Extended Essay

English Language and Literature

“How does Edgar Allan Poe’s life appear in his works?”

Submitted by: Áron Berkes

2018

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 1. Introduction to the Essay, short outline

Edgar Allan Poe. Probably one of the greatest authors and poets born in the 19th century.

His life, works, and even death are all largely controversial, possibly with good reason. His

name and works are famous all over the world today, but his writing style and stories are

something that have induced numerous heated debates, discussions, and researches. Being

aware of Poe’s rather tragic life events and reading his works the question arises whether he

used his own life as basis for his stories or he was an absolutely conscious writer using

numerous literary devices to create thrilling short stories and poems based on his own life and

things he experienced around him.

In this essay I am going to scrutinize how conscious author Poe was or how spontaneous

he was to implant his life into his works. For this, I will write a short summary of Poe’s life.

After this, I will go simultaneously through his works and the literary devices he used to

create the eerie atmosphere and the feeling that these stories are totally fact-based.

The reason that I chose this topic for my essay is that having read Poe’s works and

biography I came to believe that Poe’s mostly tragic life experiences certainly had a strong

influence on his works. At the same time, his works give the impression that he was an

educated author using literary devices to create well-structured works. Connecting any

author’s life events to his works is closely related to the theory of biographical criticism,

dating back to the Renaissance period. This idea has been used to analyze works of authors

such as Charles Dickens, F. Scott Fitzgerald and even William Shakespeare. It states that

every author creates his works based on their own life. As the name implies, it analyzes the

biography of the author to show the relationship between their lives and their literary works.

2. Poe’s short biography

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 Edgar Allan Poe was born in 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts as simply Edgar Poe. His life

began with tragic and heartbreaking events. His father deserted the family when Poe was only

a year old, and his mother died of tuberculosis when he was 3. He and his two siblings, an

older brother and a younger sister were all sent to different families to live. Poe’s foster

parents were called John and Frances Allan, hence the second family name for the author. The

Allans never adopted him officially, though treated him like their own son. Poe had an

especially good relationship with Frances, but not so much later on with John. That is why it

was so painful for Poe to lose Frances, the only person supporting him, a few years later. John

did not approve of Poe wanting to become a writer, and ultimately cut him out of his will.

When Poe was accepted to the University of Virginia, John did not help him pay the

tuition fees, so Poe turned to gambling, which naturally turned out wrong. He asked John to

pay back his debt, which he again refused, further worsening their relationship. This was not

the only disappointment in this period of his life. When he returned home, he found out that

his fiancée got engaged to someone else. After this, Poe got enlisted to the U.S. Army, but did

not want to serve the full five years. He reached an agreement to be discharged with the

condition that he would seek appointment at West Point Academy, with which he wanted to

please John Allan with. However, when Poe visited the Allans again, they had a violent row

with John, and was forced to leave again. Due to this incident, his service at West Point did

not last long. He deliberately disobeyed orders and neglected duties so that he would be

dismissed. Poe was twenty-one at the time.

After the army and the academy, Poe went to live with his aunt Maria, cousin Virginia,

and older brother Henry. His first breakthrough as a writer happened during this period. He

wrote a short story for a competition in the Baltimore Sunday Visiter. He won the first prize

and was able to publish some of his works. Few years later his friend got him a job as a writer

and critic at the literary magazine Southern Literary Messenger in 1833. Not much later, in

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1836, Poe married his then 13-years-old cousin, Virginia. She not only was a love interest for

him, but a literary inspiration, a muse as well. His job at the newspaper however, did not last

long. Although during his time there, sales increased, Poe’s excessive drinking problem led to

him being fired. His mental state was from that time on described as “never very far from

panic”.

After a short time living in New York City as well, the family moved to Philadelphia,

where Poe got another job as a critic and editor of a newspaper. He published some of his

best-known works during this time, including The Fall of the House of Usher. However, he

could not keep this job for long. It seemed that he could endure a maximum of two years in a

job. He was said to be a very harsh critic, which led to quarrels with other critics and writers.

This, combined with his worsening alcoholism ultimately led to him having to leave the

newspaper.

Though Poe published several famous works, such as The Raven and The Murders in the

Rue Morgue, which brought him some fame, other, more severe problems arose. His wife

started showing signs of tuberculosis, the illness that Poe’s mother had also died of. Poe tried

to relieve his problems by drinking, of course with no success. A few years later, in 1847,

Virginia died, and Poe’s depression and alcoholism assumed considerable proportions, worse

than ever before. He wanted to find a new wife for himself, who was a childhood friend of

his, but they eventually did not marry. Poe went to New York to bring his aunt to the wedding.

