Surrounding environment takes a big role in shaping a person and creating one’s personalities. Edgar Allan Poe, an American writer, is an excellent example for this. Poe’s parents died shortly after he was born and he was taken in by John and Frances Allan, though they never really legally adopt him. With a life full of obstacles, he needed to bear the sadness of his parents’ death and face financial problems all by himself, but still, Poe managed to live a successful life out by himself. He holds fame in the ring of American Gothic genre, digs out people’s darkest sides and puts them into words, and, without himself knowing, influences countless people with his works. This paper shows the background information about how the childhood environment of Poe shaped him, then talks about how his early life affected his style of writing, and, lastly, examples of how his works relate to his childhood memories. Poe did not have a supportive family. His father left the family early in Poe 's life, and his mother passed away from tuberculosis when he was only three (“Edgar Allan Poe”). He was then taken in by John and Frances Allan, a successful merchant couple. Since the couple was a successful merchant, they had abundant money to let Poe attend good schools until university. Poe attended the University of Virginia, where he was then expelled from class due to the lack of tuition and bad gambling habits which left him in high debts. After he was expelled, he decided to start the