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LITR 4232 American
Renaissance 2010 Student Midterm Samples 2. Short essay (4-6 paragraphs) on 1 of 2 options (or combinations as inspired) :
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Dorothy Noyes
Men Without Names: Poe’s
Byronic Heroes
Edgar Allen Poe is widely known to
the world as the Master of Macabre, the man who created such terrifying texts as
The Raven
and
The Telltale Heart.
When you think of the gothic, when you want a spine-tingling tale that will make
you scared to examine your own face in the mirror, Poe who is who you turn to.
But as I read the Poe selections for this class I was struck by the narrators in
both “Annabel Lee” and
Ligeia. Both are male
narrators, both have no name to assign to their voices, and they tell us the
stories of their own love lives, of the women who loved them, and that both
ended in tragedy, both flawed men who somehow, someway appear heroic in a sense.
“She was a child and I
was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love
that was more than love —
I and my Annabel Lee —
With a love that the
wingéd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.”
The tragic figure of the narrator in Poe’s “Annabel
Lee” is an interesting character to examine. We the readers never learn his
name, his function, or anything about him except for his love and loss of
Annabel Lee. While the reader is aware of his eerie obsession with Annabel Lee,
and slightly disgusted by his grotesque sleeping arrangements at her tomb, we’re
also oddly moved by his other-worldly love and devotion. In this passage we see
that this incredibly flawed, morbid character is also so passionate that he is
envied by the angels themselves. This characterization makes our nameless
narrator more than just a love-addled eccentric; he is the strange
personification of the Byronic hero: both flawed and passionate.
Similarly, in another of
Poe’s works, this figure takes shape again in the form of the narrator of
Ligeia:
“[14] She
died;—and I, crushed into the very dust with sorrow, could no longer endure the
lonely desolation of my dwelling in the dim and decaying city by the
Once again, there is represented a man crushed by
the weight of loss, a man struggling to survive in the face of tragedy. Like the
narrator/hero figure in “Annabel Lee” he does not handle the loss well. Instead
of sleeping in her tomb, however, this nameless man turns to drugs and the arms
of another woman, who he consistently treats badly until her death. This passage
highlights his spiral into the decay of madness, but is also what allows him to
be seen as another example of Poe’s use of the Byronic hero. Though he is a
drug-addicted mess, a man who spurns his wife, we as the readers sympathize with
him despite our distaste. He has lost the love of his life, and that tragedy and
obsession both deter and attract us to him. We can’t ignore the passion with
which he mourns, so despite his obviously flawed nature, we are drawn to him.
Both the men in these selections are obviously
strange, obviously obsessed, and most obviously not only flawed, but broken. The
parallels between the two are undeniable, yet what is their purpose? I think
that Poe’s use of these two characters as the representations of the Byronic
heroes is to teach his readers a lesson in perspective.
That which we are repelled from, isn’t necessarily
bad, and what draws us in isn’t always what is good and righteous. These flawed
men, these characters that don’t even seem to deserve a name paint a picture for
a reader: one of conflicting ideals and indeterminate motivations. That which we
fear to become, we can’t help but to admire in its passion and veracity, and Poe
uses these men, these figures of the Byronic hero to illustrate just that.