On the way he stopped in Baltimore, and the next day he was found semi-conscious, lying on

the street. He was brought to the hospital, but died four days later. At the time, the cause of

death was supposed to be a congestion of the brain, but since then there have been

speculations about other causes, such as alcohol- or carbon-monoxide poisoning, or even

epilepsy. His uncertain cause of death is probably one of the reasons why he and his works are

still being disputed and discussed.

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 Thinking over his life we can see that he experienced gravely negative emotions, such as

helplessness, isolation, loneliness, refusal, and abandonment, resulting from the series of

tragic events throughout his life. These include losing his mother and father at an early age,

losing his foster mother, being refused and under-supported by his foster father, losing his

brother due to alcohol problems, and his wife dying of tuberculosis.

3. Common topics and literary devices used by Poe

What may affect an artist to create a certain work? In most cases, it is clearly their life.

But their backgrounds and experiences are always different. We can state though, that in Poe’s

life, suffering and misery played an important role. However, it is also cardinal how a writer

presents these events. Is the author sentimental, heroic, or does he write in a way that

captivates the reader? In Poe’s case, it can be clearly stated that he captivates the reader by

using literary devices which make his works thrilling, menacing, and which allow insight into

the depths of the soul.

Losing your parents at such an early age is tragic. Finding a foster father who refuses you,

and a foster mother who dies prematurely is even more tragic. Losing your beloved wife at a

young age is unbearable. If you read about such events in a newspaper, you think that fate

cannot be so cruel. But for Poe, it was reality. The question arises how one can live on in

conditions like this. Many would answer that it is impossible. But that is the point where

creativity can help one survive, and that is exactly what happened in the case of Poe.

Living in such misery is intolerable, but writing about them, re-experiencing the horrible

feelings, and estranging them thereby may give the opportunity to transcend and survive. This

splendid psychological elaboration was also supported by the conscious creation of his works

which is reflected in the use of numerous different literary devices.

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 Poe’s life mostly contained dark and horrible events, and these definitely determined the

outcome of his works, which turned out to be some of the darkest, most menacing, gloomy,

sometimes even frightening literary works we know. Later critics often associated him and his

writings with Dark Romanticism, a subgenre of Romanticism, which was at its peak exactly

during his life, between 1800 and 1850. Dark Romanticism often deals with the topics of

human fallibility, self-destruction, judgement, punishment, and the psychological effects of

guilt and sin1, which are clearly some of the topics that often appear in his works.

3.a) Guilt and sin

Nowadays it is a widely accepted view among psychologists that children constantly

rejected by their parents feel guilty because they unconsciously think that they are bad and

guilty. But they not only feel remorse because of this, but also because of their repressed

anger and hatred against their parents due to their rejection. As a consequence, they will create

life situations where they suffer punishment or punish themselves. As Poe himself was an

abandoned child due to his parents’ premature death, it is not surprising that Poe’s works are

swarming with the topic of sin, punishment without justifiable reason, and the feeling of guilt.

Homicide and murder followed by remorse are also frequent topics in his writings. An

easily identifiable example for this can be found in The Tell-Tale Heart, in which a person,

claiming not to be insane, plans to kill the blind old man who he is living with. He claims that

planning something with such precision is the proof that he could not be insane. This seems as

if he tried to justify the right for murder obviously resulting from the aforementioned

unconscious hatred. After he commits the murder and buries the old man beneath the

floorboards of the house, he starts hearing a sound. That sound turns out to be the heartbeat of

the man, which eventually drives the main character mad and makes him confess his sin to the

police officers coming to check on them. Another perfect example is The Black Cat. In the

1 Definition from: https://americanliterature.com/dark-romanticism-study-guide

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story, the narrator has a good relationship with his cat. However, years later, the narrator

becomes an alcoholic, and one night while being drunk, he believes that the cat is deliberately

avoiding him. He gets furious, and gouges out the cat’s eye. After this, the cat naturally avoids

him for real. The narrator feels regret and remorse, but after a while, these feelings turn into

irritation and fury. He decided to hang the cat from a tree. On that exact night, the narrator’s

house is mysteriously burned down. When he returns the next day, the only intact thing from

the house is a large painting of the cat, with a rope tied around its neck. Though the story has

several layers, this part obviously represents guilt and punishment again. Thinking over these

examples we can assume that he elaborated his feelings of guilt developed in his childhood.

But why do these two stories have a strong impact on the reader apart from the horrible

topic? It is interesting to see how Poe uses detailed description of intensified perception of

hearing and imagination which magnetize the reader. The use of simple adjectives in contrast

with the actual terrible events of the story symbolizes the tortured psychological state of the

narrator.

