FREE ESSAY ON EDGAR ALLEN POE

EDGAR ALLEN POE

Edgar Allen Poe's life problems had a profound impact on his various short stories and
poems. Poe's problems started seemingly right after birth. His biological father, David
Poe, Jr., was an alcoholic and often abused Poe (Encyclopedia Americana, 274-275).
Shortly after the age of two, Poe's mother died. He only had memories of her vomiting and
being carried away by sinister men dressed in black, as he put it (American Writers III).
There has been some speculation as to how this affected Poe. According to Marie
Bonaparte, a student of Sigmund Freud, his mother's death caused many mental disorders.
Many agree that it warped him until the day he died. After his mother's death, Poe was
taken into the home of his godfather, John Allen, and his wife. It is believed that John
continued to abuse Poe as his father did. 
At the age of seventeen, Poe attended the University of Virginia for a short time. His
godfather couldn't afford all of the tuition fees, and Poe resorted to gambling as a
means to earn money. From this he accumulated much debt and was forced to drop out of the
university. He returned home, only to find that the girl he loved, Elmira Royster, had
gotten married. He joined the army, but his godfather later purchased his release and
helped him to enroll in West Point Military Academy. Again, Poe's godfather could not
cover the costs, so again, Poe resorted to gambling. He acquired debts of over two
thousand dollars, and was later expelled due to disciplinary problems. After this, Poe's
godfather disowned him, and Poe never attempted to pursue any further education.
Poe began to publish many of his writings. Even though he did have some success, he still
lived in poverty. When he was twenty-seven, Poe married his thirteen year old cousin,
Virginia Clemm. During his marriage, Poe had several extramarital affairs with various
women (Paley).
The biggest of Poe's life problems was alcoholism, which resulted in his being fired from
over twelve journalism jobs. When his wife died in 1847, Poe resorted even further to
alcohol.
I had never swallowed opium before. Laudanum and morphine I had occasionally used, and
about them should have had no reason to hesitate...I would take a very small dose in the
first instance. I would repeat it until I should find an abatement of the fever. This
passage, from Poe's short story, Life in Death, suggests Poe's drug use. It is known that
for medical purposes, Poe used the drug opium, which was, at the time, an
over-the-counter drug. It is speculated that he may have developed an abuse problem. The
opium caused some side effects, and Poe may have used alcohol to try and counteract them,
and possibly took opium to counteract the effects of alcohol, such as the fever mentioned
in the previous passage.
It was extremely likely that Poe had various neurotic problems throughout life; neurotic
instability was a trait that ran in his family (American Writers III). Marie Bonaparte
suggested that he suffered from an Oedipus complex, which typically results in neurotic
disorders in adult life (American Writers III). Alcohol, and possibly drugs, helped Poe
to escape from these neurotic problems, but often they just compounded them, and possibly
caused others.
After his wife's death, Poe was diagnosed as having a brain lesion. This particular
lesion was capable of producing symptoms of insanity, and may have been the result of
Poe's life traumas. It is suspected that Poe may have had sexual problems as well. He was
believed to be impotent, and possibly a necrophiliac (Paley).
Poe's tales were puzzling, mystifying, gruesome and ghastly. The characters of these
tales stand out the most. Many were homicidal, and the murderers often tortured their
victims and then killed them savagely. Dismemberment of bodies, along with mutilations
and cannibalism were popular themes in many of his stories (Moskowitz). The characters
seemed to have a natural thirst for torture. My original soul seemed, at once, to take
its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled
every fibre of my frame. I took from my waistcoat pocket a penknife, opened it, grasped
the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket! I
blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity., he wrote in The Black Cat.
Poe's tales often emphasized the fear of death and engulfment by nothingness. Usually
they took place at midnight or in the middle of a bad thunderstorm. Rotting corpses were
a favorite of his tales, and distinct detail was given to their stench and look. In his
story, The Facts of M. Valdemar's Case, it says, ...his whole frame at once - within the
space of a single minute, or even less, shrunk - crumbled - absolutely rotted away
beneath my hands. Upon the bed, before that whole company, there lay a nearly liquid mass
of loathsome - of detestable putrescence.
The question arises whether Poe's various life problems had anything to do with his
stories. It is probable that they had a profound effect on all of his writings. For
instance, some of the characters in his stories used or were addicted to drugs and
alcohol, just as Poe is believed to have been. Many characters were tortured and abused,
as was Poe as a child. The fascination with corpses in his tales could have stemmed from
Poe's alleged necrophilia. The stories he wrote seemed to actually be veiled confessions
of his various problems. All of these problems had been building up in his mind, to the
point where he had to release them into his stories and poems
The people that were tortured in his stories could have been reflective of actual people
in Poe's life. I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not
uncongenial with my own...I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At
length, I even offered her personal violence., he wrote in his story, The Black Cat. This
suggests that he may have been violent with his wife. In the tale, Eleonora, it tells of
the narrator's marriage to his mother's sister, Eleonora, whom for fifteen years roamed I
with Eleonora before love entered within our hearts. This could have been his first wife,
Virginia. 
Since dismemberment, mutilation and cannibalism were common in his stories, could it be
possible that Poe had a thirst for torture like his characters did? Perhaps because of
his tormented life, Poe only had the ability to write in the dark, demented tone that has
made his works so popular. Maybe that was merely what Poe enjoyed writing about, or was
best at writing. Maybe he himself wanted his stories to be a puzzle, not unlike his life.
That he can ever be categorized neatly biographically or artistically is not to be
expected... (qtd. In Bloom). Only a person who experienced similar traumas can possibly
fully understand the meaning of the tales of Edgar Allen Poe.