Psychosomatic Disorders and Traumatic Experiences in Poes Real Life - Research Paper Example

Psychosomatic Disorders and Traumatic Experiences in Poe’s Real Life and their Influences on his Writings Psychosomatic disorders and angst in Allan Poe’s works are so dominant that they have always provoked readers to question whether Poe’s works are influenced by his real life experiences. In fact an in-depth analysis of Poe’s works along with his life reveals that the personality disorder, “wounded ego” and “ruptured psyche” of Poe’s protagonists shares his personal as well as real life experiences. Poe’s protagonists are endowed with psychological defects that are supposed to result from a mind which is fraught with fright, haunted with the trepidation of losing the most loved ones and the anger of being abused. Referring to the influence of Poe’s real life experience on his writings, Marie Bonaparte says, “Most critics of Poe’s work analyze it in direct relation to his life experiences in only the most subtle way. Much of his poetry and some of his prose reflect his obsession with the death of a lover” (Bonaparte 623). Poe’s yearnings for his nearest ones’ affection and love –which he lost in his childhood-, were further aggravated by the bitterness of his relationship with his step-father. In fact, the stepfather soon turns Poe’s inferiority-complex, which evolves from the loss of the nearest people, into Oedipal Complex. Beside these traumatic events in his life, Allan Poe has been haunted by nightmares throughout his whole life. Instead of being terrified he soon learnt to manipulate the nightmarish experiences in his writings, as in his book, Edgar Allan Poe, Vincent Buranelli says: He took to inspecting with meticulous exactitude his psychological states when he hovered between sleep and wakefulness, found his mind occupied with shadows of ideas “rather Psychical than intellectual,” and learned to some degree to control them. (26) In a letter to Mr. Allan (April, 1833) Poe acknowledges the presence of a loveless, desolate and austere world in his life. In this world he was suffering from isolation and destitution: “Without friends, without any means, consequently, of obtaining employment, I am perishing — absolutely perishing for want of aid… For God’s sake, pity me and save me from destruction” (O’Neill 7). Noticeably his yearnings for the companionship and compassion of his near people, deteriorated by his stepfather-invoked Oedipal-angst, to a great extent, assists Poe to perceive the revengefulness of a mind infected with inferiority complex. Such perception eventually helps him to conjure up the hideously revengeful character, Montressor, in the story, “the Cask of Amontillado”. Though the “Cask of Amontillado” overridingly reflects the theme of revenge, the evidences of psychological turmoil such as inferiority-complex and Oedipal angst, etc are taken from Poe’s real-life experiences that he himself has been familiar with during his lifetime. Indeed almost of Poe’s protagonists manifest these psychological complexes. Whereas “the Cask of Amontillado”, “The Premature Burial”, “the Black Cat”, “The Tell-tale Heart” etc display Poe’s real-life Oedipal angst and inferiority complex through the protagonists’ paroxysmal personality disorders like murderous intension and alcoholism, other stories like “Ligeia” and “The Raven” exhibit Poe’s longings for camaraderie of his loved ones. These stories reveal a great of the existential void that had been invoked by these losses. Indeed such longings are vividly evident in the necrophilic fantasies of the central characters in works such as “Ligeia” and “The Raven.” Indeed the same existential absurdity and void in Poe’s life has assisted him greatly to conjure up a world that is void of love. This world of Poe is haunted by the fear of death, revenge, and injustice. In this world people are affected with love-sickness, hyperesthesia, hypersensitivity to humiliation, hypochondria, abnormal revengefulness, etc. Such bleak world is also evident in “the Fall of the House of Usher”. The death of Poe’s father, the loss of his mother at his early youth, the death of his beloved wife, the hostility of his step-father Mr. John Allan, his disappointment in love and the following indulgence into alcoholism and gambling etc- all these events and episodes of his life together influenced his writings in a number of ways. Though specific textual evidences from any specific stories cannot be directly connected to a traumatic experience in Poe’s life, the traumatic events and experiences generally have influenced the themes and styles of his stories. For example, “Ligeia” and “Raven” are noteworthy for the protagonists’ necrophilic fantasies that are ultimately the revelations of Poe’s longings for camaraderie. Meanwhile an astute reader will notice the traces of Poe’s hostile relationship with his step-father in the “Cask of Amontillado”. Indeed the Oedipal Complex in this story can be directly related to that relationship. Yet Poe’s experience of “catalepsy” has encroached into his stories like “the Premature Burial” and “the Fall of the House of Usher”. Indeed Poe himself was familiar with catalepsy or the “death like trance” of Jane Craig Stanard, one of his friends’ mother (Silverman 26). But the more or less common themes such as the themes of death, indomitable will to take revenge, love-sickness, inferiority complex, oedipal complex, and