Poes Real-life Experiences and Issues in His Dark, Pessimistic Literary Works - Essay Example

26 November Poe’s Real-life Experiences and Issues in His Dark, Pessimistic Literary Works Edgar Allan Poe is known as the writer who invented horror and detective literary genres. His stories have real-life substance for they are as dark, mysterious, and remarkable as his real life. Edgar Poe was born on July 19, 1809 to David Poe and Eliza Arnold. In his father’s side of the family, alcoholism was prevalent, and it soon took a toll on David until he decided to leave his family, when Edgar was barely three years old (Iszaj and Demetrovics 1615). From here, Edgar suffered other traumatic experiences that must have shaped both his personality and writing content and style. Edgar Allan Poe used his literary works to cope with real-life problems and vent out frustrations, where his traumatic childhood and adult life experiences and substance abuse also manifest in the darkness and negativity of his literary works. Edgar Allan Poe abused several substances in his life, which reflected in his works. Poe has used opium since his youth. His nurse used opium and laudanum to calm him down during his childhood (Iszaj and Demetrovics 1615). This drug-based treatment suggests that like Poe’s sister, Rosalie, who had a mental illness, Poe might be suffering from an emotional or mental illness too. This could not have been surprising, for the paper, since he endured the loss of many loved ones, all direct family members, at such a young age. Poe’s substance abuse reflected in his writings too. Some of his characters are also substance abusers who experienced depression and hallucinations. For instance, in one of his stories, “Ligeia,” the narrator loved Ligeia, his first wife, so passionately that when she died from sickness, he became addicted to opium. It is an example of how Poe’s own addictions shaped his stories and their characters, as if doing so helped him release the tensions of his life. In addition, because of drug use, Poe suffered from hallucinations, and so did some of his story characters (Iszaj and Demetrovics 1616). The narrator of “Ligeia,” for instance, had hallucinations from opium use, such as when the furnishings of his house take surreal forms and colors: Wild visions, opium-engendered, flitted, shadow-like, before me. I gazed with unquiet eye upon the sarcophagi in the angles of the room, upon the varying figures of the drapery, and upon the writhing of the parti-colored fires in the censer overhead” (Poe). These hallucinations do not only distort the physical environment, but for the paper, it represents the mental and emotional tortures that the character experiences. The narrator notes his misery after losing his wife: “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 Rhine” (Poe “Ligeia”). Poe expresses the narrator’s mental anguish, that, substance abuse reinforces, through depicting the darkness that his characters feel inside them. The paper thinks that the same darkness is inside Poe, which substance abuse somewhat relives temporarily, but worsens in the long run through increasing depression. To continue with these substance abuse problems, Poe, like his father, abused alcohol at some points in his life. Alcohol abuse may be a way of dealing with life problems, such as being heartbroken and dealing with a potentially untreated mental illness (Iszaj and Demetrovics 1616). Illness, substance abuse, and death are mainstays in Poe’s stories, such as “The Black Cat” (on alcoholism and murder), “Ligeia” (opium addiction after death of wife), and “The Tell-Tale Heart” (on mental illness and murder). In “The Black Cat,” the narrator admits his alcoholism and how it changes his temper and moods, making him more verbally and physically abusive towards his pets and wife: But my disease grew upon me - for what disease is like Alcohol! - and at length even Pluto, who was now becoming old, and consequently somewhat peevish - even Pluto began to experience the effects of my ill temper. (Poe “Black Cat”). Like the narrator, the paper suggests that Poe also had a tortured soul. Violence in his stories projects the violence he feels inside him. In particular, alcohol abuse may be a way of treating childhood trauma of a father leaving the Poes, when they were young, and a mother dying at a young age too (Iszaj and Demetrovics 1615). Alcoholism, after all, is often connected to personal problems, since drinking can make one forget them. Anger does not fully dissipate, however, due to the injustice one might feel from these horrible losses. Apart from abusing substances to deal with life’s difficulties, Edgar Allan Poe uses his stories to vent his frustrations in life. Poe was frustrated in love and he expressed love’s frustrations in murder plots. His heart was broken when he was young and his young wife dies early of tuberculosis. The feeling of loss of loved ones seems to be a consistent theme in his life, which also appear in his stories. His marriage to his cousin is replicated in “Berenice,” while the loss of beautiful young wives is described in “The Black Cat” and “Ligeia.” The narrator, opium-drugged, calls to his wife, as if his calls can bring her back ro life: In the excitement of my opium dreams (for I was habitually fettered in the shackles of the drug) I would call aloud upon her name…as if, through the wild eagerness, the solemn passion, the consuming ardor of my longing for the departed, I could restore her to the pathway she had abandoned --ah, could it be forever? --upon the earth.” (Poe “Ligeia”). Like Poe, the narrator feels the enormous burden of loneliness without his beloved. These romantic frustrations are also transformed to gruesome murders of women, as in “The Black Cat” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.” When the narrator sees Lady Madeline in the“The Fall of the House of Usher,” he notices: “There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame” (Poe). Her own brother has killed her because of his madness. The paper argues that these murders might be a product of violent suicide intentions. Perhaps, after the different heartbreaking events in his life, Poe wanted to kill himself, for his loved ones have all died already too. His writings, however, saved him because they are outlets of his anger and misery. Aside from love, Poe is frustrated with his military career and he shows this frustration through protagonists who are also frustrated with their careers. Poe lost his potential military profession, which might have increased his anxieties in life. He was already showing good performance in the military, but