Edgar Allan Poe's Life and How It Affected His Writing.

Edgar Allan Poe's Writing

Edgar Allan Poe's life had a big affect on his writing. Many things that happened to him were very tragic and gave him an understanding of death that he carried with him his whole life. His father disappeared when he was very young and then his mother died, leaving him an orphan. All of the women Poe ever loved ended up dying including his wife. He also lived in poverty for most of his life. Those are only a few things that may have had an affect on his writing, which was not appreciated until well after his death.

Poe had a really depressing childhood. His mother was an actress, which was not very high in the working class back then, who played Juliet in the play Romeo and Juliet. Six or seven times a week when Edgar was very young he would have to sit and watch his mother die in the play and then be alive again afterwards back stage. This probably messed his idea of death up greatly. Then when Edgar was almost three his mother died of tuberculosis then shortly after that his father, who was an alcoholic, disappeared. Luckily after both his parents were gone the Allan family adopted Edgar and raised him like he was there own son. They moved to England where Poe was sent to a private school. All was well for a few years, but as he got older the other students at his school rejected him. He had problems with his step father; the closer he got with his new mother, the farther he drifted from his new father. When he was 13 he moved back to Virginia with his family, where he fell in love with the mother of a girl in his class. Shortly after he fell in love with her she died of a brain tumor; this started the list of loved ones that were lost. One good thing that came out of her death, though, was it inspired Poe to write poems.

Three years later he fell in love again with his fifteen year old neighbor, and they eventually got engaged. Unfortunately after they got engaged they had to break it off because Poe was so indebt from gambling. This also caused more problems with his step father and led to him dropping out of school. After that he joined the army and did very well, until his step mother died. He made up with his step father because of her death, and he paid for him to go to a military school. When he started school again he did well at first but then he got into drinking heavily and gambling again. Soon he was back in dept and started skipping classes and not doing what he was told, so he got kicked out of the military school.

Poe then moved to Baltimore with his aunt and his cousin. His step father died a few years later. Poe fell in love, again, with his fourteen year old cousin; they got engaged and eventually married. A little bit after he married he became an alcoholic and got fired from his prosperous job. He and his family then moved to New York, then to Philadelphia where he found another job. During this time Poe spent most of his time writing. He was doing very well, working at a magazine, and getting his stories published in it, when his wife popped a blood vessel while singing. This was where her health went all down hill. After this he and his wife moved back to New York, where he wrote some of his best poems. He began having financial problems and resorted back to drinking. A little bit later his wife died of tuberculosis. After that he pretty much gave up, he got reengaged to his neighbor while dating another lady, and was an alcoholic until he died about a year later.

As you can see Edgar Allan Poe's life was filled with tragedy, with few up sides in between. His writing started after the death of a loved one, and was strongest when he was going through a hardship. So his writing was mostly dark, detective stories about unheard of crimes, poems about loosing something you loved. I think that the events in Poe's life had everything to do with the way he wrote. He lived a hard life with many losses, so that is what he wrote about. He did not know anything else, to him that was reality and that was what happened. All of the people who were closest to him died or disappeared or were cut off because of his internal problems with himself. This did not leave much room for happiness between getting over the loss of a loved one and finding someone else to love. But he did write some things that were in between fantasy and reality and on the meaning of things, so not all of his writings were horror or unhappy stories. These were based on the good things that had happened to him in his life, like finding his wife and living happily with her for the few years they were married. As I said this is why I think that Edgar Allan Poe's great writing was inspired by the events that happened during his life.