Edgar Allan Poe Impact
The Effects of Edgar Allan Poe on Contemporary Writers “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I wondered weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, while I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door- ‘t is some visiter,’ I muttered, ‘tapping at my chamber door-only this and nothing more. ‘”. The rhythm varies to allow different unique words throughout the poem flow better, and it’s very important to help the repetitive “nevermore.” The rhythmic pattern suggests the sameness of the narrator’s days and evenings. Edgar Allan Poe has had a big influence on many contemporary writers and how they use certain styles and methods, also on how they develop their themes. Other contemporary writers have looked towards Poe’s methods to help them create their masterpieces. They derived symbols, tone, and diction from him and utilized it. Writers like Stephen King and Horatio Quiroga are the main ones who look to Poe. When writing Alone Poe writes, “the mystery that binds me still: from the torrent, or the fountain from the red cliff of the mountain, from them the sun that round me rolled” (Alone). Poe’s elusive writing skills and use of words
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set him aside from other writers of his time. He tries to explain that one stormy night changed his life for good. The use of torrent and red cliff set aside the exercept because it lets the reader visualize the red cliff that helps bind him to his horrible nightmares, that the pain of the sun rolling over him holds him still and burns him all over. We can see Poe’s styles being utilized in the writing of Horatio Quiroga when he write in The Decapitated Chicken, “nevertheless, their souls had not found peace. Their daughter’s least indisposition now unleashed – because of the terror of losing her – the bitterness created by their unsound progeny. Bile had accumulated for so long that the distended viscera spilled venom at the slightest touch.” By using “-“in this part of the short story Horatio use of diction helps add a dark ominous mood. By using terror and bitterness he helped so how much pain and loneliness they actually feel. You can tell that he derived the tones and use of diction from Poe because they both use dark and angry words to get their meanings across to the reader. “From childhoods hour I have not been as others were: I have not seen as others saw: I could not bring my passions from a common spring” The use of “I” in this helps us, the reader, know that he is talking about himself and that he is putting himself on examination and telling us that not once in his childhood did he ever feel like a child or play like one. That he was an outcast from the very beginning which foreshadowed his whole life. In The Decapitated Chicken, “Formerly they had been restrained by their mutual failure; now that success had come, each, attributing it to himself, felt more strongly the infamy of the four misbegotten sons the other had forced him to create”. By Quiroga using “restrained” and “infamy” he showed how they broke from the restraints of their normal life, that they broke each other oppression to achieve “infamy” that had “misbegotten” sons. Once again, in The Raven: Will I learn to forget Lenore? “Nevermore.” Will I find Balm in Gilead? “Nevermore.” Will we be joined in heaven someday? “Nevermore.” Leave me alone! Go! Go! “nevermore.” And the bird is still there-will I ever be free of it? “Nevermore!”
The point behind it of course is irony, the raven has no clue as to what its three syllables mean, and of the horrid pain and suffering it’s bringing to the narrator. It merely mimics what it has been taught by its master. Although it seems that the narrator knows this, yet his fears lie with the depressing reply. He’ll never be free of the grasp of pain and sadness, although it’s his ultimate decision. In The Decapitated Chicken: So Bertita celebrated her fourth birthday, and that night, as a result of the sweets her parents were incapable of denying her, the child had a slight chill fever. And the fear of seeing her die or become an idiot opened once again the ever present wound.
