How Did Edgar Allan Poe Influence His Work?

“I remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind,” said Edgar Allan Poe once. This quote describes Poe and how he struggled with many disasters throughout his short life. It is without a doubt that Poe experienced many hardships during his career, but that is what made him the writer that he is. His work was very unique and his writing style influenced a lot of other popular authors. Edgar Allan Poe was a well known writer from the 1800’s who was successful at incorporating his life experiences and traumas into his work in a dark and gothic manner.

Poe had undergone a lot suffering from abandonment and loss from the women he loved; therefore, in some of his work, he portrays similar situations in his characters. According to

Not only did he lose a lot of people that he cared about, but he was also mistreated by his adoptive father during his adolescence. Following the alcohol, he was a big gambler and often wasted his money. He got to a point where he was in a huge debt. In “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe, he stated that “One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one my about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence,” (The Complete Stories of Edgar Allan Poe). This proves that the individual in his story struggled with alcoholism much like himself. When under a lot of stress, people cope by either doing drugs or alcohol. In Poe’s situation, he turned to alcohol. “He prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine,” (The Complete Stories of Edgar Allan Poe). This is a quote from “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe which is all about alcohol, specifically wine. It could be predicted that during Poe’s battle with alcoholism, he was inspired to write “The Cask of Amontillado.” After all, the main theme in this story is about revenge. Poe related to this story as he had many literary rivals that talked down on him and his

As mentioned before, he had lost many important people in his life due to tuberculosis. His mother, wife and brother all died from it. “The Masque of the Red Death,” released the same year, is about a plague that is killing peasants in gruesome fashion,” (Violence in Popular Culture: American and Global Perspectives). The plague in this case is referring to Tuberculosis. “The Masque of Red Death” was written in 1942 which is when Virginia became heavily ill. It is obvious that the story was inspired by tuberculosis. Poe did a great job at depicting his narratives in dark and horrific ways. According to “Violence in Popular Culture: American and Global Perspectives”, “American poet, writer, editor, and literary critic Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is best known for the macabre. The Masque of Red Death is a perfect example of that type of work. It shows horrifying and disturbing images of