The author with a sickly pallor and a sordid raven
I became insane, with long stretches of horrible sanity. — Edgar Allan Poe
What is so special about Edgar Allan Poe — that his stories are so frighteningly tragic and disturbingly macabre or that they mirror his own tragic life (he was the quintessential tortured artist), or that he redefined the genre of horror stories?
You be the judge!
The psychology of guilt and madness
While themes of death, madness and goth run amok in Poe’s famous stories — “the black cat” and “the tell tale heart”, what is central to both is the guilt of the narrators as they commit meticulously explained murders, the guilt that finally leads them to break down and confess their crimes.
In “the black cat” the narrator, an alcoholic, is driven to passionate fury by his pet cat — for in his drunken stupor he believes — the cat is avoiding him. In a fit of rage, the narrator gouges out the cat’s eye and consequently the cat is actually intimidated by the narrator, which further infuriates him. Finally, the narrator hangs the cat in a tree in his garden thus killing it. Following this, a string of bad luck follows him, which culminates with his house burning down. The narrator then finds another cat which is exactly similar to the one he hanged — even blind in one eye but with one difference — a spot of white fur. Thus his torments begin anew. This, one can argue is a figment of the narrator’s guilt, and a manifestation of his descent into lunacy.
Pluto — this was the cat’s name — was my favourite pet and playmate. I alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about the house.
That’s how the narrator describes his cat in the beginning of the story. This love, however, soon translates into frenzied bitterness, as he writes,
This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself — to offer violence to its own nature — to do wrong for the wrong’s sake only — that urged me to continue and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute. One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree; — hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart […]
The cat is merely symbolic, its not the murder of the cat that is central to the plot of the story, but the murder of narrator’s wife, something that happens near the end of the story. This story is often referred to in the genre of “fantastic” — a literary category that contains elements of both the rational and the irrational, both supernatural and logical. The appearance of the second cat could be a supernatural plot twist or it could very well be explained by the resultant irrationality of the narrator’s madness.
“The tell tale heart” unfolds in a similar manner, the narrator tries to convince the reader of his sanity constantly, while simultaneously describing how he carried out the cold blooded murder of an old man because he found the latter’s “vulture like eyes”, rather unsettling.
I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture –a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees — very gradually –I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.
The entire story is a detailed admission of the murder, blow by blow as it may, while, quite ironically, the relationship between the narrator and the old man is never specified — the latter could be his father or his employer or his landlord. The narrator then dismembers the corpse and buries it underneath the floor — a feat he describes very proudly. However, he is soon tormented by the sound of a beating heart that comes from underneath the same floor board — again a manifestation of his guilt. This torment finally drives him to confess his heinous crime.
Not only are the plot twists interesting to the point of fantastic, but the grisly settings both the stories and most importantly the first person narration of the macabre murders, make for very gripping read. To see the world from the point of view of an unhinged mind, to be walked through the motivations of an addled brain to commit murders, happens to be a rare treat — and it should not be missed.
The tragedy that was Poe’s life
One would argue, to write something so ghastly, one must be distressed in his own life, and it would be an accurate argument. Poe’s life was nothing if not utterly tragic and painfully unfair.
Poe was born in Boston in 1809 and when he was very young, his father abandoned him and his mother — who ended up dying just a year later. Poe was then raised by his god-parents, who never formally adopted him and with whom he regularly clashed for money. Poe attended the University of Virginia, where apparently, he had to burn his furniture to keep warm, for his godfather refused to give him any money. As a result of poverty he had to drop out altogether. To earn money, Poe enrolled himself in the United States Army. At this stage, his Godfather came for his rescue and got him out by paying (apparently something you could do those days). Poe’s miseries were far from over — on his return he found his fiance and the love of his life, had betrayed him and married someone else.
Poe began his writing career in the meanwhile, writing prose and poetry and also working for journals and periodicals, reviewing countless books. He married his 13 year old cousin out of love and thus began his poverty stricken family life. Poe’s misfortunes quickly caught up with him, as his wife died at the age of 24 of tuberculosis (the same age his mother had died years ago).
