Biography of Edgar Allan Poe

The fact that Poe chose to write unaccompanied about death, ruling out other prevalent themes of the period, demonstr consumes more than an indifferent decision to write on a public subject. The darkness of Poe's stories, whether conscious or non, reflect the bitterness and paranoia that ate away at his own soul.

Many of Poe's works warmness around a protagonist on the brink of insanity. In "The Pit and the Pendulum" the region in the story is torment into nuzzle insanity with the constant threat of annihilation. "I was gag - sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me." The narrator, a captive of the Spanish Inquisition, continues the tale with his confused memory of the trial, the sentence, and his descent into darkness. aberration befalls the man as he realizes the various tortures awaiting him, and the futility of escape. For, each term he thinks he has outwitted his executioners, he finds a worse death awaiting him. Poe is refuting man's assumption that he can predict and understand to the highest degree every event that occurs in his bearing. As Poe's own life has shown, life is not characterized by an orderly sequence of events that ar easily understood, but by total disunity and incoherence. Since man

Similarly, the death of the old man in "The Tell-Tale Heart" does not alleviate the narrator's paranoia, it merely serves to intensify it. The salutary of the dead man's beating heart reverberates in the murderer's ears until he is tortured into admitting to the heinous crime. The narrator of this story, like that of "The ominous Cat" is dictated by a death wish. The characters suffer from an inner make out that can only be eliminated with death. Only through death can they bring an end to the unavoidable chaos of life.

"The Black Cat" is pointedly addressed to the theme of perversity. The evildoer commits power simply for the sake of violence. In another scene as the protagonist goes to kill the white project - a metempsychosis of the black cat, he unabashedly kills his wife who stands in his way.

The character is driven by a need to do evil, however, he also wants to be punished and he wants to suffer. He frankincense subconsciously buries the white cat alive when he buries his wife. The cat then becomes his undoing as its subhuman cries alert the police. It is not the cat who betrays him, however, but his own conscience. "No other god but the self as god can turn such vengeance as when the criminal is his own mark and executioner."

Davidson, Edward H. Poe A Critical Study. Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 1957.

The antagonist's death, which is indirectly related to his quest for alcohol, may represent Poe's punishment of himself for his own dipsomania. Montresor gives his victim several attempts to transmit the crypt. "Come, we will go back; your health is precious. You are rich, respected, admired, erotic love; you are happy, as once I was." Fortunato refuses to take heed, however, and insists on continuing through the vaults in search of the wine. Poe's own beverage bouts brought him nothing but misery. Although he tried many a time to abstain from alcohol, his attempts proved futile. The sadistic killing of Fortunato so symbolizes Poe's killing of his
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