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Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most celebrated authors in American history, cited as being the first author to not take any other work besides writing - of course, that did not mean that he was successful or wealthy. His first book was received poorly and was a commercial failure. Before his death in 1849, however, he had become a common name in poetry, fiction, and literary analysis. Poe had a troubled life, being orphaned at a young age when his father abandoned him and his mother died of tuberculosis. And while his foster family treated him well as a child, their relationship did not last into adulthood, when Poe's inability to support himself and unwillingness to find other work resulted in his foster father cutting their ties. He lived in poverty for many years with his young and sickly wife, surrounded by suffering and death - naturally, this shaped his writing, but not in a negative way. In A Psycho-Analytical Study of Edgar Allan Poe, the author notes, "In his poems and in his short stories he consistently narrowed his attempts to the one field in which he was preeminent, the depicting of beauty and horror" (Pruette 375). It is most certainly true that this was Poe's area of expertise, but listing them as two separate ideas is somewhat misleading; what was truly distinct about the works of Edgar Allan Poe was his ability to depict horror as beautiful. While many of the other major poets and authors of the time had embraced transcendentalism, Poe's life did not lead to writing about nature and the goodness in humanity - his aesthetic was for shadows, death, crime, and guilt. He did not, however, treat these as ominous or ugly, but rather as elegant and interesting. Poe is regarded as a Gothic poet, but the unifying theme in his works is not just Gothic elements; it is his presentation of themes of horror as positive traits and experiences. This is evident across most of his works, and is a reflection of his life experiences and ideals. He shows dark animals as beautiful and mysterious; illness and death as graceful and spiritual; crime and guilt as dramatic and exciting. It may seem that Poe has traces of uplifting, positive messages in his writing, but the case is actually the opposite: he uses positive messages about strange ans terrible things, which only makes his tone darker.
Poe's aesthetic preferences are abundantly clear in his most famous poem, "The Raven." In culture, the raven is seen as a bad sign that brings with it messages of death. Ultimately, it fulfills this role in the poem, and is called a "fiend" and "thing of evil" - but it is not only that. Poe describes its entrance as follows: "Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, / In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore" ("Raven"). The first descriptor of this Raven is of a bird that flirts and flutters - both of these words imply gracefulness, not vulgarity. It descends as if it were a butterfly, or even an angel - only it is a Raven. It is next called stately, which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as "befitting or indicating high rank; princely, noble, majestic" (OED). It seems that the narrator knows exactly what to expect upon meeting a raven, but he welcomes it as graceful and majestic. In this way, Poe takes a typically negative element and depicts it as a positive thing. Although the raven's behavior is not always pleasant, the narrator does not drive it away, and asks it questions - in this way, Poe glorifies being open-minded about things that seem dark and evil, and about death and its permanence. Being curious about and inspired by something as clearly cursed as the phantasmic raven, though, only enhances the darkness of the overall tone of "The Raven." Flowery descriptions and speculations about the nature of life are commonly seen in poems that have much happier tones, but do not have that effect here.
Of course, "The Raven" is not the only instance of Poe taking a dark animal with a negative presence and ascribing it positive qualities. His short story called "The Black Cat" takes the aforementioned animal commonly associated with bad luck - in his own words, some superstitions even "regarded all black cats as witches in disguise" (Poe, "Black Cat") - and presents it as a sort of hero. At the very start, the narrator describes the cat as beautiful, and says that he is especially fond of that cat above all other animals. The first impression given of this cat is nothing but positive, despite immediately being associated with witches and Pluto, the Roman god of the underworld. Through the story, the narrator mistreats the black cat, stabbing an eye out and ultimately hanging and killing him. When the cat later returns to haunt him - or at least, he believes that it does, in the form of another similar cat - he is terrified, but seems to revel in the experience of terror: "I am almost ashamed to own -- that the terror and horror with which the animal inspired me" (Poe, "Black Cat"). There are plenty of ways to say that he became afraid without the use of positive expressions like "inspired." But Poe deliberately chose inspiration as the image to associate with horror and terror; he himself had been inspired to write by those same ideas. Again, things like "inspiration" seem much more at home in poems about the joy and beauty of life, but in "The Black Cat," this is not the case. The feelings the narrating voice had about his experiences were dark and terrifying; using words with a positive connotation to describe them only makes them feel darker and more depraved.
