The Dark Themes Of Edgar Allan Poe

Improved Essays
The “Grandfather of Goth”(Semtner) Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809. He was born into a family of performers, causing a lot of traveling. However, at the age of three both of his parents had died of tuberculosis. A tobacco merchant names John Allan adopted him, now his new family accepted Poe as their own and gave him everything. Soon, his new family moved to London and Poe studied in England. After returning home Poe grew a love for writing, he was inspired by a poet before him named Lord Byron. However, John Allan did not want Poe to follow that dream, because he knew there would be no financial award, he disowned Poe, another reason for the break was that Poe was an alcoholic and had gambling issues. Edgar Allan Poe …show more content…
One of these themes is darkness, this is one of the main themes to be classified as a dark romantic poet. Dark themes could mean many things, and can also symbolize others. Some of these dark themes are death and mourning. These themes are evident in Poes poems “The Raven” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”. These themes are noticed in “The Raven” because of the 1st couple stanzas, the speaker is talking about how he is in a time of struggle and barrenness. Fear is also a dark theme, it is present when the speaker hears something outside his room and appears to find nothing “Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before” (Poe 26-27) In the poem “The Fall of the House of Usher” dark themes are also present. The dark themes in this short story are the spookiness of the house and the lonesome feeling the character has. Also the character was in fear by stating “Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis.”(Poe). In the poem “The Bells” Edgar Allan Poe also used dark themes such as the iron bells, they are rung by ghouls and make those who hear mourn. Along with his dark themes Poe used other themes that can be described as dreamy and …show more content…
Poe, didn’t produce fame during his lifetime, influenced many American writers, one of the most notable is Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald took affection for Poe's writing style and the themes he used. Nowadays, Poe is viewed as a pop culture phenom in which he has many supporters, and mostly everyone knows the name Edgar Allan Poe. Poe is featured in many movies, TV shows, and Album covers, “starred on the animated series South Park and The Simpsons. His face graces the cover of a Beatles album, he has fought crime alongside Batman in the comic series Batman Nevermore (2003) and hunted a serial killer in the film The Raven (2012). Among the many films featuring Poe as a character are The Raven (1915), The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe (1942), The Man with a Cloak (1951), Castle of Blood (1964), and The Spectre of Edgar Allan Poe(1974)”(Semtner). This quote shows how Poe is viewed to day in the 20th and 21st century, “Poe's work remains present in 20th century American poets”(Dayan). Also every year on halloween many kids and adults dress up as this man of darkness and continue to represent the man who changed dark literature

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Being the author of many dark and grotesque stories, Edgar Allan Poe made his mark on humanity by truly showing what it means to be human. Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809. He was later adopted by tobacco merchants in 1811. Poe inherited his uncle’s fortune in 1825 and that is when he starts his writing career. Poe is a brilliant short story writer that trampled upon light and fluffy works.…

    • 1697 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe had different ways of expressing his constant struggles with everyday life through his work which shaped the way he wrote. Poe was a man with many challenges to overcome and with a little help of his deranged imagination produced infamous pieces of literature. In “A Tell Tale Heart,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and “The Masque of the Red Death” Edgar Allan Poe draws on his own experiences with mental illness and death to create unique works of gothic fiction that explore guilt,religion, and mortality. Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston Massachusetts on January 19, 1809. Poe’s parents, who were actors, died when he was a young child.…

    • 1014 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Poe’s stories often contain very dark and twisted characters. He likes to write about fear and torture. The main character in the stories “The Raven” and “The Tell Tale Heart” are on the edge of insanity. In “The Raven”, the narrator fears he is going insane.…

    • 208 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    The Raven presents several elements of traditional gothic literature. Poe starts the story off by presenting the gothic element of mystery. It starts with the strange tapping on the door, but when the narrator checks, “darkness there and nothing more” (Poe line 24). The poem only gets more mysterious from the point on. When he opens the window a bird flies in, the narrator is curious as to why the bird flew in but it only offers “Nevermore” as the answer.…

    • 1276 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Allan’s were a couple that were well off and didn’t comprehend the struggles that surrounded Poe’s life for those two previous years. John Allan was a successful tobacco merchant who created quite a forlorn name for himself, [Edgar Allan Poe: His life and Legacy, pg. 9 “impulsive and quick-tempered… rather rough and uncultured in mind and manner.” ] Though he seemed to have the perfect life he was an alcoholic and a physical and emotional abuser to Poe.…