other psychological semi-maniacal complexes are the more subtle and complicated influences of Poe’s real life on his writing. Poe’s preoccupation with death in his stories is the reminder of his obsession with the deaths of his beloved mother and wife. Intelligibly in Poe’s stories, “Death” is endowed a two-fold meaning. Primarily death appears, in his stories, as a tyrant that snatches away the most loved ones from a man’s life. Secondly, death is the ultimate and acutest punishment for those who commit crime. In “Raven”, “Ligeia” and “the Fall of the House of Usher” death appears as a snatcher. In these stories, Poe’s protagonists are preoccupied with the deaths of their beloveds. Such preoccupation of Poe’s protagonists with death essentially reflects his obsession with the death of his mother and wife. For a three years old boy Poe, a consumptive mother dying beside him “was never to fade from his memory” (Bonaparte 7). In the story “Ligeia” the narrator protagonist’s obsession with the beautiful and intelligent deceased Ligeia can be viewed as conjuration of his late mother or beloved wife. Regarding Poe’s obsession with death, Georges Zayed says, If death assumed such importance in Poe’s works, it is because more than others he came to know the tragic content of the word—and at a very early age. It struck several times “at his chamber door”; it took away his parents, then Mrs. Allan, his adopted mother, and Mrs. Stanard, and his brother; finally his young wife, his beloved Virginia. How could he have escaped from his obsession with it and from the terror which it instilled in him? (Zayed 93) In this regard Kenneth Silverman comments that Poe’s protagonists’ phantasmal longings for the camaraderie of their deceased lovers are to considered as Poe’s lifetime search for “motherly succor” (45). For Poe, death is the melancholic opposite of love, as he says in “The Philosophy of Composition”, “the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world [and] the lips best suited for such a topic are those of a bereaved lover” (Poe 56). The root of his characters’ phantasmal and necrophilic yearning lies in Poe’s longings for “motherly succor” that was induced by the loss of nearest people. Another poem “Annabel Lee” bears the legacy of Poe’s real-life trauma. The poem can be read as a reference to his cousin-bride Virginia’s death. Referring to Poe’s preoccupation with Virginia’s premature, Bonaparte comments, “Virginia, throughout her short life, remained a child by the side of her mature husband. But he, in infancy had dearly loved his beautiful ailing mother, many and many a year ago” (Bonaparte 127). The necrophilic fantasy a common theme in most of Poe’s stories again occurs at the conclusion of the poem “Annabel Lee”: “Andso, all the nighttide, I lie down by the side / Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride / In her sepulchre by the sea— / In her tomb by the sounding sea” (Poe, “Annabel Lee”) In Allan Poe’s works, death as the highest possible degree of punishment is more subtly associated with his real-life traumatic experiences. Since death is the cruelest demon that robbed Poe of the meaning of his life, for some of Poe’s characters horrible slow death has been used as the ultimate punishment. But the psychology to punish by burying alive originates from Poe’s inferiority that was enflamed by the animosity of his foster-father as well as the lack of emotional support from his near and dear ones. Poe was thoroughly familiar with the inferiority of complex of an orphan and with one’s wounded ego. Referring to Poe’s adamant behavior to stick to his aim while suffering from the inferiority complex, Silverman says, “In wanting to excel and to command, Edgar resembled many other orphans, in whom a feeling of nonexistence and the need to master changeable surroundings can produce a will for power.” (Silverman 25) Indeed for Poe, “to bury alive” and “the fear to be buried alive” have two different meanings. A comprehensive knowledge about Poe’s real-life trauma can assist a reader to pursue the distance between the connotations of these two terms. When in the “Cask of Amontillado” Montressor buries Fortunato alive behind the wall, a horrible revenge motif works behind this burial and “burying alive” is to be considered as the extreme punishment. But here one may ask the question whether Montressor represents Poe’s hatred for this step-father as well as his fate. Indeed it does not matter whether Montressor represents Poe or not, rather it is important that Poe could conjure up character like Montressor because his real-life hatred for his step-father and his fate. Like Montressor and even as Fortunato, Poe was one of those less fortunate people who suffers the pain and suffocation of a buried man while they are alive. (Quinn 45-7) Works Cited Buranelli, Vincent. Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1961. Bonaparte, Marie. The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Translated by John Rodker. London: Imago, 1949. O’Neill, Edward H, ed. Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Tales and Poems. NY: Dorset Press, 1989 Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1941. 500 Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991. Zayed, Georges. The Genius of Edgar Allan Poe. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing Company, Inc., 1985. 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