It’s ironic that although her parents wanted nothing but happiness and content for their daughter that they were ultimately the ones that were damaging her most. The use of cruel and sad irony is derived by Quiroga from the styles of Poe. The diction is “the raven” is very essential to the effect and meaning of the poem. When Poe talks about Lenore and calls her “rare” and “radiant” he could have used “unusual” and “glowing” but that would have stolen the effect of the line and stanza. In Poe’s poem, The Bells you can see the repetition of the bells is to indicate each time period in Poe's life. His use of assonance throughout the poem is clearly shown through such repetition. The bells toll to show the end of a time period, and a beginning of another. Symbols in The Raven are a really big part in the poem, and help the overall theme and tone of the story. Lenore, this particular lady is the main focus of the speaker's obsessive thoughts. He brings her up constantly, and even when he tries to think about something else, he always ends up back at Lenore. Despite this, we don't actually learn that much about her. We don't hear what she looks like or how she is related to our speaker (wife? girlfriend? sister?). She's an idea, a memory, but she never really becomes a full-fledged character. He seems completely filled with love for this dead woman. It's almost a little too much. He calls her "sainted," "rare," "radiant." In a sense, this Lenore is not anything like a real person. She's an ideal, a symbol of what the narrator thinks a perfect, unspoiled, untouchable woman ought to be. To this grief-stricken man, she stops being human and becomes a heavenly saint. And the Main key point of this poem is a big symbol too, The Raven. Not only is it the title of the poem, but even once we've heard all about Lenore, and the guy in his chamber, it's probably the image of the Raven that sticks most in our minds. It was a pretty great choice on Poe's part, a bird that looks like a part of the black night it came out of, a little scary looking, but also hard to read. The emphasis that Poe puts on the way he comes into the room. The image we get is of a king or a queen walking into a throne room. He mentions that the Raven is "stately" and he also says that its "mien" (its way of acting) is like that of a "lord or lady.” Our final image of the bird is that of a sleeping demon with burning eyes. He casts a shadow over the whole room, and terrifies our poor narrator. Starting out as a sort of funny bird with a strange way of walking into a room, he's now the symbol of pure satanic evil. The uses of ancient and poetic language are attributes to the symbols in The Raven. Nepenthe, this is an allusion to a mythological drug that you might take to forget your grief. From what we can tell, we think our narrator might really need some of this stuff. The idea of nepenthe occurs to our speaker in a kind of daydream/hallucination. He imagines that the room is filling with some sort of perfume, and thinks that God himself has decided to help him forget his misery. In the Odyssey, Homer describes nepenthe in exactly this way, as a drink that will take away all the sadness
The tone of “The Raven” is dark and depressing. Poe used a man who had lost his love Lenore to deepen the melancholy feeling, because losing a loved one is the grimmest subjects there is. Poe had a raven, an already grim animal, to repeat the word “nevermore” whenever the narrator would speak to it. One other way Poe increased the melancholy effect is the torture of the narrator. The answer the narrator received each time was already predetermined and both the reader and the narrator knew what the reply was going to be; therefore, continuously torturing the narrator.
Symbols in stories like The Decapitated Chicken or The Feathered Pillow by Horacio Quiroga were quite disgusting and ugly; nature was what created the disgusting scenes. The nature was weird and almost unrealistic; one blood-sucking parasite becomes the size of a pillow, and one couple creates four "idiot" and zombie-like children. Aside from his extremely tragic and violent life, Quiroga's writings were greatly influenced by the modernism movement and by the influence of Edgar Allan Poe at an attempt to be different. Nature, a popular subject of these writers, became the driving force behind some of the tragedies in his stories. Nature created the giant parasite and the zombie children. Nature at this point in history could not be tamed. No matter how hard the couple from "The Decapitated Chicken" tried, they could not produce a "normal" child until their third try. However, a spoiled daughter is born and eventually, is tragically killed by the four freaks of nature. That somewhat innocent murder by the four idiots was a sign that nature rules. The parents of the children were so concerned about their children being ideal that finally when nature had granted their wish, their wish eventually was killed and it was a horrible tragedy. Nature created the opposite of what the parents wanted. The nature of the "idiot" boys killed the parents' wish. Nature prevailed over selfish desirers.
