ipl-logo

Fear In Poe's Poetry

734 Words3 Pages

How Can Fear Change the Outcome of Our Lives?
Fear can be beneficial and unhealthy, it just depends on how people handle it. Fear can keep people from doing horrendous things; however, being exposed to such fear can cause someone to become so paranoid they cannot enjoy life. For example, Edgar Allan Poe writes stories like “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and “The Masque of Red Death” to show the different ways to handle fear. All of the main characters in Poe’s stories are exposed to fear and handle it differently. In the texts by Edgar Allan Poe, the symbols, irony, and imagery all display how fear distorts the narrator's mind and the results of that fear.

Poe uses symbolism to represent how fear can distort the mind and the results of such fear. For example, in the “Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator obsesses over the eye to show how fear can distort the mind: “It was open-wide, wide open- and I grew furious as I gazed upon it” (76). This symbol represents the old man judging the narrator, which the narrator fears. Afraid, the narrator starts to obsess over his actions because of his fear that the eye will keep criticizing him. Consequently, the narrator becomes so paranoid …show more content…

The narrator describes the pit in “The Pit and the Pendulum” as “In the centre yawned the circular pit from whose jaws I had escaped; but it was the only one in the dungeon” (67). The narrator describes the pit as having jaws, and the image that readers picture is that the pit was swallowing the narrator if he was not saved. The narrator feels alarmed when he realizes what torture he has to encounter. However, instead of becoming paranoid about it, he overcame his fear by being optimistic and using his wits. The narrator shows the example of how fear does not distort people’s minds if they use logic and hope to conquer their

Show More
Related
290 Words | 2 Pages

We live our lives in fear. Some of us fear failure, maybe you fear the dark, others fear heights. While some of humanities fears may be irrational, there is no denying that everyone experiences fear. But how does fear affect us? How does it affect our actions?

Read More
976 Words | 4 Pages

Throughout “Tell Tale Heart” and “Ministers Black Veil”, both Poe and Hawthorne use symbolism to show they cannot hide from their sins. To show Poe cannot hide from his sins, he uses the old man's eye as a symbol. The reason the eye creates this symbolism, is because although it has a blue, hughey film over it, he cannot stop seeing it. Every night when Poe opens the old man's door, the light shines upon the vulture eye, which always seems to be open. The pale blue film, also demonstrates Poes inability to see clearly; in this case representing Poe trying not to acknowledge his own sins.

Read More
174 Words | 1 Pages

“The Masque of the Red Death” displays the gothic element of a character 's motivation caused by fear. Prince Prospero insured his and his guests’ safety with “The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts” (Poe 430). In order to protect himself and the guests from the contagion he had the doors of the abbey sealed shut. The fear of getting the contagion caused Prince Prospero to seal himself in the abbey. Prince Prospero’s fear is not only shown towards the contagion, but towards the masked figure.

Read More
844 Words | 4 Pages

Poe uses symbolism a lot in his stories to make his writing have a more eerie feeling. ”The Tell-Tale Heart” and “Masque of Red Death” both have symbols that induce fear into the main characters hearts. In The Tell-Tale Heart Poe writes “...for it was no the old man who vexed me but his evil eye “(75).The narrator kills an innocent old man for that hr thought the old man's eyes were judging. Although the old man just had cataracts ,the narrator could not stand the man for his eye he compared looked as vulture's eye. The narrator was afraid of this old man and his “evil eye”.

Read More
412 Words | 2 Pages

In “The Pit and the Pendulum”, the author manages to incorporate suspense into several parts of this story. One example is where it states, “I was sick—sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence—the dread sentence of death—was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum.” This shows how the author created suspense by not telling the reader about why the narrator was receiving a death sentence.

Read More
547 Words | 3 Pages

Dr. Nichols (2010) writes; “Many fears are positive and productive because they prod [one] to do something about fearful situations” (p. 23). “Fear is a healthy, natural response that can turn unhealthy and manipulative” (Nichols, 2010, p. 70). The concept of action should be one of encouragement because fear can cause anxiety, anger, and depression. Anxiety “wastes mental, physical, and spiritual energy” (Nichols, 2010, p. 54), and anger is a “dangerous emotion that becomes a distraction from the main problem” (Nichols, 2010, p. 57). Fear can also cause bodily damage over a period of time, including heart disease, cancer, and damage to the immune system (Nichols,

Read More
648 Words | 3 Pages

In the end Poe’s writing represents fear and how it can distort your thoughts and make you take a turn for the worst. Or in some cases, usually more rarely, the better, as in “The Pit and the

Read More
918 Words | 4 Pages

The Prevalence of Fear Fear is something that has always existed since the beginning of time. In ancient times the notion of fear allowed humans to survive and not be killed by predators. While in modern times, the fear of the unknown has restricted creative learning and progress. Fear is a double edged sword and fear is something that is still affecting the daily lives of countless people to this day.

Read More
698 Words | 3 Pages

Fear can be very advantageous when it comes to surviving. Fear inhibits you from doing risky actions that can put you and others in danger; it keeps you cautious and careful. Even though fear helps you when surviving, fear can harm you in life. Fear can cause paranoia that keeps you from enjoying life. You start to obsess over minimal things leading to hallucination.

Read More
328 Words | 2 Pages

Not only can fear overtake us through haunted houses and horror movies but fear can grab us through the environment we live in. In the story, “The House of Usher,” Poe was in a scenario where his high school friend Roderick Usher was mentally ill and fear took every reasonable thought he had left inside him. ”I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin” (Poe par. 46).

Read More
945 Words | 4 Pages

For example, in the text “The The-Tale Heart”, Poe’s use of the old man’s eye symbolized the obsessions and fears of the narrator like, “Whenever it fell upon me, my blood

Read More
1590 Words | 7 Pages

The scary tone has a trend through all of his stories which makes the reader more engaged. In “The Tell Tale Heart” Poe talks about death and how an eye viewed as, “an evil eye” could cause someone to kill. It took some time, but Poe lead the whole story up to the gruesome murder scene. “First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and then the legs.

Read More
1822 Words | 8 Pages

One of Edgar Allan Poe’s most known attributes is his use of fear in many of his stories. He used words and images to instill the fright into his readers. He strung together scenarios that happen to his characters that encapsulates real fears that a reader could have. Poe would use fear in his stories in multiple ways. A story could relate around a certain fear.

Read More
1053 Words | 5 Pages

Fear can be healthy, but also deadly to the human race. Fear makes people not do things that can harm them, which makes them stay alive longer. Not only does it keep people alive, it can also kill as well. Fearing something and being frightened of an object or thing can turn into a panic situation, which can lead to an untimely death. In the book Fear by Michael Grant the characters face that same reality.

Read More
1395 Words | 6 Pages

It usually implies a revelation as a defense of sanity. In the tales of the criminal insanity, first-person narrators are the protagonists, focusing on their conflicts with hysteria and law. In The Tell-tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe uses many symbols such as, the Evil Eye, the watch, the narrator himself, bedroom, and the lantern. He also tries to dehumanize the old man in the short story.

Read More

More about Fear In Poe's Poetry

Related Topics

Open Document