3.b) Guilt and punishment

As I previously mentioned, guilt and punishment are closely related both in psychology

and in Poe’s works as well. It is hence not surprising that some type of a punishment, may that

be physical, mental, or both, appears frequently in his works. One of the best examples for

this could be The Pit and the Pendulum, one of his best-known short stories. In the story, an

unnamed person is brought to trial. He is condemned to death, and later wakes up in a dark

prison cell. He realizes that there is a deep pit at the edge of the cell and he is tied to a table,

with a pendulum swinging back and forth and slowly descending, designed to eventually kill

him. However, he manages to attract rats with the leftover food. The rats chew through his

bondages, allowing him to escape in the last minute. This work is rightly among the most

popular ones, because the thrill is intensified by the detailed description of senses, but Poe

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leaves the reader in uncertainty about the reason for punishment. This is a clear example of a

person who cannot comprehend why they are struck frequently by fate. In this work another

astonishing literary device can be found as we can associate the swinging, deadly pendulum

with the imminent death and the passing time representing the end of life.

3.c) Death, being buried alive

As Poe himself suffered losses of many of his beloved ones, it seems obvious that the

subject matter of death also affected him in the creation of his works. Not only death, but the

process of burial, and even being buried alive occupies a central place in his writings. These

topics did not only originate from his personal life, but from the social conditions of the time.

In the Victorian Age, due to the then low level and mistakes of medical science, it was quite

frequent that people diagnosed dead were buried alive. We know this from the fact that in that

era they even built special coffins for such cases. For example, there were coffins with ropes

tied to small bells over the grave, so that if the “dead” person turned out to be alive, he could

pull the rope from inside the coffin and ring the bell. The English language also provides

another evidence through idioms such as “saved by the bell”.

A graphic example of this can be found in the short story titled Berenice, in which, apart

from the horroristic and weird events, the main focus is on being buried alive. The same topic

can be observed in The Premature Burial, where the main character lives in terrible fear of

being buried alive, because the physicians diagnosed him with catalepsy, a condition where he

randomly falls into death-like trance. He asks his friends to promise not to bury him

prematurely, and builds a tomb in which he could signal if he turned out to be alive after being

buried. Some of the literary devices Poe uses in these works are anaphora and the use of first

person narration. Anaphora is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is repeated at the

beginning of a clause or another group of words, and imparts emphasis. The permanent

repetition of words or phrases symbolizes the unavoidable outcome of a situation. This,

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intertwined with the first person narration helps the reader identify with the story and creates

the feeling that such situations could just as well happen to them.

Observing the topic of death from another point of view, we may assume that being buried

alive may carry a symbolic meaning. Mentally ill people often claim that they are dead

despite being present at the moment of conversation. The symbolic meaning of being buried

alive can be something similar, suggesting that Poe himself, after having to endure such losses

and emotional traumas, felt that he could not relate to ordinary people emotionally and he felt

himself estranged from the ordinary, living world. Could this have been a reason why his

colleagues and acquaintances regarded him insane?

3.d) Insanity

In colloquial language, we quite often use the word “insane”. But do we actually think it

over why or how someone gets into this mental state? What do we consider insanity? From a

biological, medical point of view, insanity is caused by dysfunctional brain activity. But folk

wisdom has a deep knowledge of emotions driving people crazy even if only for periods of

their lives. In Poe’s case it is without doubt that events in his life disrupted his mental and

emotional stability, so it is easy to understand why he was so fond of including this topic in

his works.

The use of anaphora and first person narration together can be observed not only in The

Premature Burial, but in The Black Cat as well. Poe efficiently uses these two devices

together to create the feeling that the narrator is insane. The anaphora “I blush, I burn, I

shudder [...]” with the repetition reflects the obsessive compulsive mental disorder of the

narrator, where we cannot get rid of fixed ideas. OCD is a frequent characteristic of mentally

insane patients as well. After the cat injures him, he says that “the fury of a demon instantly

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possessed me”. This also contributes to the exaggeration that even a small injury from his

beloved cat can lead him to commit such atrocities like gouging out its eye.

An illustrious example of the use of the topic of insanity and the aforementioned literary

devices can be seen in The Black Cat. Analyzing it, we can follow the mood and temperament

alteration of the main character due to increased alcohol consumption, ending in total

craziness. He kills his beloved cat, and the guilt combined with his mental deterioration due to

alcohol drives him mad, eventually causing him to hallucinate. A similar pattern can be

observed in Poe’s life, where his worsening binge drinking eventually resulted in losing his

consciousness, further impairing his mental state.

Another example of using insanity as a main topic appears in The Tell-Tale Heart. The

similarity between The Black Cat and The Tell-Tale Heart seems evident. In both cases, the

main character commits a murder, and cannot stand the weight of his deed. This ultimately

leads to their own guilt driving them crazy. Overall, the threefold pattern of an immoral deed,

feeling guilty, and as a consequence going crazy can be identified.

