Edgar Allan Poe Research Paper

During the 19th century, it was reported that over 450 people between the ages of fifteen and forty-four in America died of tuberculosis every day. The life of Edgar Allan Poe had been significantly affected by this epidemic due to the fact that he watched as tuberculosis took the life of his biological mother, foster mother, and wife. For Poe, losing the women who were the closest to him was an experience that haunted him for the rest of his life. Poe’s experiences shaped him into the author and poet that he became because he created stories that symbolize and reflect the hardships of his life. Therefore, Edgar Allan Poe incorporated the theme of death into all of his short stories because it was a way to fulfill his fantasies of killing the

In the article, Literary Contexts in Short Stories: Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado, it states, “Those in the publishing world of the time interpreted it as Poe’s response to attacks made upon by a one time friend Thomas Dunn English in the New York ‘Evening Mirror’- which included a charge that Poe was a heavy drinker” (Mustafa 1). When Thomas Dunn English exposed Poe’s private life, Poe then published The Cask of Amontillado, which resulted in the theory that Poe wrote this short story to attack English. William Evans Burton was also attacked. Five years before Poe published his short story, he had written a letter to Burton which states, “… If by accident you have taken it into your head… that I am to be insulted with impunity I can only assume that you’re an ass” (Mustafa 1). In the letter that Burton received, it included a quote which Poe later used in The Cask of Amontillado. Overall, Poe had many disputes with men during this time period, which resulted in Poe including attacks towards these men in his short

After Poe’s wife died of consumption, he spent the years after roaming graveyards and writing poetry about his lost love. According to Edgar A. Poe, “Virginia would die in her mid-twenties, an invalid for years, and versions of her would figure in many of Poe’s tales of consumptive women destined to haunt his narrators’ imaginations…” (Rollyson 1). Following Virginia’s death, Poe coped with extreme grief by symbolizing her death in his short stories. In The Raven, it states, “Leave my loneliness unbroken!- quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out of my heart and take thy form from off my door” (Poe 3). This quote demonstrates how Poe wants the raven which is symbolizing grief, to leave him alone because he doesn’t want to continue feeling extreme sadness and grief. Overall, Poe incorporated the theme of Death to be able to emotionally cope with the death of his beloved wife,