Fear In Edgar Allan Poe's Renown Stories

Everyone must know that fear has its negative effects, but it also has its positive effects on humans. Fear can help you to be more aware and prevents harm to you and others around you since you are more cautious. However, on the other side of the spectrum, fear can bring obsession such as losing control of yourself to focus on certain people or objects, and can bring poignancy to your life. Both aspects of fear are shown in Edgar Allan Poe’s renown stories, ¨The Tell-Tale Heart,¨ ¨The Pit and the Pendulum,¨ and ¨The Masque of Red Death,¨ where all the main characters are introduced to fear, but all approach it differently. Their approach can be seen through the use of symbolism, irony, and imagery in which, Poe depicts how fear distorts the

They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within” (57). It’s ironic how the castle is well built to block anyone or anything from entering, even the lower class people who may have the plague. Even with these precautions, someone with the plague is still able to get inside. The prince fears the plague, which makes him isolate himself from everything without thinking about the downsides of being isolated. The fear of the prince has actually caused more deaths since he could've helped save people instead of being selfish for himself and for certain people. Just like the “Masque of Red Death,” Poe also uses irony to show fear in “The Tell-Tale Heart.” It’s ironic how the narrator's main goal was to get rid of the eye, not the whole person, but ends up killing him. The narrator writes, “I loved the man… I think it was his eye… I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, thus rid myself of the eye for ever” (74). It’s ironic how he decides to kill the man as a whole, not

I struggled for breath. The intensity of the darkness seemed to oppress and stifle me. The atmosphere was intolerably close” (64). The narrator gives us an image of how he felt during his time in the prison, explaining how hard it was to breath. He feared if he was going to make it out alive with this kind of condition around him. However, he is able to overcome that since he never loses hope and keeps trying to get out with the use of logic. The narrator also gives us an image of how people were back then. The narrator says that he “saw—but with how terrible an exaggeration! I saw the lips of the black-robed judges. They appeared to me white” (62). This gives us an image of how judges were at the time the story took place. The narrator feared their expression and their clothing since the judges looked deadly and feared what they might do. The narrator was able to overcome it because, in the end, he was able to procure freedom and get away from the terror. The narrator did this with his hope and determination, without those key things, he would have suffered the judge’s wrath. Imagery has a great way of showing things in detail, and it does the same to fear by making an event or object more