Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most complex figures in the history of American authors. ... None of Poe’s work is easy to interpret, nor is it meant to be. ... Poe used his writings as a way to escape his failures and his everyday reality. ... Although many of Poe’s poems and short stories appear to be very impersonal and detached from his own life, they are in fact very closely correlated to his own life and experiences. Many parts of Poe’s actual life are a mystery to everyone. ... From the many parts that are known however, it is obvious that Poe’s own experiences greatly influenced his writing. Poe was born the son of two parents who worked as wandering actors. His father was a drunk, who abandoned their family shortly after his son’s birth and his mother died by the time Poe was two years old. According to Asselineau,“ this sudden death warped Poe for the rest of his life” (Asselineau). Poe was then placed with the wealthy Allan family, who agreed to take care of him. Poe was never legally adopted by the Allan’s however, which lead to him feeling as though he never really had a home to belong to. He especially felt this way when John Allan, his guardian had two more sons with his wife, therefore denying him the position as heir to the family fortune. Poe and Allan, although they got along for the first twenty years of his life started to have disagreements over the affection that Allan’s wife had for Poe, and his gambling debts which Allan refused to help him pay off. These gambling debts led to Poe being thrown out of the University of Virginia. It was these disagreements that caused Poe to leave home and to be completely on his own by the age of twenty two. After leaving the Allan house, Poe then went to live with his Aunt, where he met and married his fourteen year old cousin Virginia. ... A few years after his wife’s death, Poe too was found “half conscious and delirious” on the side of the road where he died soon after. ... Many common themes can be seen throughout Poe’s work which is feasible evidence that these stories are truer then they are false. ... Even though you can not assume that the narrator s in fact the author many elements in Poe’s work convince his readers that it might not be such a long stretch. According to Asselineau, Poe once declared, “The supposition that the book of an author is a thing apart from the author’s self is, I think, ill-founded” (Asselineau).
Ratings
Very informative and in depth
by Buttstewey