    • 1269 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Of course every story has it’s themes and symbols The Fall of the House of Usher has a couple of themes and symbols presented throughout the story. A theme presented in The Fall of the House of Usher is depression. No matter what Poe always adds something to the story describing it as dark and making the reader create a depressing image in their mind. “A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence, through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his master”(Poe). Poe hints to the reader that the house might also be dark and in silence because the owner is the same way.…

    • 1605 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Many of Poe’s life events inspired him to write several dark stories. Poe was born on January 19, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts. His mother, Elizabeth, died when he was an infant so he was adopted by John Allan. He was raised in Richmond, Virginia. He attended the University of Virginia and received the highest honor in his class (Quinn).…

    • 1020 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Edgar Allan Poe was a marvelous writer. Neil Gaiman describes Poe as “a working writer who kept himself alive with his words” (Poe xiii). Most of Poe’s stories and poems are works of horror, but not the kind of horror most would think of. Jeffery Goddin says that “his horror, rather than revolving around vampires, werewolves, and the like, is usually psychological horror, bred from a character’s obsession and paranoia” (Dziemianowicz xiii). Gaiman said, “He was vain, envious, good-hearted, morbid, troubled, and a dreamer” (Poe xiii).…

    • 1327 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The events of Edgar Allen Poe’s life definitely affected his way of writing. Poe suffered greatly in life, which made him a mysterious man who wrote mysterious stories. Many of them have personal reasons behind them, which explain why they’re consistently strange. Some themes in Poe’s life that merge with his writing were his madness, losing loved ones and alcoholism. If Poe hadn’t had such a hard life, maybe he wouldn’t be a writer, or maybe his stories wouldn’t constantly be about sorrow and suffering.…

    • 476 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Edgar Allan Poe was born, January 19th, 1809 in Boston, MA and passed away October 7th, 1849. David Poe and Elizabeth Arnold Poe, were professional actors and gave birth to three children, Rosallie, Henry, and Edgar. By the time, Edgar became three years old, him, his younger sister and his older brother were orphans. The three children were separated to live among different parts of the family after their father deserted them and their mother died from Tuberculosis. Edgar was sent to live with John and Frances Allan in Richmond, Virginia.…

    • 1274 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The Drastic Life of Edgar Allan Poe Having a traumatic life, losing his birth parents at a young age, Edgar Allan Poe made something better of himself, he became a writer. Edgar Allan Poe born on January 19,1809 lived a harsh life, at the age of three he lost his parents, who were traveling actors. Soon after he was adopted by John Allan, who was a prosperous tobacco merchant in Virginia and his wife Frances. Poe had two siblings, William Henry Leonard Poe and Rosalie Poe who went off to live with different families after their parents death. Later in 1815, Poe and his foster parents moved to England, there Poe attended a school in Chelsea.…

    • 266 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This passage describes Poe's genres, life and all of his influences. Poe grew up pretty lonely having his mom die at a young age and his dad soon after abandon him. After Poe lost both his parents, he was adopted and attended boarding school when he was 6 and 11. He then ended up moving to Boston and wrote his first poems. In Poe's later years, he moved in with his aunt Marie and his cousin Virginia in Baltimore.…

    • 279 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Edgar Allen Poe is a writer well-known for his dark and romanticized gothic literature. Poe stimulates the senses through sensory detail in which his words can paint a vivid mental picture in the minds of his audiences. Dark imagery is very prominent in Poe’s works as it relates to gothic literature. Dark imagery is how Poe speaks through his stories to set his mood and tone which commonly consists of a dark and mysterious atmosphere, characteristic of gothic literature. Poe’s use of imagery through his stories is prominent in his works, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Tell-Tale Heart, and The Black Cat.…

    • 1216 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Poe wrote “The Raven” with his usual melancholy style and incorporated his feelings of grief into the poem’s narrator as well. The feelings of grief evolve in the poem into madness as the depression takes over the narrator. In “The Raven,” Edgar Allen Poe uses symbols, rhyme, and point of view to…

    • 1011 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Poe's Poe: The Father Of Poetic Horror

    • 884 Words
    • 4 Pages
    • 7 Works Cited

    He dug himself out of his depression with the help of his wife, but unfortunately spiraled back down after her sudden death. To illustrate the darkness of his works, he is known as the Father of Poetic Horror, though the title is not needed, because his works are a true testament to that. He uses repetition and rhythm to state a point, while showing true emotion in his work. He uses rhyme in many of his works to show his feelings and positions on the topics he speaks about. Lastly he uses dark Irony, sometimes to antagonize people in his poems, and sometimes, to show his hatred and ill will towards characters, who in his mind transition into the real world.…

    • 884 Words
    • 4 Pages
    • 7 Works Cited
    Improved Essays