Edgar Allan Poe: He Who Needed A Punching Bag
Jacob Wargotz
Mrs. Newell
Honors English 11
4/15/2014
Edgar Allan Poe: He Who Needed a Punching Bag The writer and poet, Edgar Allan Poe, was not as creepy as his stories portray him to be. He was just full of teenage angst and anger, even in his older years. It would be likely that if he were alive today, he would have weekly sessions with a psychologist, but he did not live in this era. However his stories did act as an emotional outlet in which many of his stories can be attributed to some emotionally taxing part of his life. A subject that he often wrote about was murderous intent fueled with affection. He tended to write about two conflicting personalities within a person. The eeriest of his stories were usually about insanity out of …show more content…
obsession. The name, Edgar Allan Poe, brings to mind images of spiders, ravens, corpses, and any item that one would associate with a horror movie. His writings, in addition, attest to the spooky stigma that surrounds his name. However, despite these eerie impressions of him, Poe did not spend his childhood in a household similar to the Addams Family. During his adulthood the aspiring author experienced the hardships of a struggling writer. Poe’s life was not as dark as the pseudo-horrors he wrote about, but he was no stranger to emotional suffering or alcoholism. Despite his dark style of writing, Poe did not have a terrible childhood.
He was born on January 18, 1809 in Boston Massachusetts. His parents, David and Elizabeth Poe, were actors. Aside from Edgar, David and Elizabeth had two other children, William Henry Leonard Poe and Rosalie Poe (“Poe’s Life: Who is Edgar Allan Poe?”). Unfortunately for the Poe siblings their mother died when Edgar was two and his father followed soon after. Subsequently, the orphaned Poes were separated. Their grandparents took in William, his sister was adopted, and a rich merchant from Richmond, by the name of John Allan, adopted Edgar. Allan raised young Poe with the intentions of having him carry on his tobacco company. At the direction of his foster father, Poe was sent to England, where he learned math, Latin, French, and history for five years (“Biography of Edgar Allan Poe”). However, despite his extensive studies to become a businessman, Poe aspired to be a writer and was always writing. At the age of seventeen he left home and went to study at University of Virginia in 1826 (“Poe’s Life: Who is Edgar Allan …show more content…
Poe?”). It is during his time at university that Poe encountered financial difficulties.
While John Allan had large wealth, he gave less than what Poe needed to attend University of Virginia. Poe began gambling in order to pay for college. Through this he accumulated a large sum of debt (“Biography of Edgar Allan Poe”). Later on, upon returning to Richmond, the young impoverished writer discovered that his fiancée, Elmira Royster, had become engaged to another man. With his series of unfortunate events, Poe and Allan’s relationship faltered and Poe left his home to pursue writing and adventure. His thirst for adventure led him to join the Army and apply to West Point in 1827. In 1830 the rebellious writer enrolled in West, but after Allan refused to send money, Poe was dismissed from the academy Point (“Poe’s Life: Who is Edgar Allan Poe?”). By 1831 Poe was living in New York City where he submitted his stories to magazines, but they were rejected. In 1834 John Allan died without a mentioning of Poe in his will. Fortunately for Poe, he was able to become the editor of a newspaper, called the Southern Literary Messenger, after winning a writing contest. He was able to make the paper more successful, but left in 1836 due to a low salary. In 1838 Poe moved to Philadelphia where his first short story book, Tales of Grotesque and Arabesque, was published in 1839. Unfortunately, Poe received only the copyright for his book, a few copies of his book, and no money. From 1840 to 1845 Poe
jumped from magazine to magazine, even starting his own (“Biography of Edgar Allan Poe”). Edgar Allan Poe died at the age of forty on October 7, 1849 for reasons that are as unknown and mysterious as his stories. Just days before his death, Poe had been on a train to Philadelphia, but disappeared for five days after the train stopped in Baltimore. He was discovered in a bar room and was rushed to Washington College Hospital as his consciousness slipped in and out (“Poe’s Life: Who is Edgar Allan Poe?”). His death was as mysterious as his stories.
