Preview

Edgar Allen Poe: Rabies, The Killer

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
210 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Edgar Allen Poe: Rabies, The Killer
Rabies, The Killer Edgar Allen Poe, a talented writer of the horror genre died from unknown causes while he was in Baltimore. His death has caused multiple theories to arise from alcoholism or becoming ill from exposure such as rain. But I would like to discuss the possibility of Poe dying from a fatal virus, Rabies. An article had stated that Poe had shown multiple symptoms of Rabies such as difficulty drinking water and fluctuating behavioral patterns; Poe would be fine and calm one day but would then be confused and insensible. (187) The article had also talked about Poe’s sensitivity to alcohol and that he would become very ill from it, which would cause Poe to avoid such things. (188) Another biography had also stated that Poe experienced

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Edgar Allan Poe was a writer in the 19th century famous for his eerie literary works. Most of his family died from tuberculosis when he was young, and he lived in poverty his entire life. However, the true reason for his death is unknown. Evidence suggests that Poe died of cooping.…

    • 332 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Ralph Emerson once wrote, "Talent alone cannot make the writer. There must be a man behind the book." Edgar Allan Poe acquired the ability to write Gothic horror through the tragedies that existed in his life. At three years old Poe lost his mother and father. Grief and sadness overwhelmed Poe's childhood and eventually his literary style. "By temperament and mournful personal experience, Poe was drawn into the contemporary cult of death" (Kennedy 111-33.) In his shocking and lurid tales of horror, "The Masque of the Red Death," "The Tell-Tale Heart," and "The Cask of Amontillado," Edgar Allan Poe reveals his obsession with death and suffering through the development of his characters and the shocking situations he exposes.…

    • 1498 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    On October 3, 1849, Edgar was found in the bathroom at the Gunnell’s Hall, a public house that was being used as a polling place for an election. The magazine editor, Joseph Snodgrass, sent Poe to the Washington College Hospital, where he spent his last days in and out of consciousness, far away from home, and surrounded by nothing but strangers. They were never able to explain what happened to him to cause any of this. On October 7, 1849, only at the age of…

    • 805 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Character in Edgar Allan Poe stories seem to have characteristics like him such as sickness, craziness, and sadness. A large number of his family suffered from tuberculosis which might have influenced “The Masque of the Red Death” , which had a fictional plague. There was signs of craziness in Poe’s writing too, such as extreme OCD in “The Tell Tale Heart” and vivid hallucinations in “The Raven”, both of which Edgar had experienced at one point. In addition his writings like “ The Raven” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” included depression that he himself may have felt due to abandonment and death. Although Poe's writing was very dark, he created genres of literacy that are still popular…

    • 121 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The problems of alcoholism and insanity are recurring themes in Poe’s literary works. One can say that “The Black Cat,” one of Poe’s short stories, portrays much of the author’s own views on his substance abuse problems and mental illness. The unnamed narrator from “The Black Cat,” struggles with his addiction to alcohol and his hatred for two cats become prevailing. The narrator states, however, that he was never like this before he loved animals, “never was so happy as when feeding and caressing them.” (Poe, 3). The narrator takes on a cat and cares for it, however, as his drinking problem progressed, he states, “I grew day by day more moody… my disease grew upon me.” (Poe, 4). After a night out drinking, he decides to cut out one of the cat’s eyes and ultimately, kills the cat. Later, another cat strangely identical to the first cat with one eye comes around and as the narrator tries to kill the second cat he ends up killing his wife instead. He buries the body of his wife and the second cat behind a wall and police later hear the cat calling out from inside the wall. In relation to Poe’s life, Poe was known to love cats and had a female cat named Catterina (Mercier). The killing of the first cat relates to Poe’s own destruction of the things he loved and desired due to alcoholism. He lost his job in 1837 due to his drinking and feuding with other editors (Edgar Allan Poe, Encyclo.) The killing of an innocent wife can closely relate to Poe’s views of women in his own life, through the deaths of both his mother figures and then eventually his wife. Poe writes about women who carry a unique beauty to them. The women are compassionate to the men they…

    • 908 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    After carefully examining Edgar Allan Poe’s conditions, I have come to the conclusion that Poe fell victim to a gang engaging in cooping and later died of alcohol poisoning. The Smithsonian Magazine states that Poe had a high intolerance to alcohol, so the reward given to him by the gang members likely influenced his death. Not only was cooping a popular practice in Baltimore at the time, Poe was found wandering about the streets near a voting poll where cooping was practiced. He was wearing second hand clothes, which were meant to pose as a disguise. As stated by the University of Maryland, Poe had a long history with the abuse of alcohol and opiate drugs, but he hadn't consumed any alcohol within six months before his death. Knowing his…

    • 383 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Edgar Allen Poe lived a turbulent life. Orphaned before the age of 3 he was raised in foster care in Richmond Virginia. He later was forced to drop out of West Point due to gambling debt. Later, after finding work as a magazine editor, he worked to publish most of his work in order to support his 13 year old wife (and cousin), who had tuberculosis. Two years after her passing he died at the age of forty.…

