Similarities in Edgar Allan Poe Stories
Edgar Allen Poe was a very experienced author. He was born on January 19, 1809 and died on October 7, 1849. He had a dark childhood because his mother, foster mother, and his wife died from tuberculous. His father abandoned him and his foster father disliked him. This background may have greatly influenced his work. He wrote 70 poems and 66 short stories during his lifetime. Edgar Allan Poe has written many Gothic horror stories with similar themes and traits. The use of a narrator in telling the story is one similarity. The themes involve isolation, fear, blood, and death. They are all spooky, eerie tales. The purpose of this paper is to show the similarities used in “The Tell Tale Heart,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” and “The Fall of the …show more content…
Roderick is the only exception, but his actions were based on fear. Each main character acts on fear or describes it. In “The Mask of the Red Death,” the narrator describes the horror of the outside scene that Prospero and his friends hide from in one of his “castellated abbeys” with “security… within.” Prospero isolated himself and his friends from the outside noting it “was folly to grieve, or to think.” In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Roderick described the “terror” of his “struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR.” The narrator had felt the terror of the place when he first arrived and felt Roderick’s condition “creeping upon me.” It “terrified” and “infected me.” The narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart was the main character as well as the murderer of a man “who never wronged me.” His fear of the sound of a beating heart “excited me to uncontrollable terror” and caused him to murder his victim quickly. The sound later caused him to confess to his crime. “I admit the deed!” The characters were similar because they all acted out of fear and death was a central part of each
Edgar Allen Poe was a very experienced author. He was born on January 19, 1809 and died on October 7, 1849. He had a dark childhood because his mother, foster mother, and his wife died from tuberculous. His father abandoned him and his foster father disliked him. This background may have greatly influenced his work. He wrote 70 poems and 66 short stories during his lifetime. Edgar Allan Poe has written many Gothic horror stories with similar themes and traits. The use of a narrator in telling the story is one similarity. The themes involve isolation, fear, blood, and death. They are all spooky, eerie tales. The purpose of this paper is to show the similarities used in “The Tell Tale Heart,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” and “The Fall of the …show more content…
Roderick is the only exception, but his actions were based on fear. Each main character acts on fear or describes it. In “The Mask of the Red Death,” the narrator describes the horror of the outside scene that Prospero and his friends hide from in one of his “castellated abbeys” with “security… within.” Prospero isolated himself and his friends from the outside noting it “was folly to grieve, or to think.” In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Roderick described the “terror” of his “struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR.” The narrator had felt the terror of the place when he first arrived and felt Roderick’s condition “creeping upon me.” It “terrified” and “infected me.” The narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart was the main character as well as the murderer of a man “who never wronged me.” His fear of the sound of a beating heart “excited me to uncontrollable terror” and caused him to murder his victim quickly. The sound later caused him to confess to his crime. “I admit the deed!” The characters were similar because they all acted out of fear and death was a central part of each