Poe’s short stories often contain characters where their affection towards their victims fuels their urge to murder. In “The Black Cat” the cat’s affection and caring for the narrator only motivates the narrator to kill the cat. The speaker in “The Tell-Tale Heart” likes the old man who he kills, but cannot stand the cataract eye of his victim. The polite and friendly façade that Montresor, from “The Cask of Amontillado,” enrages him even more to kill Fortunado.
The affection Pluto, the cat, shows towards the stories narrator from “The Black Cat” adds to his determination to kill the cat. The speaker of this story is a person who is fond of animals and very affectionate towards them, but as years go by he becomes more and more temperamental, to the point of animal abuse. Pluto is always at his side following him everywhere, but this only leads to more aggression. The narrator continues to abuse and attack his pets. He eventually becomes enraged by Pluto and mutilates him. Not long after, he proceeds to hang the cat claiming that it was “…because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence…” (Poe 65) The narrator has no reason for why he did such a deed. It just an urge he felt because the cat cared about him.
The narrator of the story, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” kills an old man who he has no genuine ill will towards. He only despises the old man’s cataract eye. The narrator at the very beginning claims, “I loved the old man. He had never done me wrong,” (Poe 121). However, even though he states that he did not have any reason to hate the old man, at the mention of his cataract eye, all the feelings the narrator holds towards the man turn to hate. He is so focused upon the eye that even his so called “love” for his victim, turns to murderous intent. His obsession with the eye binds any emotion he has for the old man into utter hate. “…I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye for ever,” (Poe 121) confirms the narrator decision to abandon all kindness towards the old man and to let loose nothing but malice.
The protagonist of “The Cask of Amontillado,” Montresor’s façade of courtesy and kindness is controlled by his lethal intentions towards Fortunado. Fortunado wronged Montresor, in some manor that is not explained. Thus Montresor plots his revenge against him. The protagonist retains a friendly relationship with his victim, all to lure the drunken Fortunado into a trap. Montresor promises a rare wine to him and bids him to come and receive it. The two travel into Montresor’s wine cellar, which is also his ancestries’ tombs. From these caverns Montresor often exhibits kindness towards Fortunado, appearing to be worried about his victims health, and suggesting that they should leave. This kindness only makes Fortunado more determined to taste the wine which Montresor promised. When the two feel the chilliness of the cavern, the two men share a bottle of Medoc. Montresor toasts to Fortunado, “And I to your long life,” (Poe 193) a phrase that all though seeming to be kind, is truly ironic and a malignant remark. The two wine-lovers carry on through the cellar. By the end Montresor buries Fortunado, completely unaware of the trap until it is too late, in a wall. Poe’s works do not confront worldly issues; they focus on the inner-self. His stories often reflect the human psyche and the conflicting emotions and personalities within a person. The story, “William Wilson,” follows the life of a despot boy who try’s to subdue his second personality that embodies rebellion. The poems “Lenore” and “The Raven” share the same subject: seeing the dead Lenore again, a person who is thought to be Poe’s wife. The two poems focus upon the same matter yet contrast each other so much, as if there were two different Poes, each with their own perception of Lenore’s death. The protagonist, William Wilson, the story, “William Wilson,” is in conflict with his second personality, which takes the form of another William Wilson, identical in every way and form. The only difference between the two personalities is a rebellious trait within the second William Wilson. The original Wilson attempts to control any and all people who surround him, but the second Wilson always inhibits these attempts. He refuses to be subjugated. It is from the time of their meeting that the two began to wage war against each other. For the real Wilson “…felt angry with him for bearing the name, and doubly disgusted with the name because a stranger bore it…” (Poe 161). The armaments of choice for the first Wilson are practical jokes. However, his dubious double utilizes the very object which he claims “…were venom in my ears...” (Poe 161), his name. The real Wilson, in an effort to escape his double, transfers from school to school, but never escapes his personified second personality. This double consistently proves to be a barricade to the real Wilson’s plans. He prevents Wilson’s use of