Gloom and Terror in the works of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe has captivated readers for over a century with his terrifying poems and short stories. His success is due to the careful approach used in the building of suspense. The feeling of gloom and terror is the effect found in the majority of Poe's work and is created through many poetic and literary devices. Poe brings the reader into the dreary atmosphere of all his works through his use of gloom and terror.
The root of Edgar Allan Poe's writing stems back to his tragic life. Every women Poe loved was a victim of the plague, tuberculosis. The many references to the "Red Plague" in Poe's work, as well as the focus on the death of beauty, love, and innocence, are attributed to the deaths of these women. Poe was the second child of three and was born in 1809 to Eliza and David Poe. When Poe was one year old his father abandoned his family, leaving Eliza Poe the burden of raising three children by herself. His mother became a victim of Tuberculosis just as Edgar was turning three, scarring Poe for the remainder of his life. "Mr. Silverman, a biographer, also recognizes that the heart of Poe's work and its continuing appeal lies in a lifelong preoccupation with his mother's death"(Salamon). His foster mother, Mrs. Allan, also died of tuberculosis in 1830.
After his stepmother's death Poe attended the University of Richmond, only to be expelled due to his lack of funding. Poe sunk into a life of poverty, gambling, and alcoholism, which later led to his attempted suicide in 1849. In 1837, Poe married his first cousin, Virginia. They were married for ten years until she contracted tuberculosis and passed away. Poe disappeared the week before he died. It is not quite known what happened to him during this time, however it has been speculated that he either died from alcohol poisoning or of rabies, on October 7, 1849.
Poe used a number of poetic devices to relate the feeling of depression and sorrow into the minds and hearts of his readers. These devices are present throughout all of Poe's works and are quite easy to recognized. Adding to the grotesque and arabesque nature of a particular writing, these devices transforms the words into an almost song-like melody.
The device of alliteration in poetry helps to grab the readers attention to minute details. "Critics often point to "The Raven" for its song like flow and creative use of alliteration"(Carlson 79). One of the many examples of alliteration found in "The Raven" is the following: "Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before"(Poe 86,87). This passage demonstrates alliteration being used to emphasize sounds of words over the meanings of words. The repetition of the "D" sound allows the words to flow and the reader's mind to easily take in a line and not focus on one indivisual word.
Another device commonly appearing in Poe's works is assonance, the resemblance of sound especially of vowels in stressed syllables. This method is practical when making the reader view ideas and situations through Poe's perspective and opinion. In this way, Poe persuades the reader to connect with and feel the same desperate feelings that are experienced by the narrator. Assonance is used to lull the reader into accepting the speaker's perception of a raven without suggesting other causes of raven's arrival such as in this passage "Whether Tempter sent, of whether tempest tossed thee here ashore"(Poe 86,87). The similarity of each word causes the reader to skip along the passage instead of stumble.
Internal rhyme also helps to maintain the reader's focus on the gloomy setting of a story or poem. By allowing the reader to unconsciously focus attention on the important meanings of words, the reading of Poe's work becomes an enjoyment instead of a tedious task. In this way the reader does not have to concentrate on each individual word to obtain the sinister significance of Poe's writing.
Onomatopoeia is the key component which lulls the reader into the darkness and horror of Poe's stories. Through his use of onomatopoeia he is able to describe, in detail, the horrible anxieties present in a character or setting. In "The Bells" Poe's use of onomatepia adds a stunning reality to the poem. He used words that sharply describe sounds such as "chiming, shrieking, clang, clash, twanging, and clanging"(Bagert 25). These words all describe the sounds which bells make. Each word although only slightly different, is combined with the context to create a distinctly different feeling. The sound of the bell shrieking, for example, invokes more fear than the sound of the bell chiming.
Through grammatical devices and skillful writing Poe creates an eerie overtone, which can be detected in all of his works. This overtone is best described as grotesque and arabesque. Poe's use of dark gothic characters produce a haunting feeling, involving the reader within the plot and creating the thought that perhaps the reader, himself, is being watched. The psychological terror and insanity a character undergoes is ingrained into the reader's head and heart.
