nature of this psyche is not known and has thus been examined and hypothesized upon by many great minds. Literature in particular seeks the means to offer a theorized explanation of the workings of this mysterious psyche in a multitude of ways, from scientific writings, to poetry and fiction. Although these thoughts lie subtly embedded in the fictional stories, they often offer the best explanations. Two of the earliest and best known American writers that attempted to explain such a complex matter in their stories are Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allen Poe. Both of these authors use twisted fictional stories, such as “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “Young Goodman Brown” to try to explain the inner workings and struggles of the human psyche. These stories expose the psyche’s continuous battle between right and wrong, reality and illusion, and sanity and insanity, and look into things that affect these battles. Although Poe and Hawthorne’s writing differentiate vastly from one another, both of them expose the instability and frailty of the human psyche and the traumatic effect loneliness has on breaking the psyche.

Edgar Allen Poe’s works primarily center on death and the effect death has on one’s mental sanity. Poe uses death and fear to create horrific stories that entice his audience, but underneath all this he examines and displays the inner workings of the mind. “He [Poe] worked hard at structuring his tales of aristocratic madmen, self-tormented murderers, neurasthenic necrophiliacs, and other deviant types