gambling to swindle people, and causes many other disturbances, often by appearing, time and time again, before the first Wilson, uttering nothing more than their name. From then on Wilson plays a metaphorical game of tag with his duplicate, fleeing from one place to the next, until a conclusion is finally reached in Rome. During a party Wilson encounters his counterpart, and, in a private room, murders him. However, he soon finds himself to be the one stabbed with a mirror in front of him; by murdering his double, which is only a second personality imagined into reality, he secures his own death. The poems, “Lenore” and “The Raven,” represent two of Poe’s conflicting views on the deceased. In “Lenore” Guy De Vere, the deceased’s lover, believes that he will see Lenore in Heaven. Despite her death, he remains hopeful with faith that they will meet again in the afterlife. The lines, “‘From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven-/From grief and groan, to a golden throne, beside the King of Heaven,’” (25-26) express Vere’s certainty that Lenore will be waiting for him in Heaven with God. Guy De Vere represents Poe in mourning of Lenore, a person rumored to have been his wife. In this poem he takes on a more positive disposition, comforting himself with the thought of seeing the deceased after death. It is quite the contrary when it concerns “The Raven.” In “The Raven” a raven that confirms to the speaker that he will never again see Lenore, even in death, visits. The bird utters only one word over and over “Nevermore” (49). When the speaker requests to “‘Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, /It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore-,” (93-94) the raven only responds with its singular word “…Nevermore,” (96). This conveys to the speaker that he shall never again see Lenore, not even in death. The speaker in “The Raven” is like a depressed and fearing Poe who does not hold any hope for meeting Lenore after death.
Although his works made him appear insane, the real lunatics were Poe’s characters. Most of the characters from his darker stories are obsessed with something or become obsessed. Their obsessions drive them into complete madness, left with nothing but an extreme focus and fixation on the object they so obsessed over. The protagonist in “The Tell-Tale Heart” goes mad over his obsession with the cataract-inflicted eye of an old man. His obsession with his pet cat, Pluto, brings the narrator of “The Black Cat” to insanity.
The narrator of the story, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” is consumed by insanity due to his obsession with the cataract of an old man’s eye. He obsesses over the eye, claiming that it “…resembles that of a vulture-a pale blue eye, with a film over it,” (Poe 121). This obsession leads him to see the eye as an “Evil Eye” (Poe 121), one that had made the narrator’s “blood ran cold” (Poe 121). However, his madness does not end with the death of the old man; it only plunges him deeper into the depths of insanity. In the moments that the narrator murders the old man, he hears the beating of his heart, which he mistakes, out of lunacy, to be that of his victims. Even after the old man was slaughtered “…the heart beat on with a muffled sound,” (Poe 123), and through his disturbing madness the narrator continues to believe that the sound is that of his victim’s heart. His insanity causes him to hallucinate that the sound of the beating heart “…grew louder-louder-louder…” (Poe 124). This delirium brings the narrator to the height of his madness; he scrapes his chair against the ground and does all manors of actions so as to drown out the sound of the unreal beating heart.
The speaker in “The Black Cat,” is driven mad by his obsession with his cat, Pluto. After several years of living with Pluto, the narrator becomes more and more temperamental. During one night, in his drunkenness, he mutilates one of Pluto’s eyes. It is from that point onwards that the seed of insanity begin to sprout within the narrator. Later on, he hangs the cat with no other reason aside from the fact that it exists. He felt the need “-to offer violence to its own nature-to do wrong for wrong’s sake only-” (Poe 65). A few months after this event, the speaker begins to regret his inexplicable murder, and, coincidentally, another cat identical to Pluto, save for a white spot on its chest, appeared before the speaker. However, the speaker begins to feel incomprehensible hate towards the new cat. He begins to hallucinate, and comes to the belief that the cat’s white patch of fur “…was now the representation of an object the I shudder to name-…-of the GALLOWS! -...” (Poe 67). One day, fully consumed by his insanity, he attempts to decapitate the cat, but instead he slays his wife when she attempts to stop his dark deed. Without a doubt the speaker has become obsessed with the cat that resembles Pluto to the point of killing his own wife.
