Sample Student Research Project, fall 2004
LITR
4232: American Renaissance
Sample Student Research Project, fall 2004
Jennifer Baker
Poe’s Pain
Introduction
I can remember in high school when it was that point in the school year where the teacher would try to tackle poetry. This was not my most favorite point in the semester. I never like poetry much. At that point in my life I felt that people should just say what was on their minds and not worry about rhyme, syntax, and other things like that. I felt this way until the semester that my teacher introduced us to Edgar Allen Poe. It opened a whole new world for me and I have been in love with it ever since. Until I took this class never really realized that the gothic was a style of writing. I thought of the term in more of a personal sense. I thought of people running around wearing black and painting their faces white. This class has taught me that there is much more to the gothic than people dressed in black.
History
Most people would agree that Edgar Allen Poe is one of the most skilled gothic writers of his time or anyone else’s’. The vast majority of his work deals with confusion, loss, death, pain and even love. Poe was born in the city of Boston in July of 1809. He lived in the New England area most of this life with exception to a very brief visit to England with his foster father. Poe suffered the early death of his natural born parents and was eventually disinherited by his foster father for incurring gambling debts and getting kicked out of West Point (Mc Gill 2387). Despite being disinherited by his foster father, he did receive a formal education at the University of Virginia. Poe was a magazine editor, a poet, a short story writer, a critic, and a lecturer. He introduced the British horror story, or the commonly called Gothic genre, to American literature, along with the detective story, science fiction, and literary criticism. Poe lived a short life, dying at the age of forty.
Poe’s Pain
Pain is an emotion that Poe was all too experienced with. He experienced great pain and loss with the deaths of his parents and several wives. There are echoes of Poe’s upbringing in his works, as sick mothers and guilty fathers appear in many of his tales. He expresses this feeling of loss in one of the most well known poems by Poe “The Raven”. Pain and loss in expressed first time in this poem in the second stanza
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;- vainly I had sorrow to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow-sorrow for the Lenore-
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore-
Nameless here for evermore. (Poe 2467)
In this excerpt the narrator and possibly Poe is trying to take his mind off of the pain associated with his wife dying. There is another example of the grief-stricken narrator expressing his pain in “Ligeia”. “She died;-and I, crushed into the very dust with sorrow, could no linger endure the lonely desolation of my dwelling in the dim and decaying city by the Rhine. I had no lack of what the world calls wealth. Ligeia had brought me far more, very far more than ordinary falls to the lot of mortals” (Poe 2395). There are many more examples of Poe’s expression of pain, but by these two alone any reader can see that the worst feeling of pain comes from loosing someone close to you.
Life and Death
I have heard it said in many lecture over the years that Poe would present death as a battle that must be fought. He alludes to the idea of wrestling with death is if it were an actual person in “Ligeia”. Not only is death a battle that must be but it is also a thief,
“And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in sepulcher
In this kingdom by the sea. (Poe 2474)
By reading this poem and many of his other works he speaks of death as if it were someone who wronged him by taking his loved ones away from him. This could seem this way because his view of life was just as dark as his writings. It is common knowledge that he had both alcohol and gambling problems. I feel that his view on life is just as dark. Many times in “The Fall of the House of Usher” he uses gothic devices to describe the decay and downfall of society.
Self vs. Alter Ego
In many of Poe’s gothic tales, characters wage internal conflicts be creating imaginary alter egos or by assuming alternate and opposite personalities. In “The Black Cat” the narrator transforms from a harmless animal lover, to a raged cat killer. The dreadfulness of this tale draws from this sudden transformation and the act of killing Pluto the cat. The reincarnation of Pluto as a white cat haunts the narrator’s guilty conscience. The new cat is black with a splash of white. This white fur takes on the shape of a gallow. The cat’s fur symbolizes suppressed guilt that eventually drives him insane and causes him to murder his own wife.
Love and Hate
I seems as though Poe interpreted love and hate as universal emotions that were severed from the specific conditions of time and space. The gothic terror that is displayed in many of Poe’s works is the result of the narrator’s love of himself and hatred of his rival. This suggests that love and hate are inseparable and that they may simple be two forms of the most intense form of human emotions. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” the narrator confesses his love for an old man whom he then violently murders and dismembers. The narrator revels his madness by attempting to separate the person that the old man is, from the old man’s supposedly “evil eye”, which triggers the narrator’s hatred. Even as much as he talks about hatred of people it is still very obvious to the reader that he has a great love and respect for women. Example of this can be found through out most of his work. He speaks highly of his wife in “Ligeia” and his beloved Annabel in “Annabel Lee”
“But our love it was stronger by far then the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE:” (Poe 2474)
This conveys how Poe shows his respect for love and the opposite sex. These lines and many others like them show that he not only respects the aspect of love but the physical beauty of a woman as well.
Conclusion
I may have gotten a late start in my love of Poe’s works, but they are things that I will continue to read throughout my life. Later when I have my own classroom and that time in the school year comes around where it is time to tackle the poetry, I too will introduce my students to Poe. Most high school age students do not like poetry anyway but I feel that if they were introduced to “cool” poetry like “The Raven” they might see that not all poetry is bad, as I once thought.
Works Cited
McGill, M. “Edgar Allen Poe”. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. 4th ed. Vol 1. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 2002. 2387-2474.
Poe, E. “ Ligeia” “Annabel Lee” “The Fall of the House of Usher” “The Black Cat” “The Raven” “The Tell-Tale Heart”. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. 4th ed. Vol 1. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 2002. 2387-2474.