Edgar Allan Poe's The Light-House

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An Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Light-House” Edgar Allan Poe became a renowned writer and permanent literary figure in the horror and detective genres with works such as “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Raven”, and “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”. However, Poe’s obscure and unfinished work “The Lighthouse” is perhaps one of his most mysterious, and certainly one of his most unknown, stories. While differing stylistically, “The Lighthouse” shares similar themes with previous works by Poe that could help determine how the story would have been further developed. “The Lighthouse” is centered on an unnamed narrator who tells his story through a series of diary entries that take place around the first of January in 1796. Poe does not reveal …show more content…
The story does not contain the highly detailed descriptions and ornate diction that is so common of Poe’s preceding prose writings. However, “The Lighthouse” shares similar themes, such as isolation and paranoia, with numerous Poe stories. These themes are especially evident in “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “The Pit and the Pendulum”, and “The Tell-Tale Heart”. The diary format is also similar to “The Balloon Hoax” and “MS. Found in a Bottle”. All of these stories, while differing immensely in content and plot, could help determine how Poe would have finished his mysterious tale. “The Lighthouse” is arguably most similar in content and format to Poe’s story about a man lost at sea, “MS. Found in a Bottle”. The narrator in “M.S. Found in a Bottle” journals his harrowing experiences as his situation becomes increasingly ominous and Poe’s writing becomes more foreboding. Similar to “The Lighthouse”, the first person narration in “MS. Found in a Bottle” allows the reader to experience the fear and paranoia of the narrator. If the “The Lighthouse” were continued in a manner similar to “MS. Found in a Bottle”, the narrator’s mental state would likely become more questionable as the story progressed and his external situation would become grimmer. The same disintegration of mental state and situation shown in “MS. Found in a Bottle” is also evident in “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”. It can be estimated that Poe’s trend of an unstable narrator paired with the gradual dissolution of the narrator’s surroundings would be continued in “The Lighthouse” as

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