he failed a muster that forced him to leave the armed forces behind (Iszaj and Demetrovics 1615). Poe became a writer, which could have helped him cope with numerous traumatic experiences, but subsequent losses of loved ones, career options, and the existence of mentally-troubled personality could have pushed him to substance abuse and repressed depression (Iszaj and Demetrovics 1617) that reflected in his story, “The Fall of the House of Usher.” In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Neilson asserts that “Roderick is the artist who must destroy himself in order to create; the entire story is a symbolic enactment of the Apocalypse according to Poe” (2). Roderick is a frustrated artist, who discovers that destroying his sister helps him replace what he has lost. The paper agrees with Neilson that writing may have some protective effects for Poe’s depression, but in his stories, his characters get no relief at all. Instead, Usher falls into a psychosis that drives him mad in the end. Madness over unmet self-expectations in Poe’s occupation is also visible in his stories. Finally, Edgar Allan Poe uses storytelling to express the negativity of his perceptions of human existence. Poe himself did not grow in a “normal family,” and instead, he was an adopted child who might not have received enough love and support from those who adopted him, so he might see families as meaningless. Several stories showed the negative perceptions of life. The narrator in “The Black Cat” kills his wife because of depression and mental illness. Poe describes the murderous deed after his wife tries to stop him from killing their cat, Pluto: “Goaded, by the interference, into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot, without a groan.” The paper notes that the negativity of the character is based more on his mental illness, and yet the violence in the story is utterly inhumane that his darkness inside becomes terrifyingly hard to justify. The paper infers that when the character kills his loved one, it is an indication of Poe’s loss of humanity inside him that his grotesque stories absorbed. To expound Poe’s negative perceptions in life further, the paper argues that his gloom also depicts his pessimism over human nature. Several stories reveal madness and inhumanity combined. In another story, Egaeus violates his dead wife’s grave to get her teeth because of his obsession over it in “Berenice.” Her teeth are perfection and something to be coveted, but her death increases his desire for her teeth even more. From this story, it is asserted that Poe is obsessed with death because of several important people who died in his life. In a way, “Berenice” suggests that death is the end of all pain and loneliness, a cynical way of seeing life in death. Death is central to Poe’s stories, especially the death of beautiful women (“Ligeia” and “Berenice”) and the downfall of arrogant men (in “The Masque of Red Death”). Premature burial in “Berenice” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” can mean that Poe feels that he has died early too with the death of his loved ones. Several stories have premature burial plots, such as “Berenice,” “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Premature Burial.” In “Berenice,” Poe juxtaposes two hair-raising images: the menial’s talk about “a disfigured body enshrouded, yet still breathing - still palpitating - still alive” and the narrator’s clothing that was “muddy and clotted with gore” and the falling of “thirty-two small, white and ivory-looking substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor.” He does not only violate his wife’s grave, it is also possible that he consciously buried her alive to get her teeth. The interpretation of the paper for this is that the burying represents repressed emotions and ideas. Poe writes stories that speak of his morbid ideas about life, where life is as cold and terrifying as death. Moreover, Poe is also obsessed with the thin line between dreams and waking (Rollason 45), which may suggest his thinking, that, reality is misleading. Dreaming is present in the hallucinations of several characters in the stories, where Poe fuses the self and the world (Taylor 364). The narrator of the “The Black Cat” is haunted by sounds that only he can hear: “I was answered by a voice from within the tomb! - by a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman - a howl…” The narrator has lost his wits, where he can no longer distinguish reality from hallucinations. The paper thinks that Poe feels the same when writing. When writing, he can hardly live his real life because he lives through his characters. The escape is always temporary though, which is why he also used several substances. The death of loved ones never ceased to hurt him; they always haunted him and he wanted to bury them. Poe is a fantastic writer because drugs and alcohol allow him to expand these stories to morbid proportions. But more than that, he has real-life issues and events that provide content for his pessimistic view of life, which is present in his stories. If his stories are full of mental illnesses, it is because he was mentally ill too. If his stories are always ending in sadness and death, it is because his life felt that way. If his stories are swimming in isolation and doubt, it is because the father of horror and detective writing has lost his self-confidence in his capacity for joy and success. Poe’s darkest fantasies are based on his darkest realities- and that is the greatest story he told and never told. Works Cited Iszaj, Fruzsina, and Zsolt Demetrovics. “Balancing Between Sensitization and Repression: The Role of Opium in the Life and Art of Edgar Allan Poe and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.” Substance Use & Misuse 46.13 (2011): 1613-1618. Academic Search Premier. Web. 22 Nov. 2013. Neilson, Keith. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Masterplots, 4th ed (2010). Literary Reference Center. Web. 22 Nov. 2013. Poe, Edgar Allan. “Berenice.” Web. 22 Nov. 2013. ---. “Ligeia.” Web. 22 Nov. 2013. ---. “The Black Cat.” Web. 22 Nov. 2013. ---. “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Web. 22 Nov. 2013. --- “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Web. 22 Nov. 2013. Rollason, Christopher. “Tell-Tale Signs - Edgar Allan Poe and Bob Dylan: Towards a Model of Intertextuality.” Atlantis 31.2 (2009): 41-56. Academic Search Premier. Web. 22 Nov. 2013. Taylor, Matthew A. “The Nature of Fear: Edgar Allan Poe and Posthuman Ecology.” American Literature 84.2 (2012): 353-379. Literary Reference Center. Web. 22 Nov. 2013. Read More