Poe focussed on internal problems which everyone can relate to by using mainly obsessive compulsive qualities in his characters. The reader is brought to feel the evil within characters as they are pushed to their limits and even almost justified in their bizarre actions. Therefore, the reader often feels sympathy for the character, although he is committing malicious acts. As the reader progresses through one of Poe's stories he involuntarily rides an emotional roller coaster with many unforeseen twists and turns.
As Poe wrote short stories, many things were kept in mind. Wanting a story to be read in one sitting, Poe would condense a complicated plot that carefully built to a sharp terrifying climax and was concluded with a quick denouement, left the reader in a dismal stupor. Poe kept the focus of a story on creating would a single effect, such as fear. This single effect would hold true from the opening sentence through to the closing sentence.
Many literary conventions added to the morose mood of short stories. One of the most popular literary devices found in Poe's stories are unnamed narrators. By not giving the narrator a name the reader automatically relates to the narrator as a friend, for there is no need for an introduction. In many of Poe's stories, a killer will murder for insignificant reasons, claiming he is not insane and leaves the reader feeling pity for the mentally unsound individual. This character quite frequently says the opposite of what he really means and gives himself away. The killer always buries his victims under ground level; alluding to the constant geographical movement downwards. This symbolism of downward movement relates the killer to his miserable movement to the depths of hell.
The poetry of Poe also strikes fear into the heart of the reader. Poe believed that a poem should not be written in order to teach a moral lesson, but rather simply for the poem's sake. It was with this idea that Poe created poems such as "The Raven" and "To Helen." Poe's poetry exhibits the creation of beauty and expression of emotions such as fear, love, sadness, and terror. Each poem was created as an outlet for emotion and was also written to invoke a particular feeling within the heart of a reader. The originality of Poe's poetry, by the use of new innovations and philosophies, helped to create perhaps the most terrorizing poems known to modern man.
The majority of Poe's stories transpire in a slowly deteriorating environment. By doing this Poe reflects the impending psychological collapse of his main character.
The typical Poe story occurs within the mind of a poet; and its characters are not independent personalities, but allegorical figures representing the warring principles of the poet's divided nature....The action of the story is the dreaming soul's gradual emancipation from earthly attachments....Poe's typical story presents some such struggle between the visionary and the mundane; and the duration of Poe's typical story is the duration of a dream.(Wilbur 117)
This demonstrates Poe's own belief in the resonating universe. He invokes his characters to enact the tensions between life and death, sanity and madness. The heroes of his stories are rarely ever to be seen in the light of day and "Almost never does a Poe hero breathe the same air that the others breathe"(Wilbur 103). The hero is always in a tightly sealed "bubble" or is slowly trapping himself within a bubble. In this way Poe describes the gloom of psychic dissolution.
One of Poe's requisites for the character is a close and claustrophobic setting. The characters of Poe's work find themselves walled into cellars, tortured in dungeon chambers, and buried alive. The settings are made to portray men meeting with their souls, either in the womb or in the tomb. Both, imagined ideals of the soul and the reality of mortal restriction met by the mechanism of Poe's stories.
Clearly, the effects of gloom and terror are present throughout the many dismal works of Edgar Allan Poe. These characteristics have gained Poe recognition both in American and world literature. The creation of such terrifying and invoking pieces of literature set a new president for all writers. Poe transformed the short story and the idea of poetry through his work, by the unique ways of capturing a reader's attention and emotions. It is for this that Poe will never be forgotten as a great author.
Works Cited
Bagert, Brod. Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Sterling Publishing Company, 1955.
Carlson, Eric The Recognition of Edgar Allan Poe: Selected Criticisms Since 1829. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966.
Poe, Edgar Allan. Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., Inc. 1966.
Salamon, Julie. Vertical File "A Sorrowful Master of the Macabre." December 27, 1991.
Wilbur, Richard. "The House of Poe." Poe, Robert Regen, ed., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc. 1967.