3.e) Losing beloved ones

The list of parallels between his life and works continues with the topic of losing beloved

ones. This series of losses started with Poe losing his parents, then his fiancée got engaged to

someone else, his foster mother died a little while later, his brother died due to excessive

alcohol consumption, and lastly his only wife, Virginia, died of tuberculosis. These losses are

clearly represented in his works and further contribute to my conviction that there is a strong

connection between his life and the writings he created.

For this, there can be two examples mentioned. Firstly, the poem titled Annabel Lee,

which is about a painful memory and the narrator reminiscing about their love with Annabel

when they were children and how they used to live in a kingdom by the sea in happiness.

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Annabel’s death was caused by some wind that came down from the clouds and made

Annabel sick, eventually killing her. This poem again represents some unexpected, abrupt bad

luck destroying the narrator’s life causing him to lose all hope. Poe uses repetition and refrain

to express his eternal and deep love for a loved one, but also represents his obsessive

character, as he constantly repeats the phrase “the beautiful Annabel Lee” or “my Annabel

Lee”.

The second example is Ligeia, a short story, where an unnamed narrator is introduced to

Ligeia, a woman perfect for him. She is intellectual and passionate, with uncommon beauty.

They marry, and Ligeia impresses him with her immense knowledge of scientific subjects.

However, after an undefined period of time, Ligeia becomes ill, and ultimately dies. After

this, the narrator moves to a new home and enters into an unhappy marriage with a woman,

Rowena. Just after a few months, Rowena starts to suffer from anxiety and fever. Her

condition rapidly worsens and a few days later she dies. But before her death, she reveals her

face, and the narrator realizes in shock that her eyes and hair changed into that of Ligeia’s.

This story carries a symbolic meaning, representing Poe’s eternal love for his only wife,

Virginia. Even after she dies of tuberculosis and years pass, Poe cannot forget her, despite

getting engaged to a childhood friend of his, whom he ultimately does not marry.

The previous two topics, namely loss of loved ones and insanity, are perfectly integrated

in Poe’s probably most famous poem, The Raven. In the poem, the narrator is sitting in his

home library on a December midnight, when he suddenly hears a tapping at his door. He

becomes more and more uneasy by the tapping, as he was contemplating his now ended

relationship with his wife, Lenore. This, as we see, is again the topic of bitterness and sorrow

which he feels for losing his beloved wife. The topic of insanity comes when he tries to elicit

answers from the raven, about why it is there, what his name is, and why it cannot leave him

alone in his suffering. Whatever the question he asks, the raven can only answer with one

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word: “Nevermore”. This constantly repeated word has two roles in the poem. First of all, as

it gives no real answer to the questions, it drives the narrator crazy that the raven can only say

this. Secondly, it represents the total hopelessness and despair of the man, who cannot ever

again talk to or see his wife.

At this point, it must be noted that there is something else common in many of his works

besides the topics. This is the use of first person singular and/or unnamed narrators. It gives

the impression that Poe does not want to create external characters, but tell the stories as if

they were his own experiences. It also strengthens the assumption that there is a close

correlation between his life and works, that is, he is the subject who went through all the

events present in his writings.

4. Summary

Answering the original question whether Poe simply implanted his life events into his

works or he was a conscious writer who used efficient literary devices to attract or amaze his

readers, we can say that he successfully combined these two. We saw that from the beginning

of his childhood, he basically lost everyone he loved and could rely on. It is hence not

surprising that he went crazy and turned to alcohol and possibly other mind altering

substances to survive. However, besides these, he found the best available way to cope with

these memories, experiences, and feelings: writing. Even if he probably could not name the

exact source of the problem that was on his mind, he started writing, projected his own soul

onto the paper, relived his unbearable memories, but at the same time used splendid literary

devices to create some of the most shocking, depressing, and still wonderful pieces of literary

works.

His ability to build on his own terrible life and writing in high consciousness makes Edgar

Allan Poe one of the greatest artists ever. The literary devices he used were strongly

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characteristic of his style. His life and works could be summarized with one of his most

famous quotes: “I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.” While being sane,

life was unbearable and meaningless for him. But while being insane? That was the time

when he could really live and create.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Collins, P. (2014). Edgar Allan Poe: The Fever Called Living. New York, USA: Amazon

Publishing

Lemoine Didier, E. (2017). Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Tales and Poems +

Biography of the Author (The Greatest Writers of All Time). USA: Book House Publishing.

Wagenknecth, E. (1963). Edgar Allan Poe: The Man Behind The Legend. United

Kingdom: Endeavour Media Ltd.

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