Additionally, illness and death tend to not be something viewed favorably - certainly not by someone like Poe, who had suffered tragedy after tragedy because of tuberculosis. Yet, he attributes nothing but positive qualities to the dying, and often even to the dead. Longing and loneliness are not uncommon themes among Gothic and romantic authors, but what is striking about Poe's depictions is that traits that are a result of illness and death - such as pale skin and frail figures - are among the primary charms of his female characters. Poe's Ligeia especially is described as follows: "In stature she was tall, somewhat slender, and, in her latter days, even emaciated. I would in vain attempt to portray the majesty, the quiet ease, of her demeanor, or the incomprehensible lightness and elasticity of her footfall. She came and departed as a shadow" ("Ligeia"). This is how she is described before her death, and yet she has almost ghost-like qualities. The use of the word "shadow" is especially telling. But this tall, emaciated, light-footed woman with "skin rivalling the purest ivory" is not a figure of horror; the narrator sees her as the most beautiful, precious thing in the world. In other stories this sort of character would surely be a ghost, haunting the narrator, not a loving wife. But her dark, death-like features are never a negative, they are always a part of her grace and her femininity. This particular story was published in 1838, long prior to his wife's death, so the inspiration for Ligeia's charm was unlikely to have come from Virginia and her illness. One writer's analysis reveals: "His mother was to him an idealization of feminine charms, about as tangible as the vanished fragrance of unseen flowers" (Pruette 378). This perfectly explains why Poe idolizes the concept of the dying woman. The intangibility, the ghost-like qualities, come from his mother, who was to him effectively a ghost.
Similar themes exist in the famous "Annabel Lee," though Poe gives much less description about her physical condition. Her beauty is emphasized repeatedly, as well as the strength of the love between the narrator and the title character. What he depicts as positive element in this case is the mourning of her death, with such lines as, "For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams / Of the beautiful Annabel Lee" (Poe, "Annabel Lee"). Mourning is typically a melancholy, painful experience - not one that involved beaming and dreaming. The dissonance of the elegant language almost disguises the fact that the narrator is implied to give up his life in despair so that he can stay together with his bride. Interestingly, the poem was not actually published until after the death of Poe himself; he wrote it in 1849 and it did not actually reach print until 1850. A letter that he wrote in 1848 tells us exactly what he was feeling in the wake of Virgninia's death, saying, "Her life was despaired of. I took leave of her forever & underwent all the agonies of her death. She recovered partially and I again hoped. At the end of a year the vessel broke again — I went through precisely the same scene" (Poe, Letter). Knowing that he had effectively watched his young wife die over and over again, the feeling of loss would have weighed heavily on him for quite a lot longer than it should have. Certainly, it must have been agony - but it was an agony that the author thrived off of. So much of his writing was inspired by the intimate understanding he had of loss.
Along the topic of horror, Poe was also a writer of crime drama. There is a reason that the Mystery Writers of America call their highest honor the "Edgar Award" - Edgar Allan Poe is often credited as the father of modern detective fiction. What separates him from stories like Sherlock Holmes, though, is that his narrators are the murderers, not the murdered. More interestingly, the character's presentation if very ambiguous; it is possible to hope for their success or for their downfall, depending on the reader. To revisit "The Black Cat," the principal character accidentally kills his wife while trying to get the cat out of his way. Rather than claiming it as an accident, he desperately hides her body by removing a portion of his cellar wall, stuffing the corpse behind it, and then replacing the wall. It is never a mystery whether or not he gets away with the crime; he makes mention of writing from a jail cell early on in the story. It is also never a mystery how he committed the crime, as the story is told from his perspective, and the murder is detailed as it occurs. The suspense all comes from how he is going to be caught and end up in that jail cell, despite the fact that "The wall did not present the slightest appearance of having been disturbed. The rubbish on the floor was picked up with the minutest care" (Poe, "Black Cat"). There is no detective for the reader to root for; only the narrator. And while he is not necessarily a sympathetic character, the beginning of the story does not depict him as evil, only strange and reclusive. He talks about disliking people but having a fondness for animals and that his wife felt the same way, which is why they got on well. He is only truly depicted as human: lonely, angry, and scared. But after the incident, when he thinks he has safely committed the crime, he no longer displays these emotions, but rather becomes empty and emotionless. Towards the end, he says things like, "The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little" and "I felt no embarrassment whatever" (Poe, "Black Cat"). Poe has a very keen interest in humanity, and this lack of remorse is almost inhuman; this is why it is so interesting and horrific. The dissonance in this particular story arises because the inhuman murderer is the same character whose voice has been telling the story, and whose life the reader can see into. The tone of this story may have been dark when dealing with hanged cats and house fires, but it truly becomes haunting when the narrator, whom the reader may have been subconsciously supporting, reveals his complete lack of remorse.
