Edgar Allen Poe and the Fall of Mankind - Term Paper Example

Edgar Allen Poe and the Fall of Mankind The short story is an art form that was first mastered by the 19th century writer Edgar Allen Poe. In perfecting this form, Poe said “If any literary work is too long to be read at one sitting, we must be content to dispense with the immensely important effect derivable from unity of impression” (Mowery, 1997). Frequently parodied for his dark personality and gloomy outlook, most of Poe’s stories are memorable because of the way that he uses in-depth imagery and descriptions based on binary oppositions to help build the suspense and horror of his tales. As Mowery explains, binary oppositions are things such as hot and cold, male and female, dark and light. “It is in the subtle shifts in our expectations of the character that tension and conflict are developed” (Mowery, 1997). In stories such as “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Cask of Amontillado” and “Ligeia” and even in his poetry, such as in “The Haunted Mansion”, Poe employs binary oppositions and other techniques to illustrate his convictions regarding the fall of nobility in his society. In discussing the relationship between the brother and sister in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe presents a very Freudian perspective on the way they relate to each other. “Roderick is the ego or consciousness which attempts to bury the primitive impulses of the id, Madeline. The narrator in this reading functions as the superego, an awareness of standards and conventions that mediates between the twins” (Heim, 1994). Roderick is presented first as a poet and artist, living in this house of woe while Madeline appears as a ghostly, wraithlike figure. He is the positive side of the opposition because he is the logical male and is the representative of nobility and continuation of the family line. This is made clearer as the twins appear in their first scene together. “’Her decease,’ he said, with a bitterness which I can never forget, ‘would leave him (him the hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race of the Ushers.’ While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for so she was called) passed slowly through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared” (Poe, 1997). In a world that makes sense, she should remain mostly a part of the background scenery, but Poe does not allow this to happen as he upends the world by placing female power over that of the male. The night of the storm, Roderick is seen in the narrator’s room. “His head had dropped upon his breast … he rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and uniform sway” (Poe, 1997) while he is aware that Madeline, buried alive in the crypt below, has been struggling for many days to escape her tomb. While Roderick is incapable of facing his ghastly mistake in order to rectify it, Madeline appears in the doorway with “blood upon her white robes and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame” (Poe, 1997). Despite the man’s literal attempt to bury the female, she has risen again and demands his death. This idea of the undead female exacting revenge has led to some critics interpreting the work as a vampire story with Madeline in the pivotal role. Lyle Kendall points to several examples in the story that indicate Madeline’s role as a vampire, including her brother’s wan, anemic appearance, her ability to stupefy their guest with little more than a passing glance, the “mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip” (Poe, 1997). Her superhuman ability to escape a sealed coffin and bolted door are two more reasons he provides for this view (Kendall, 1963). In this view, Madeline has been feeding off of her brother ever since his return home, continuing to weaken him, but is prevented from leaving to find new strength by the knowledgeable doctors and her own brother’s ability to keep her locked away. While this seems to suggest that the male has triumphed, it is clear at the end of the story, with both twins falling dead on a collapsing floor, that the female has had her way and the narrator is left to flee with images that will haunt him forever. While Poe does not explicitly state where his story “The Cask of Amontillado” is set, he provides several clues that it is in Italy. The first of these clues is in the names of the characters, Fortunato and Montresor, both of which have Italian origins. This concept is reinforced when the narrator tells his reader, “He [Fortunato] prided himself upon his connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians have the true virtuoso spirit” (Poe, 2003). However, much the story happens not on the Italian streets, but deep underground within the burial crypts (serving double duty as a wine cellar) of the Montresor family palazzo, or large home, mansion or palace. The narrator of the story makes it clear that his intention is revenge against another noble house for a perceived wrong. “I must not only punish, I must punish with impunity. A wrong is undressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong” (Poe, 2003). From here, the plot moves straight forward, beginning with the trickery that brought Fortunato deep into the ancestral burial crypt of Montresor’s ancestors and beyond the hearing of even the most sensitive servant to the final walling in of the victim. The depth of his plotting is revealed when he indicates to the reader the way in which he ensured no one would witness his crime. “There were no attendants at home; they had absconded to make merry in honour of the time. I had told them that I should not return until the morning, and had given them explicit orders not to stir from the house. These orders were sufficient, I well knew, to insure their immediate disappearance, one and all, as soon as my back was turned” (Poe, 2003). Montresor indicates throughout his story how he planned and prepared for his crime, timing it so as to keep his face hidden while he lured his victim to the appropriate location, choosing a site from which his victim’s screams would not be heard and preparing the site in advance with stones and mortar. In the end, he can’t help but brag about his cleverness, “For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. In pace requiescat!” (Poe, 2003). Not only does this story recount the fall of a noble house in Fortunato’s death, but also suggests the fall of the Montressor’s as well, highlighting