Edgar Allan Poe Mental Illness

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Edgar Allan Poe was an odd man, almost resembling a character from one of his stories. With a life full of depression and illness, he still managed to write such amazing stories. It makes you curious to see what lies inside his head. I’ll be looking through his life, and seeing how it relates to the Tell-Tale Heart, Cask of Amontillado, and Hop-Frog.
Edgar Allan Poe lived a life full of sadness and death. With losing almost everyone you get to know, some mental illness could very well come into play. The Article, Edgar Allan Poe Biography, tells some about just how much Poe went through. By the age of three, Poe was an orphan. His father had left and then his mother had passed away. Because of this he was adopted by the Allan’s, a family from
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Struggling with getting away from alcohol only to find himself right back where he started took a toll on Poe. The Article, “Edgar Allan Poe, Drugs and Alcohol” dives deeper on the subject. Poe was an avid drinker and battled with alcoholism for many years which only led him down to broken promises to himself. While it is known that Poe would become ill from only having a couple of drinks, that still didn’t stop him and he would turn to alcohol to help alleviate his depression. But that isn’t the only reason Poe would drink, sometimes for fun and there is a chance that he would drink to help him write some of his stories as alcohol is used by some characters.
You see this clearly in the cask of Amontillado, as Fortunato was set on tasting the fabled Amontillado. During the whole story Fortunato was drinking alcohol making it easier and easier for Montresor to lure him to his death. Ironically, Edgar Allan Poe met his demise in what is speculated to be issues revolving alcohol since he was found outside of a voting toll for elections, a common place for people to get others very drunk and manipulate their
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Poe didn’t have a lot of people or other authors that had inspired him. He mainly was inspired to write about his own life and the hardships he had gone through like the loss of his wife Virginia. He didn’t want to copy other people or take inspiration from others, but instead inspire others to branch out to literature. But this being said, one notable author that inspired Poe was Charles Dickens. “The inspiration to Poe's darkest and most well-known poem, written in 1845, was a real raven that was the beloved pet of the writer Charles Dickens who named it Grip”

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