Edgar Allan Poe was a writer whose stories were an outlet for him to release his pent up aggression towards his adoptive father, John Allan. In many of the stories similar to “The Black Cat,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” or “The Tell-Tale Heart;” the protagonist represents Poe and Allan is Fortunado/Pluto/the old man. Poe cannot help, but have some affection towards his adoptive father, but it is because they should be sharing a familial bond that Poe is angry as well. “William Wilson” represents Poe’s difficult choices in life. His choice of becoming a writer or to be the heir to Allan’s company. The contrasting poems, “Lenore” and “The Raven” symbolize Poe’s two perception of Lenore’s death. Edgar Allan Poe’s stories are essentially all of his emotions Poe-tically written out.
Works Cited
Poe, Edgar. “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, INC. 1966. 121-124. Print.
Poe, Edgar. “The Black Cat.” Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, INC. 1966. 63-70. Print.
Poe, Edgar. “William Wilson Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, INC. 1966. 156-170. Print.
Poe, Edgar. “Lenore.” Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, INC. 1966. 746-747. Print.
Poe, Edgar. “The Raven.” Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, INC. 1966. 754-756 Print.
Poe, Edgar. “The Cask of Amontillado.” Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, INC. 1966. 191-196. Print. “Biography of Edgar Allan Poe.” PoeStories.com. 2005. Web. 11 January. 2014. www.poestories.com/biography.php. Web.
“Poe’s Life: Who is Edgar Allan Poe?” Edgar Allan Poe Museum. 2013. Web. 11 January. 2014. www.poemuseum.org/life.php. Web.
Mrs. Newell
Honors English 11
4/15/2014
Edgar Allan Poe: He Who Needed a Punching Bag The writer and poet, Edgar Allan Poe, was not as creepy as his stories portray him to be. He was just full of teenage angst and anger, even in his older years. It would be likely that if he were alive today, he would have weekly sessions with a psychologist, but he did not live in this era. However his stories did act as an emotional outlet in which many of his stories can be attributed to some emotionally taxing part of his life. A subject that he often wrote about was murderous intent fueled with affection. He tended to write about two conflicting personalities within a person. The eeriest of his stories were usually about insanity out of …show more content…
obsession. The name, Edgar Allan Poe, brings to mind images of spiders, ravens, corpses, and any item that one would associate with a horror movie. His writings, in addition, attest to the spooky stigma that surrounds his name. However, despite these eerie impressions of him, Poe did not spend his childhood in a household similar to the Addams Family. During his adulthood the aspiring author experienced the hardships of a struggling writer. Poe’s life was not as dark as the pseudo-horrors he wrote about, but he was no stranger to emotional suffering or alcoholism. Despite his dark style of writing, Poe did not have a terrible childhood.
He was born on January 18, 1809 in Boston Massachusetts. His parents, David and Elizabeth Poe, were actors. Aside from Edgar, David and Elizabeth had two other children, William Henry Leonard Poe and Rosalie Poe (“Poe’s Life: Who is Edgar Allan Poe?”). Unfortunately for the Poe siblings their mother died when Edgar was two and his father followed soon after. Subsequently, the orphaned Poes were separated. Their grandparents took in William, his sister was adopted, and a rich merchant from Richmond, by the name of John Allan, adopted Edgar. Allan raised young Poe with the intentions of having him carry on his tobacco company. At the direction of his foster father, Poe was sent to England, where he learned math, Latin, French, and history for five years (“Biography of Edgar Allan Poe”). However, despite his extensive studies to become a businessman, Poe aspired to be a writer and was always writing. At the age of seventeen he left home and went to study at University of Virginia in 1826 (“Poe’s Life: Who is Edgar Allan …show more content…
Poe?”). It is during his time at university that Poe encountered financial difficulties.