The classic story “The Tell-Tale Heart” deals with a murder and the murderer’s capture, but in a very different way. This narrator is seen as much more deranged from the very beginning, offering no definitive reason for why he must commit murder, and being clearly paranoid, watching the man with the eye in complete darkness every night for a week. His actions are much harder to understand, in contrast with a man who seems stable but antisocial and did not premeditate his murder. And yet this narrator is famously plagued by intense guilt, so much that he admits to his crime to quiet his conscience. One critic notes, "I find it almost impossible to believe that Poe has no serious artistic motive in ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ that he merely revels in horror and only inadvertently illuminates the depths of the human soul" (Gargano). This highlights the idea that while the story is aesthetically dark, dealing with murder and paranoia, it is much more about the darkness of human psychology, and the terrors that people inflict upon themselves. This narrator shows that he is truly a human by experiencing the horror that is guilt and self-loathing - emotions that Poe himself was familiar with and fascinated by.
The works of Edgar Allan Poe are still highly regarded to this day and generate a great deal of discussion not just because of the themes they present, but because of the way they are presented. His poems and short stories are known for their dark, Gothic tones, despite Poe’s frequent use of positive language, positive emotions, and sympathetic, human portrayals of dark characters. His life and experiences are reflected in his works also, which makes it all the more fascinating that such traditionally positive messages might be present in stories relating to his personal traumas - this shows us his talent as an author, that he was not afraid to delve into dark things like shadows, criminals, and his own loss. Ultimately, this dissonance makes his works that much more disturbing, but also show a passion for writing unique, fascinating works of literature.
Pruette, Lorine. "A Psycho-Analytical Study of Edgar Allan Poe." The American Journal of Psychology 31.4 (1920): 370-402. JSTOR. Web. 14 Dec. 2015.
Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. New York: John Hopkins UP, 1998. Print.
Freedman, William. "Poe's 'Raven': The Word That Is an Answer 'Nevermore.'." Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism: History Theory, Interpretation 31.1 (1998): 23-31. Rpt. in Poetry Criticism. Ed. Timothy J. Sisler. Vol. 54. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 Dec. 2015.
"stately, adj." OED Online. 2012. Oxford University Press. 16 December 2015.
Poe, Edgar Allan. Letter to George Eveleth. 4 January, 1848. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Ed. Quinn, Arthur Hobson. New York: John Hopkins UP, 1998. Print.
Gargano, James W. "The Question of Poe's Narrators." College English 25.3 (Dec. 1963): 177-181. Rpt. in Short Stories for Students. Ed. Kathleen Wilson and Marie Lazzari. Vol. 4. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 Dec. 2015.
Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Raven." Poe Stories. 1845. Web. 16 December 2015.
Poe, Edgar Allan. "Annabel Lee." Poe Stories. 1849. Web. 16 December 2015.
Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Black Cat." Poe Stories. 1845. Web. 15 December 2015.
Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Tell-Tale Heart." Poe Stories. 1850. Web. 19 December 2015.
Poe, Edgar Allan. "Ligeia." Poe Stories. 1838. Web. 14 December 2015.