Merely two years after his wife’s death, Poe, who was driven to depression and alcoholism, was found delirious and in great distress in the streets of Baltimore. He was moved to a hospital, where he eventually passed away, at the age of 40. His body was buried “in an unmarked grave” — a testimony to how extraordinarily unfair life had been for this very talented gentleman.
Poe’s misfortunes with women, that started as early as his mother’s untimely death, inspired several of his stories, including the very famous, “The fall of the house of the Usher” and “Ligeia”, central to both of which is the tragic death of a beautiful woman. In both the stories, the dead women later appear as phantoms — as embodiments of the supernatural. Poe says,
The death of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such a topic are those of a bereaved lover.
The murders in the Rue Morgue
(And the invention of the armchair detective)
Poe is often credited with developing modern detective fiction, he created the character C. Auguste Dupin, a quintessential armchair detective, who uses his genius and ability to make logical deductions to solve crimes that baffle the police. He wrote three stories featuring the detective, “The murders in the Rue Morgue”, followed by “The mystery of Marie Roget ‘’ and “The purloined letter”.
Poe’s biographer Jeffrey Meyers sums up the significance of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by saying it “changed the history of world literature.” Often cited as the first detective story, the character of Dupin became the prototype for many future fictional detectives, including Aurthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot. The genre is distinctive from a general mystery story in that the focus is on analysis. Poe’s role in the creation of the detective story is reflected in the Edgar Awards, given annually by the Mystery Writers of America.
The story is about the double murder case of Madame L’Espanaye and her daughter, in the ficticious street of Rue Morgue in Paris. What stumps the police are the following two facts, 1. the neighbours hear a rather singular accent besides the screams of the victims and 2. the utterly gruesome manner in which the bodies were found. The daughter was strangled to death and her body was thrust upside down in the chimney with great force. The mother’s corpse was found in the courtyard below, bones shattered and her throat so severely cut that her head separated from the body when she was moved. Dupin solves the crime out of his penchant for solutions and refuses to accept any monetary reward for his feat.
“The mystery of Marie Roget” and “The Purloined letter”, begin similarly, narrated by Dupin’s friend who thinks highly of the detective’s analytical skills. All the three stories deliver Poe’s innate narration of the macabre and horror, with the added edge of suspense and the charm of a transcendent detective. For someone with a penchant for detective stories, if you haven’t read Poe’s works, I would suggest you start with “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”.
The sinister tale of “the Raven”
The Raven is unquestionably the most famous and highly quoted poems by the author. It is a testament to Poe’s proclivity for the themes of love and death and the supernatural. In the poem, the narrator is tormented by a raven that refuses to leave his chamber. The narrator begs the ominous bird to answer his desperate questions about his life but the raven always gives the same answer “nevermore”. As the poem goes on, it’s as if the speaker intentionally crafts questions that will cause him the most pain when he hears the answer he knows the raven is going to give: “nevermore.”
The poem has deeper layers, the narrator while being tortured by the sinister bird, is actually mourning the death of his lover, Lenore. We can conclude she is the woman the narrator pines for, that she was the one who lived in the same house and sat in the same chair as the narrator and he is deeply agonized by her absence. Furthermore, like several other Poe’s works, the narrator desperately tries to rationalise the bird’s ability to speak (and thus his own sanity) and the reason why the bird will speak only one word — nevermore.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore —
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“‘Tis some visiter,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door —
Only this and nothing more.”
The poem is written beautifully, with alliterations, allusions, rhymes and copious imageries. The poem ends in a grim note, when the narrator asks the bird if he will reunite with Lenore in heaven and it says, “nevermore”.
“The Raven” has inspired many works of literature including Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” and Paul Gaugin’s painting titled “nevermore”.
If you haven’t read Poe yet, I sincerely hope you would after my (rather tedious!) account of his spectacular writing and his dismal personal life. The tragedy of Poe’s life is a testament of the society’s inability to appreciate talent when they live. Poe might have achieved scores of accolades after he died, but his life was still a sordid affair — to say the least. Is concluding that his struggles were imperative to his success, undercutting his talents? Possibly.
What are your opinions? I am eager to know!
Thank you for making till the end! Please, leave your comments!