While John Allan had large wealth, he gave less than what Poe needed to attend University of Virginia. Poe began gambling in order to pay for college. Through this he accumulated a large sum of debt (“Biography of Edgar Allan Poe”). Later on, upon returning to Richmond, the young impoverished writer discovered that his fiancée, Elmira Royster, had become engaged to another man. With his series of unfortunate events, Poe and Allan’s relationship faltered and Poe left his home to pursue writing and adventure. His thirst for adventure led him to join the Army and apply to West Point in 1827. In 1830 the rebellious writer enrolled in West, but after Allan refused to send money, Poe was dismissed from the academy Point (“Poe’s Life: Who is Edgar Allan Poe?”). By 1831 Poe was living in New York City where he submitted his stories to magazines, but they were rejected. In 1834 John Allan died without a mentioning of Poe in his will. Fortunately for Poe, he was able to become the editor of a newspaper, called the Southern Literary Messenger, after winning a writing contest. He was able to make the paper more successful, but left in 1836 due to a low salary. In 1838 Poe moved to Philadelphia where his first short story book, Tales of Grotesque and Arabesque, was published in 1839. Unfortunately, Poe received only the copyright for his book, a few copies of his book, and no money. From 1840 to 1845 Poe
jumped from magazine to magazine, even starting his own (“Biography of Edgar Allan Poe”). Edgar Allan Poe died at the age of forty on October 7, 1849 for reasons that are as unknown and mysterious as his stories. Just days before his death, Poe had been on a train to Philadelphia, but disappeared for five days after the train stopped in Baltimore. He was discovered in a bar room and was rushed to Washington College Hospital as his consciousness slipped in and out (“Poe’s Life: Who is Edgar Allan Poe?”). His death was as mysterious as his stories.
Poe’s short stories often contain characters where their affection towards their victims fuels their urge to murder. In “The Black Cat” the cat’s affection and caring for the narrator only motivates the narrator to kill the cat. The speaker in “The Tell-Tale Heart” likes the old man who he kills, but cannot stand the cataract eye of his victim. The polite and friendly façade that Montresor, from “The Cask of Amontillado,” enrages him even more to kill Fortunado.
The affection Pluto, the cat, shows towards the stories narrator from “The Black Cat” adds to his determination to kill the cat. The speaker of this story is a person who is fond of animals and very affectionate towards them, but as years go by he becomes more and more temperamental, to the point of animal abuse. Pluto is always at his side following him everywhere, but this only leads to more aggression. The narrator continues to abuse and attack his pets. He eventually becomes enraged by Pluto and mutilates him. Not long after, he proceeds to hang the cat claiming that it was “…because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence…” (Poe 65) The narrator has no reason for why he did such a deed. It just an urge he felt because the cat cared about him.
The narrator of the story, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” kills an old man who he has no genuine ill will towards. He only despises the old man’s cataract eye. The narrator at the very beginning claims, “I loved the old man. He had never done me wrong,” (Poe 121). However, even though he states that he did not have any reason to hate the old man, at the mention of his cataract eye, all the feelings the narrator holds towards the man turn to hate. He is so focused upon the eye that even his so called “love” for his victim, turns to murderous intent. His obsession with the eye binds any emotion he has for the old man into utter hate. “…I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye for ever,” (Poe 121) confirms the narrator decision to abandon all kindness towards the old man and to let loose nothing but malice.