the particular hidden madness that afflicts the family. In “Ligeia,” the figure of Ligeia herself symbolizes the concept of an idolatrous love that is pushed into the realm of obsession, again employing the use of the male/female binary opposition to illustrate the fall of mankind. That this character is herself a captivating mystery is illustrated in the narrator’s own admission that he knew very little of his wife. “I cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely where, I first became acquainted with the lady Ligeia … I have never known the paternal name of her who was my friend and my betrothed” (Poe, 2003). In making this admission of her mysterious origins, Poe reveals the degree to which his own murky beginnings alienated him from himself. According to Mike Campbell (2007), the name provided the character was one given to one of the Sirens of Greek myth. According to legend, these sirens always lead men to their doom through the sound of their voice as they sing. This aspect of her character is emphasized by the way in which Ligeia is described as she takes on almost super-human qualities. Physically, she reminds us of the ancient Greek statues of feminine perfection, possessing the alabaster skin similar to marble, the larger than ordinary eyes and the “dear music of her low, sweet voice” (Poe, 2003). The degree of her education and intelligence place her beyond the scope of ordinary women during this time period even as her incredible inner passion belies the outward calm of a well-bred lady. “Like one of those angelic women, cut from the romantic poems, Ligeia is the epitome of physical beauty and cunning intelligence. A true ‘femme fatale’ whom Poe mystifies” (de Mancelos, 1997). However, the love represented by Ligeia is not the soft, motherly love of a companion but is instead a passion-filled possessive love as Poe desired to possess himself. The character of Ligeia dies from some wasting illness, but is not permitted to pass away entirely. Poe uses his characteristic madness as a means of illustrating how this character becomes a part of the narrator’s being. This occurs as he worships the figure before him, which “passed into my spirit, there dwelling as in a shrine” (26). The strength of this connection is made apparent as the female character again becomes capable of sustaining a will strong enough to circumvent death and find a means of returning to the object of its affection. This strength of affection leads directly to the final scene, in which Ligeia is perceived to have reanimated and transformed the body of Rowena to that of Ligeia. It is “the vengeance of the former wife over the second one. An improbable and exquisite punishment … by which Ligeia enters and possesses Rowena’s body, to impose herself on her husband” (de Mancelos, 1997). As with Madeline in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Ligeia is able to overcome death itself in order to assert her desire upon the figure of the male, again turning the world upside down and crushing the nobility of man under her. Not quite fitting into the definition of lyrical, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Haunted Palace” can best be classified as an allegorical poem that also highlights this same sense of the fall of nobility. Full of classic imagery and metaphors, the somewhat stuttering meter and language serve the author’s purpose in suggesting a man decaying into madness. Because of this slow decay and the lament of “the olden / Time long ago!” (11-12), the poem could almost be considered elegiac. Throughout the poem, Poe develops his theme of a brilliant, youthful mind lost to tragedy, decay and madness through a complex set of metaphors and imagery. “In the monarch Thought’s dominion” (5) suggests the palace of the mind while “Banners yellow, glorious, golden, / On its roof did float and flow” (9) is classic imagery used to describe a blonde-headed youth. That the mind in question was brilliant and good is suggested in: A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty Was but to sing, In voices of surpassing beauty, The wit and wisdom of their king. (29-32) Decay creeps in toward the end of the poem as “evil things in robes of sorrow” (33) that “old time entombed” (40). Images such as the “red-litten windows” (42) symbolizing red-rimmed eyes, “a ghastly rapid river” (45) and “a hideous throng” (47) symbolizing thoughts and ideas turned bad, work together to complete the horror of the poem. Throughout his stories and poetry, Poe continues to use psychological concepts to surprise and upset the reader, revealing how the social order of the world is breaking down and nobility is fallen. In stories such as “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “Ligeia”, he focuses on upsetting commonly held binary oppositions that indicate the male is the stronger of the species and more capable of overcoming the uncontrolled and unpredictable forces of nature. He does this by allowing the women to dominate over the psyches of the men, enthralling them to the point where they no longer retain their noble spirit. In other stories, such as “The Cask of Amontillado”, Poe demonstrates the fall of nobility through the petty revenge plots of those members of noble families who have become insane perhaps through the thinning of the bloodline. This theme can be traced through many of Poe’s writings even while other themes are equally well-developed. This is the brilliance of Poe. Works Cited Kendall, Lyle H. Jr. “The Vampire Motif in ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’” College English. Vol. 24, N. 4, (March 1963), pp. 450-53. de Mancelos, Joao. “How to Murder a Young and Beautiful Woman: Death in Edgar Allan Poe’s Gothic Tales.” Alfarrabio. 1997. Mowery, Carl. “An Overview to ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’” Short Stories for Students. Gale Research, 1997. Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Cask of Amontillado.” Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Aerie Books, (2003). Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Haunted Palace.” Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. Ed. S.T. Joshi. California: Aerie Publishing. 50-51. Poe, Edgar Allen. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Project Gutenberg. May 8, 2009 Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Black Cat” and “Ligeia.” Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Aerie Books, (2003). Read More