Mysterious Style of Edgar Allan Poe Essay Example
Mysterious Style of Edgar Allan Poe Essay Example

Mysterious Style of Edgar Allan Poe Essay Example

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  • Pages: 4 (907 words)
  • Published: May 5, 2022
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All throughout history, literature has a major impact on the lives of many people through authors who wrote mostly about politics or romance: however, Edgar Allan Poe took a major turn with his writing style. His writing was very dark and disturbing. His writing is a reflection of his childhood since Poe suffered multiple tragedies. Poe’s state of mind of being on the brink of madness transpired into his attempts to self-medicate himself with his writings. His emotions from his real life can be seen in his poetry with how he makes them dark, depressing, and full of death.

Poe uses a specific style of writing, which includes darkness that can be interpreted as a consequence from his personal life, the tragedies that he encountered shaped his life experience and is projected in his poetry “After experiencing the

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trauma of their mother's death, the children were further traumatized when they were separated and sent to live with different families” (Sova). The loss of someone he cared about, along with being separated from the other important people in his life gave him the experience of a traumatic loss that influences his poetry. Poe further into his life had an obsession with death and being buried alive, which is another way that his poems are similar to his life, almost all of his literary works mention death at least once.

Firstly, later in Poe’s life, he wrote: “The Raven” which is one of Poe’s most well-known poems. This poem recognizes the trauma of him losing a loved one and because of this, the poem feels heavily with darkness, grief, and remorse. These characteristics of the “The Raven” are displaye

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immense in the theme and can also be found in many of Poe’s other works. In “The Raven” the narrator is minding his business one night until there is a disturbance in the quiet evening, a tapping sound that pulls him from his thoughts of his Lenore.

In the poem, Lenore was the love of his love who passed away and with him writing about this it resembles how his mother and wife both passed away. The significance is that in both Poe’s real life and in the poem, he and the narrator both mourned from suffering such unfortunate events, “The narrator's melancholy breeds contradiction: he tries to suppress the memory of the 'lost Lenore' by retrieving 'forgotten lore'; he vows that she will be 'nameless here for evermore' (Kennedy). From hearing the tapping he ponders and questions who could be making that sound which pulls him to go investigate. He soon finds that there is indeed nothing out there, feeling confused and scared he gathers up the courage and whispers Lenore. He ventures back inside only to have the tapping repeated again, but this time the narrator spots a raven in the darkness, who only repeats the word, “Nevermore”.

Secondly, Poe was a fan of using metaphors in his literary works, and in “The Raven” the metaphor that can be recognized is that the raven itself is a reminder of those who have died but instead of the bird also leaving him it will not leave but it will stay forever with him causing him agony for the rest of his days. Some would say that the pain of everything and experiencing such agony made Poe

go crazy and deeper into madness and using metaphors was a way for him to hide hidden meanings and messages in his poems allowing an out from his crazy life. In his poems he also used imagery never in a light way, he uses the imagery in a dark and depressed way while also using adjectives that give his poems a deeper effect, “What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird or meant in croaking nevermore” (Poe 932). This represents the way that Poe had with words and describing such moments that captured the true feelings that he had experienced going through such things first hand.

Lastly, Annabel Lee is another example of a poem that mentions the death of someone Poe loved, it mentions a woman who name is Annabel Lee that has passed on and the writer is remembering the woman that he loved. She lived in a kingdom by the sea and the narrator remembers back to when they were both children in love that was so powerful the angels were jealous “The angels, not half so people say that Annabel Lee could be based on Poe’s mother, wife, or even adoptive mother who all passed away, but the way the poem talks about his bride, “And so all the night-tide, I lie down by the side of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride” (Poe 931) gives off the impression that this is more likely about how Poe lost his wife in his actual life.

Clearly, Edgar Allan Poe had a difficult upbringing and struggled through his life with being left alone and having difficulties with staying happy. Poe endured

a life of pain and used that pain to write poems that have changed the literary world, he was different from other poets because of his unique style of writing while using darkness in a gothic style that was considered unusual. He used his emotions and experiences from his real life to create wonders when it came to his imagery and metaphors engulfing his true feelings of sadness and depression.

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