The protagonist of “The Cask of Amontillado,” Montresor’s façade of courtesy and kindness is controlled by his lethal intentions towards Fortunado. Fortunado wronged Montresor, in some manor that is not explained. Thus Montresor plots his revenge against him. The protagonist retains a friendly relationship with his victim, all to lure the drunken Fortunado into a trap. Montresor promises a rare wine to him and bids him to come and receive it. The two travel into Montresor’s wine cellar, which is also his ancestries’ tombs. From these caverns Montresor often exhibits kindness towards Fortunado, appearing to be worried about his victims health, and suggesting that they should leave. This kindness only makes Fortunado more determined to taste the wine which Montresor promised. When the two feel the chilliness of the cavern, the two men share a bottle of Medoc. Montresor toasts to Fortunado, “And I to your long life,” (Poe 193) a phrase that all though seeming to be kind, is truly ironic and a malignant remark. The two wine-lovers carry on through the cellar. By the end Montresor buries Fortunado, completely unaware of the trap until it is too late, in a wall. Poe’s works do not confront worldly issues; they focus on the inner-self. His stories often reflect the human psyche and the conflicting emotions and personalities within a person. The story, “William Wilson,” follows the life of a despot boy who try’s to subdue his second personality that embodies rebellion. The poems “Lenore” and “The Raven” share the same subject: seeing the dead Lenore again, a person who is thought to be Poe’s wife. The two poems focus upon the same matter yet contrast each other so much, as if there were two different Poes, each with their own perception of Lenore’s death. The protagonist, William Wilson, the story, “William Wilson,” is in conflict with his second personality, which takes the form of another William Wilson, identical in every way and form. The only difference between the two personalities is a rebellious trait within the second William Wilson. The original Wilson attempts to control any and all people who surround him, but the second Wilson always inhibits these attempts. He refuses to be subjugated. It is from the time of their meeting that the two began to wage war against each other. For the real Wilson “…felt angry with him for bearing the name, and doubly disgusted with the name because a stranger bore it…” (Poe 161). The armaments of choice for the first Wilson are practical jokes. However, his dubious double utilizes the very object which he claims “…were venom in my ears...” (Poe 161), his name. The real Wilson, in an effort to escape his double, transfers from school to school, but never escapes his personified second personality. This double consistently proves to be a barricade to the real Wilson’s plans. He prevents Wilson’s use of gambling to swindle people, and causes many other disturbances, often by appearing, time and time again, before the first Wilson, uttering nothing more than their name. From then on Wilson plays a metaphorical game of tag with his duplicate, fleeing from one place to the next, until a conclusion is finally reached in Rome. During a party Wilson encounters his counterpart, and, in a private room, murders him. However, he soon finds himself to be the one stabbed with a mirror in front of him; by murdering his double, which is only a second personality imagined into reality, he secures his own death. The poems, “Lenore” and “The Raven,” represent two of Poe’s conflicting views on the deceased. In “Lenore” Guy De Vere, the deceased’s lover, believes that he will see Lenore in Heaven. Despite her death, he remains hopeful with faith that they will meet again in the afterlife. The lines, “‘From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven-/From grief and groan, to a golden throne, beside the King of Heaven,’” (25-26) express Vere’s certainty that Lenore will be waiting for him in Heaven with God. Guy De Vere represents Poe in mourning of Lenore, a person rumored to have been his wife. In this poem he takes on a more positive disposition, comforting himself with the thought of seeing the deceased after death. It is quite the contrary when it concerns “The Raven.” In “The Raven” a raven that confirms to the speaker that he will never again see Lenore, even in death, visits. The bird utters only one word over and over “Nevermore” (49). When the speaker requests to “‘Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, /It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore-,” (93-94) the raven only responds with its singular word “…Nevermore,” (96). This conveys to the speaker that he shall never again see Lenore, not even in death. The speaker in “The Raven” is like a depressed and fearing Poe who does not hold any hope for meeting Lenore after death.