    • 591 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    . . . Mr. Poe is at once the most discriminating, philosophical, and fearless critic upon imaginative works who has written in America. It may be that we should qualify our remark a little, and say that he might be, rather than that he always is, for he seems sometimes to mistake his phial of prussic-acid for his inkstand.” — (James Russell Lowell, “Edgar Allan Poe,” Graham’s Magazine, February 1845.) Although he was heavily criticized, many seemed to view him as genius. “That perfection of horror which abounds in his writings, has been unjustly attributed to some moral defect in the man. But I perceive not why the competent critic should fall into this error. Of all authors, ancient or modern, Poe has given us the least of himself in his works. He wrote as an artist. He intuitively saw what Schiller has so well expressed, that it is an universal phenomenon of our nature that the mournful, the fearful, even the horrible, allures with irresistible…

    • 568 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Edgar Allan Poe Dbq

    • 599 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Edgar Allan Poe endured awful life experiences that caused him to write horror stories and poems. Poe’s dad abandoned him and his mother when Poe was young. His mother died a year later, which put Poe into the hands of two foster parents. Sadly, his foster mom also died (Doc. A & B). Edgar Allan Poe lived in poverty all of his life (Doc. A & B). He made bad decisions, like spending the last of his savings on a piano for his wife, and he drank heavily after her death (Doc. A & B). He never let anything good happen to himself. The evidence supports that Poe had an awful life that inspired him to write about fear due to the lack of guidance in his lifetime.…

    • 599 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Edgar Allan Poe Alcoholic

    • 422 Words
    • 2 Pages

    According to the researcher and writer of “Poe’s Death is Rewritten as Case of Rabies, Not Telltale Alcohol” Dr. R Michael Benitez believes it was because of rabies. Dr. Benitez states in his article that Poe was indeed hallucinating, and shouting at imaginary companions (187-188). Also, when woken up one day Poe refused to drink alcohol and could only drink water with great difficulty (187). Dr. Benitez also states that is a common case of rabies because “Rabies victims frequently exhibit hydrophobia or a fear for water because it is painful to swallow” (187). Poe didn’t know where he was, and couldn’t remember anything as well. Dr. Benitez also states when Poe came to him he was not drunk, and there was no evidence of him being bitten. Statistics show that most human rabies victims do not remember being bitten, and bites takes about a year to appear…

    • 422 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Edgar Allan Poe Isolation

    • 1118 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809-October 7, 1849), lived to be 40 years old. During his 40 years of living he had to go through many deaths of his loved ones. In addition, being abandoned by his father and foster father. Poe lost his mother, wife, and foster mother all to tuberculosis. He was devastated, lost and didn’t know what to do. Leading him to attempting suicide after his wife died. Instead of killing himself, he took his agony out in his writings. Edgar Allan Poe wrote approximately sixty-nine stories and poems. It has been seen that Mr. Poe has made a collection of similarities in his stories connecting to what he has gone through in life. As some of his most famous stories “Annabel Lee”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, and “The…

    • 1118 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    According to the author that “The rider was so sensitive to alcohol that a glass of wine would make him violently ill for days” (Silverman 188). This quote is significant because Poe was always ill. Another quote is “evidence of Poe’s chronic binges is strewn through his letters, in periodic admissions of recoveries” (Silverman 189) … Poe was found dead outside a bar. Therefore, I think he had to be drunk. Silverman says that “None of the signs of rabies confirm that he was not drunk” (Silverman 189). The alcohol could have just been catching up to his body. Therefore, is the reason I think Poe died of…

    • 520 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Cause Of Poe's Death

    • 506 Words
    • 3 Pages

    While Poe was at the hospital, he exhibits odd behaviors similar to what rabies victim…

    • 506 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Edgar Allan Poe's Rabies

    • 651 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In a letter Benedetto wrote he states, “Dr. Benitez admits the primary weakness of his theory- lack of evidence of a bite or scratch” (Benedetto 189). Dr. Benitez’s statement of there being a lack of a bite or scratch shows that rabies could not be an option for Poe’s death. Robert Benedetto explains that Poe’s cat, Caterina, Showed no signs of rabies (189). Without any signs of rabies on his beloved cat, Caterina proves that Poe’s cat did not give him rabies. As said in Benedetto’s letter, “Dr. R. Michael Benitez, an assistant professor of medicine at Maryland University Medical Center, is wrong to ascribe the death of Edgar Allan Poe to rabies through animal infection than to the traditional maintained caused alcoholism (Benedetto 189). Dr. R. Michael Benitez was wrong to assign Poe’s death to rabies with the lack of proper evidence. With no evidence that proves that Poe died from rabies it is wrong to label the cause of from…

    • 651 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Edgar Allan Poe had a life full of devastation and misery. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was two. He was then adopted by John Allen, who had an enormous amount of money. Although, when Poe went to college, John Allan only gave him a third of what he needed. He had to quit school in less than a year; he had no money, no job skills, and no one who loved him. He decided to join the army, but did not stay long because John Allan refused to send him funding. He lived with his aunt and cousin Virginia, whom he later married. He published many short stories, but they did not sell well; he could barely make a living for his family. Virginia and Poe were happily married for eleven years. Despite their happiness, she died…

    • 1994 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays