YOU WERE LOOKING FOR :American Literature as Defined by Edgar Allan Poe
Essays 61 - 90
- into a "setting conducive to unrest and fears" (Fisher 75). The narrator reveals that his grief over his wife Ligeias death pro...
the supposed "insult" which Fortunato has offered him; he vacillates between a hatred of the man and a reluctant admiration for hi...
the beginning. He states, "From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition. My tenderness of heart was...
rage (Cutts). Poe, like his stories, was quite unusual. Even his physical appearance hinted that his mental processes were...
it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribut...
all together. The characters are not three-dimensional in that they are more caricatures of types of people. Whereas Faulkner give...
nothing of pleasantry or peace. The windows seem as though they are "vacant," and "eye-like" and the narrator continues in this ...
her, hearing her cough and moan, witnessing her tears at the knowledge that she must soon leave them... the mothers despair and an...
of revelation. Each of these stories begins with opening cryptic epigraphs that lay the ominous thematic groundwork. In "MS Foun...
that never completely healed. It is believed that there is a little of Elizabeth in all of Poes female characterizations. One of...
ill person - a person who might easily be Poe himself. Poes preoccupation with humanitys darker side could very well have perpetu...
been and am; but why WILL you say that I am mad?" (Poe [3]). In this the reader is immediately told that the narrator is mad becau...
that he despises genius, "the greater the genius the greater the ass" (Poe). At this point, Proffit sounds like a particularly pom...
says, knows he is telling the truth about the murder, but because he is trying to justify it so strongly, and madly, we know he is...
a "filmy" eye, and in the narrators mind, it became an "evil" eye (Poe). The narrator, who is obviously mentally ill, decided he ...
death. Not simply because death equates with grief, but there is also the element of terror, the fear of a small child at the loss...
such as "bleak walls" and minute fungi overspread on the whole exterior" to describe the place of which he speaks. There is defin...
very fast and uncontrolled manner - all signs of the narrators questionable mental state. The narrators obsession with th...
was paramount to understanding many of his stories and aspects of the life of Poe are often mirrored within the narrators of his s...
knowledge and, occasionally, pronounced comatose or unconscious patients as dead (Premature Burial). There were documented instanc...
that "The Cask of Amontillado" centers more around the theme of revenge than do any of Poes gruesome works. "The Cask of Amontill...
have his works lived on, his style and teachings have as well. When he wrote Murders in the Rue Morgue, it was probably the first ...
talk that he had "hastened his wifes death to write the poem" (Allen 3). There can be little doubt that the poem itself is obvi...
healthily, how calmly, I can tell you the whole story" (Poe NA). The narrator immediately informs us that something horrible and...
truly fulfilled, and in fact he likens this fulfillment to a nearly spiritual ideal. On the other hand, there was...
that "justice" was being defined since 9/11 appears to equate it with vengeance. A headline in the November 16th edition of the ...
even on good speaking terms with him. This leads the rest of the townsfolk to determine that Brown is crazy making Hawthornes poin...
an ever-present element in "The Cask of Amontillado", Poe manages to keep it just below the surface of the plot until that final ...
grief-stricken protagonist/narrator who is mourning the loss of his beloved, Lenore, and has perhaps taken to drink much as Poe ha...
banks of a "black and lurid tarn" (Poe Usher). As the narrator in both stories is fully aware of who he is, he never bothers to in...