Although his works made him appear insane, the real lunatics were Poe’s characters. Most of the characters from his darker stories are obsessed with something or become obsessed. Their obsessions drive them into complete madness, left with nothing but an extreme focus and fixation on the object they so obsessed over. The protagonist in “The Tell-Tale Heart” goes mad over his obsession with the cataract-inflicted eye of an old man. His obsession with his pet cat, Pluto, brings the narrator of “The Black Cat” to insanity.
The narrator of the story, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” is consumed by insanity due to his obsession with the cataract of an old man’s eye. He obsesses over the eye, claiming that it “…resembles that of a vulture-a pale blue eye, with a film over it,” (Poe 121). This obsession leads him to see the eye as an “Evil Eye” (Poe 121), one that had made the narrator’s “blood ran cold” (Poe 121). However, his madness does not end with the death of the old man; it only plunges him deeper into the depths of insanity. In the moments that the narrator murders the old man, he hears the beating of his heart, which he mistakes, out of lunacy, to be that of his victims. Even after the old man was slaughtered “…the heart beat on with a muffled sound,” (Poe 123), and through his disturbing madness the narrator continues to believe that the sound is that of his victim’s heart. His insanity causes him to hallucinate that the sound of the beating heart “…grew louder-louder-louder…” (Poe 124). This delirium brings the narrator to the height of his madness; he scrapes his chair against the ground and does all manors of actions so as to drown out the sound of the unreal beating heart.
The speaker in “The Black Cat,” is driven mad by his obsession with his cat, Pluto. After several years of living with Pluto, the narrator becomes more and more temperamental. During one night, in his drunkenness, he mutilates one of Pluto’s eyes. It is from that point onwards that the seed of insanity begin to sprout within the narrator. Later on, he hangs the cat with no other reason aside from the fact that it exists. He felt the need “-to offer violence to its own nature-to do wrong for wrong’s sake only-” (Poe 65). A few months after this event, the speaker begins to regret his inexplicable murder, and, coincidentally, another cat identical to Pluto, save for a white spot on its chest, appeared before the speaker. However, the speaker begins to feel incomprehensible hate towards the new cat. He begins to hallucinate, and comes to the belief that the cat’s white patch of fur “…was now the representation of an object the I shudder to name-…-of the GALLOWS! -...” (Poe 67). One day, fully consumed by his insanity, he attempts to decapitate the cat, but instead he slays his wife when she attempts to stop his dark deed. Without a doubt the speaker has become obsessed with the cat that resembles Pluto to the point of killing his own wife.
Edgar Allan Poe was a writer whose stories were an outlet for him to release his pent up aggression towards his adoptive father, John Allan. In many of the stories similar to “The Black Cat,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” or “The Tell-Tale Heart;” the protagonist represents Poe and Allan is Fortunado/Pluto/the old man. Poe cannot help, but have some affection towards his adoptive father, but it is because they should be sharing a familial bond that Poe is angry as well. “William Wilson” represents Poe’s difficult choices in life. His choice of becoming a writer or to be the heir to Allan’s company. The contrasting poems, “Lenore” and “The Raven” symbolize Poe’s two perception of Lenore’s death. Edgar Allan Poe’s stories are essentially all of his emotions Poe-tically written out.
Works Cited
Poe, Edgar. “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, INC. 1966. 121-124. Print.
Poe, Edgar. “The Black Cat.” Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, INC. 1966. 63-70. Print.
Poe, Edgar. “William Wilson Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, INC. 1966. 156-170. Print.
Poe, Edgar. “Lenore.” Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, INC. 1966. 746-747. Print.
Poe, Edgar. “The Raven.” Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, INC. 1966. 754-756 Print.
Poe, Edgar. “The Cask of Amontillado.” Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, INC. 1966. 191-196. Print. “Biography of Edgar Allan Poe.” PoeStories.com. 2005. Web. 11 January. 2014. www.poestories.com/biography.php. Web.
“Poe’s Life: Who is Edgar Allan Poe?” Edgar Allan Poe Museum. 2013. Web. 11 January. 2014. www.poemuseum.org/life.php. Web.