Stephen King’s use of first person throughout the piece, as well as his use of diction makes it seem as if he is sitting in front of you, on the couch, telling his life story. His style of writing makes the reader feel as if they have witnessed the events firsthand. You can almost visualize and feel what he went through when he wrote about the two-hundred-pound babysitter The use of the words two hundred pound place emphasis on her size and brings it to the reader’s attention that this is a huge woman. King chose his words carefully in order to make the tone seem a mix of reminiscent, carefree, exasperated, and somewhat horrified. He is reliving a part of his past that wasn’t particularly pleasant. You can tell that his family had moved frequently by his choice of words, during our Wisconsin period, stress placed on the word period. A stream of babysitters is the way he chose to describe the amount of people that watched him and his older brother. He lets the reader know right away that there were many babysitters. In the description of his most memorable sitter, he chose to italicize the word dangerous. By choosing this type of font, it causes the word to stand out and places emphasis on the type of humor she had.
Also the tone in The Decapitated Chicken is a cruel and violent one. This is because the four idiots are denied love from their parents since they were diagnosed with their abnormalities and are then treated with violence and cruelty from their parents. The parents, Berta and Mazzini, then hired the servant to help around the house and with the four idiots who also treats the brothers with cruelty. Then in the end, the brothers respond this cruelty that has been thrust upon them their entire lives by killing the daughter after seeing the chicken is decapitated. Many people can argue that Poe’s, Quirogas and King’s style vary in many ways.
They all can make the argument that Poe write about pain and being alone and uses a lot more complex language while Quiroga uses more modern complex writing techniques and also while King uses simple writing and very informal unlike his opposing colleagues Poe and Quiroga. Many can argue that Poe’s ways on describing characters and very different than King’s, King follows the “less detail is more” trail unlike is counterpart Poe, who deeply describes all of his characters. One can always make the argument that Quiroga and Poe use different methods to kill and show a sense of pain and torture. All which are very valid points, but not extremely bullet
proof. But I must insist that all three are very much alike. Poe, Quiroga, and King all attribute themes and tones of similar morose obsession with death, terror, horror, and murder. Not only were King and Poe both alcoholics but they both use deep description to attract the readers and make them actually see the story with there use of diction and symbols. Also Quiroga and Poe both suffered from depression and they both contemplated suicide and although Quiroga actually followed through with his death, it is said that Poe killed himself too. Although they are separated by decades
Hallqvist, Christoffer. The Poe Decoder-“The Raven”.
Poe Decoder, 1998. Web. 12 February 2011.
Quiroga, Horacio. “The Decapitated Chicken”. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 February 2011.
“A Memoir of the Craft”. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 March 2011.
“Horacio Quiroga”. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 February 2011.
“Poe, Edgar Allan- Poe at Work: Contemporary Literary Criticism”. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 February 2011.
set him aside from other writers of his time. He tries to explain that one stormy night changed his life for good. The use of torrent and red cliff set aside the exercept because it lets the reader visualize the red cliff that helps bind him to his horrible nightmares, that the pain of the sun rolling over him holds him still and burns him all over. We can see Poe’s styles being utilized in the writing of Horatio Quiroga when he write in The Decapitated Chicken, “nevertheless, their souls had not found peace. Their daughter’s least indisposition now unleashed – because of the terror of losing her – the bitterness created by their unsound progeny. Bile had accumulated for so long that the distended viscera spilled venom at the slightest touch.” By using “-“in this part of the short story Horatio use of diction helps add a dark ominous mood. By using terror and bitterness he helped so how much pain and loneliness they actually feel. You can tell that he derived the tones and use of diction from Poe because they both use dark and angry words to get their meanings across to the reader. “From childhoods hour I have not been as others were: I have not seen as others saw: I could not bring my passions from a common spring” The use of “I” in this helps us, the reader, know that he is talking about himself and that he is putting himself on examination and telling us that not once in his childhood did he ever feel like a child or play like one. That he was an outcast from the very beginning which foreshadowed his whole life. In The Decapitated Chicken, “Formerly they had been restrained by their mutual failure; now that success had come, each, attributing it to himself, felt more strongly the infamy of the four misbegotten sons the other had forced him to create”. By Quiroga using “restrained” and “infamy” he showed how they broke from the restraints of their normal life, that they broke each other oppression to achieve “infamy” that had “misbegotten” sons. Once again, in The Raven: Will I learn to forget Lenore? “Nevermore.” Will I find Balm in Gilead? “Nevermore.” Will we be joined in heaven someday? “Nevermore.” Leave me alone! Go! Go! “nevermore.” And the bird is still there-will I ever be free of it? “Nevermore!”
The point behind it of course is irony, the raven has no clue as to what its three syllables mean, and of the horrid pain and suffering it’s bringing to the narrator. It merely mimics what it has been taught by its master. Although it seems that the narrator knows this, yet his fears lie with the depressing reply. He’ll never be free of the grasp of pain and sadness, although it’s his ultimate decision. In The Decapitated Chicken: So Bertita celebrated her fourth birthday, and that night, as a result of the sweets her parents were incapable of denying her, the child had a slight chill fever. And the fear of seeing her die or become an idiot opened once again the ever present wound.
It’s ironic that although her parents wanted nothing but happiness and content for their daughter that they were ultimately the ones that were damaging her most. The use of cruel and sad irony is derived by Quiroga from the styles of Poe. The diction is “the raven” is very essential to the effect and meaning of the poem. When Poe talks about Lenore and calls her “rare” and “radiant” he could have used “unusual” and “glowing” but that would have stolen the effect of the line and stanza. In Poe’s poem, The Bells you can see the repetition of the bells is to indicate each time period in Poe's life. His use of assonance throughout the poem is clearly shown through such repetition. The bells toll to show the end of a time period, and a beginning of another. Symbols in The Raven are a really big part in the poem, and help the overall theme and tone of the story. Lenore, this particular lady is the main focus of the speaker's obsessive thoughts. He brings her up constantly, and even when he tries to think about something else, he always ends up back at Lenore. Despite this, we don't actually learn that much about her. We don't hear what she looks like or how she is related to our speaker (wife? girlfriend? sister?). She's an idea, a memory, but she never really becomes a full-fledged character. He seems completely filled with love for this dead woman. It's almost a little too much. He calls her "sainted," "rare," "radiant." In a sense, this Lenore is not anything like a real person. She's an ideal, a symbol of what the narrator thinks a perfect, unspoiled, untouchable woman ought to be. To this grief-stricken man, she stops being human and becomes a heavenly saint. And the Main key point of this poem is a big symbol too, The Raven. Not only is it the title of the poem, but even once we've heard all about Lenore, and the guy in his chamber, it's probably the image of the Raven that sticks most in our minds. It was a pretty great choice on Poe's part, a bird that looks like a part of the black night it came out of, a little scary looking, but also hard to read. The emphasis that Poe puts on the way he comes into the room. The image we get is of a king or a queen walking into a throne room. He mentions that the Raven is "stately" and he also says that its "mien" (its way of acting) is like that of a "lord or lady.” Our final image of the bird is that of a sleeping demon with burning eyes. He casts a shadow over the whole room, and terrifies our poor narrator. Starting out as a sort of funny bird with a strange way of walking into a room, he's now the symbol of pure satanic evil. The uses of ancient and poetic language are attributes to the symbols in The Raven. Nepenthe, this is an allusion to a mythological drug that you might take to forget your grief. From what we can tell, we think our narrator might really need some of this stuff. The idea of nepenthe occurs to our speaker in a kind of daydream/hallucination. He imagines that the room is filling with some sort of perfume, and thinks that God himself has decided to help him forget his misery. In the Odyssey, Homer describes nepenthe in exactly this way, as a drink that will take away all the sadness
The tone of “The Raven” is dark and depressing. Poe used a man who had lost his love Lenore to deepen the melancholy feeling, because losing a loved one is the grimmest subjects there is. Poe had a raven, an already grim animal, to repeat the word “nevermore” whenever the narrator would speak to it. One other way Poe increased the melancholy effect is the torture of the narrator. The answer the narrator received each time was already predetermined and both the reader and the narrator knew what the reply was going to be; therefore, continuously torturing the narrator.
