Edgar Allan Poe- Heck of a Guy

By Sophie C.

In October of 1849, poet Edgar Allen Poe became famous for his poems "Annabelle Lee" and "The Raven". Sadly, he died the year his poems shot him and his dark tales to the spotlight.  He wrote and published volumes of short stories before 1849, but he was unpaid, and his now famous works were met with no money and little recognition. He had a tenacious passion for writing and made do with the figurative pocket change he'd received from prizes in the low hundreds for works such as "The Gold Bug" (1843).

Countless collections have been made of Poe's work, as he is now famous for his extremely unique writing style.  Most of his writing uses the themes of death, burial, and agony with such imagery difficult to find in other authors' writing. I read Dawn B. Sova's collection of Poe's writing, but since all work inside is Poe's alone, it does not differ from any collections made of Poe's stories other than the Introduction.

In reading Edgar Allan Poe's tales and poems, a few stand out with exceptional plots and the classic examples of Poe's effective dark imagery. Of his stories, "The Tell-Tale Heart" is well worth reading; despite the simplicity of the plot itself. The story is told by Poe using the first person account of an unnamed character, whose sanity is made to be questioned due to his irrational fear of an old man's eye, describing it as vulture like, all while attempting to maintain the reader's belief that he is not mad. As he executes a well planned murder of the man whose eye is the source of his paranoia, he continues trying to portray his actions as sane, claiming that his extreme precaution is evidence of his sanity.  Though the narrator has killed the old man in an attempt to lessen his paranoia, he accounts to hearing the old man's desperate moans in the night. The police come to the home beneath which is the corpse of the old man on account of noises that were reported coming from the home. He cultivates in his own mind the sound of a beating heart he believes is the old man's, and pleads at the policemen with despair, confessing to the murder desperately wanting the sound of the man's heart to go away, as he can no longer stand the sound. Instead of creating a story that focuses mainly on the reader's reaction to a building and winding plot, the character's only actions are killing an old man, and confessing to the police.  Poe focuses instead on following the thoughts of an insane man.

"The Tell-Tale Heart" is only one of several stories, but I think it is a great example of Poe's writing. This collection features some

of the most beautiful poetry, harrowing horror stories, and tales of turmoil, death, and misery. I certainly would recommend this

collection to anyone who enjoys reading dark stories and poetry.