Symbols in stories like The Decapitated Chicken or The Feathered Pillow by Horacio Quiroga were quite disgusting and ugly; nature was what created the disgusting scenes. The nature was weird and almost unrealistic; one blood-sucking parasite becomes the size of a pillow, and one couple creates four "idiot" and zombie-like children. Aside from his extremely tragic and violent life, Quiroga's writings were greatly influenced by the modernism movement and by the influence of Edgar Allan Poe at an attempt to be different. Nature, a popular subject of these writers, became the driving force behind some of the tragedies in his stories. Nature created the giant parasite and the zombie children. Nature at this point in history could not be tamed. No matter how hard the couple from "The Decapitated Chicken" tried, they could not produce a "normal" child until their third try. However, a spoiled daughter is born and eventually, is tragically killed by the four freaks of nature. That somewhat innocent murder by the four idiots was a sign that nature rules. The parents of the children were so concerned about their children being ideal that finally when nature had granted their wish, their wish eventually was killed and it was a horrible tragedy. Nature created the opposite of what the parents wanted. The nature of the "idiot" boys killed the parents' wish. Nature prevailed over selfish desirers.
Stephen King’s use of first person throughout the piece, as well as his use of diction makes it seem as if he is sitting in front of you, on the couch, telling his life story. His style of writing makes the reader feel as if they have witnessed the events firsthand. You can almost visualize and feel what he went through when he wrote about the two-hundred-pound babysitter The use of the words two hundred pound place emphasis on her size and brings it to the reader’s attention that this is a huge woman. King chose his words carefully in order to make the tone seem a mix of reminiscent, carefree, exasperated, and somewhat horrified. He is reliving a part of his past that wasn’t particularly pleasant. You can tell that his family had moved frequently by his choice of words, during our Wisconsin period, stress placed on the word period. A stream of babysitters is the way he chose to describe the amount of people that watched him and his older brother. He lets the reader know right away that there were many babysitters. In the description of his most memorable sitter, he chose to italicize the word dangerous. By choosing this type of font, it causes the word to stand out and places emphasis on the type of humor she had.
Also the tone in The Decapitated Chicken is a cruel and violent one. This is because the four idiots are denied love from their parents since they were diagnosed with their abnormalities and are then treated with violence and cruelty from their parents. The parents, Berta and Mazzini, then hired the servant to help around the house and with the four idiots who also treats the brothers with cruelty. Then in the end, the brothers respond this cruelty that has been thrust upon them their entire lives by killing the daughter after seeing the chicken is decapitated. Many people can argue that Poe’s, Quirogas and King’s style vary in many ways.
They all can make the argument that Poe write about pain and being alone and uses a lot more complex language while Quiroga uses more modern complex writing techniques and also while King uses simple writing and very informal unlike his opposing colleagues Poe and Quiroga. Many can argue that Poe’s ways on describing characters and very different than King’s, King follows the “less detail is more” trail unlike is counterpart Poe, who deeply describes all of his characters. One can always make the argument that Quiroga and Poe use different methods to kill and show a sense of pain and torture. All which are very valid points, but not extremely bullet
proof. But I must insist that all three are very much alike. Poe, Quiroga, and King all attribute themes and tones of similar morose obsession with death, terror, horror, and murder. Not only were King and Poe both alcoholics but they both use deep description to attract the readers and make them actually see the story with there use of diction and symbols. Also Quiroga and Poe both suffered from depression and they both contemplated suicide and although Quiroga actually followed through with his death, it is said that Poe killed himself too. Although they are separated by decades
Hallqvist, Christoffer. The Poe Decoder-“The Raven”.
Poe Decoder, 1998. Web. 12 February 2011.
Quiroga, Horacio. “The Decapitated Chicken”. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 February 2011.
“A Memoir of the Craft”. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 March 2011.
“Horacio Quiroga”. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 February 2011.
“Poe, Edgar Allan- Poe at Work: Contemporary Literary Criticism”. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 February 2011.