Victor Alfonso Tzorin Sagastume Beyond the horror of Edgar Allan Poe Do you like Star Wars?

Do you watch CSI everyday? Do you enjoy watching horror movies with your friends? If you answered affirmatively to any of the questions above, then you surely are going to love Edgar Allan Poe. Poe was more than another American writer. Poe reformed science fiction, detective, and horror genres. Star Trek, Sherlock Holmes, Law and Order, Saw, Funny Games, American Psycho and other well-known series and movies exist thanks to his great contributions to literature. Despite all this, many people do not know about his work or his life or they have a wrong idea of him. Edgar Poe was born in 1809, in Boston. His parents were David and Elizabeth Poe. Poe was the second one of three children; Henry and Rosalie were his siblings. Elizabeth divorced from David and took the kids with her. She died when Poe was barely two years old. Mr. John Allan and Mrs. Valentine Allan adopted Poe and, to represent the adoption, gave him their last name: Allan. What happened with his siblings? Well, Henry went to live with his grandparents and another family adopted Rosalie. John Allan was a wealthy tobacco merchant, this allowed Poe to have a good education. When Poe was six years old, he went to study in England for five years. He later came back and continued studying. He attended to the University of Virginia in 1826. He did well in French and Latin but he started drinking and quickly became in debt. And, even though John Allan had plenty of money, he gave Poe only one third of what he needed. Because of that, he was forced to quit school (Giordano, 2005). Without more options, Poe went to Boston and joined the U.S. Army in 1827. He was 18 years old. He did well in the army and attained the rank of sergeant major. Mrs. Allan died in 1829 and Poe returned for her. John Allan tried to be friendly towards Poe. John even agreed to sign Poe's application to the United States Military Academy at West Point. While waiting to enter West Point, Poe lived with

Page #

Victor Alfonso Tzorin Sagastume his grandmother, Ms. Clemm, his brother, Henry, and his young cousin, Virginia. In 1830, Poe entered West Point but did not stayed too long because John refused to send him any money. Many experts believed that that was the reason why he broke the rules, to be expelled (Poes Life, 2013). After that, Poe went to New York City where he published some of his poetry. He tried to sell his stories too but were rejected by the magazines. Poe had economic troubles because he could not get a job. He begged John for help but none came. John Allan died in 1834 and Poe was not mentioned in his will. Finally, in 1835, Poe got a job in Richmond, Virginia, as the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, job that acquired for winning a writing contest. Poe successfully managed the newspaper, increasing its sells but left it in 1836 due to the poor salary. After that, he moved to New York again. He missed Mrs. Clemm and Virginia so he invited them to live with him; invitation that they accepted. Poe married Virginia in 1837. He was 27 years old and Virginia just 13. In New York he was not able to make money so he moved to Philadelphia. In 1839, "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque", Poe's first volume of short stories, was published. Poe worked as an editor of Burtons and then Grahams Magazine. He increased seven times the profits made by Grahams magazine. In 1842, he left Grahams to start his own magazine, but he could not find the necessary resources to accomplish his dreams. Poe did not have enough money but always found comfort at his home with his wife and mother-in-law. Mrs. Clemm often helped with money to maintain the family. Poe briefly lived his dream of owning a magazine when he bought the Broadway Journal. But the magazine ran out of money, leaving Poe without a job again. Due to his failure, his wifes delicate health, and some rumors spreading about Poes relationship with a married woman, he moved with his family to a small cottage in the country. There, in 1847, Virginia died, ten days after Poes birthday. Poe was devastated and could not write for months (Poes Life, 2013).

Page #

Victor Alfonso Tzorin Sagastume Poe only live two years more and spent most of that time travelling from city to city giving lectures and trying to find sponsors for his latest proposed magazine project to be called the Stylus. In one of those travels, Poe stopped in Baltimore and disappeared for five days. He was found at Gunners Hall, a public house that was being used as a polling place for an election. Poe was taken to the hospital. He was never able to explain exactly what happened to him. Edgar Allan Poe died on October 7, 1849, at the young age of forty. The exact cause of his death remains a mystery (Giordano, 2005) Poes life is, in my opinion, a tragedy. He lost all the people that he loved. Misunderstood by society. At the end he died alone, surrounded by strangers. After his dead, Rufus Griswold tried to defame him. In the biography Griswold did on Poe, he portrayed Poe as a drunken, womanizing madman with no morals and no friends. And even though the biography had the desired effect in America, in Europe, Poe became famous for his poetry and short stories. He influenced European authors like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Poe is considered the inventor of the detective genre. He wrote, in 1841, the first detective story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue. The story is about C. Auguste Dupin, a very smart gentleman that lives in Paris, and his friend, the unnamed narrator. One day, they read, in the newspaper, the news of some weird murders that occurred in the Rue Morgue. Two persons were brutally assassinated. The witnesses, that heard the fight, identified the voice of a Frenchman but they could not identify the second voice. The police was perplexed by the strength of the killer and did not have any suspects due to the lack of clues. Dupin decides to use his mental skills to solve the case. He obtains authorization to study the crime scene. With the clues that he finds, and his ability of deduction, he is able to determine that the killer was not a human, but an Orang-Outang that escaped from his owner. This is considered the first detective story because it has the following characteristics:

Page #

Victor Alfonso Tzorin Sagastume What appears to be a perfect crime. A wrongly accused suspect. An incompetent police. A detective with great deductive abilities. An unexpected end with the explanation of how the culprit did the crime.

Poe wrote two more detective stories with Dupin as principal character. These stories are suspenseful and full of excitement. It is clear why Poe influenced Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to write the stories of Sherlock Holmes. When comparing both characters, you esily find the parallelisms that exist between both of them. Dr. Watson made and allusion to this when he told Sherlock that he is like Dupin. Sherlock obviously stated that he is way better than Dupin. I have read Sherlock Holmes, and I can tell that Doyles style of writing is similar to Poes, at least when we are talking of detective stories (Detective story, 2013). But Poe not only invented the detective genre, he also contributed to science fiction. Many people argue that Poe also invented science fiction genre. They think that because of The Balloon Hoax he wrote. A hoax is a story published in the news as true when in reality is false. Poe wrote this hoax to become famous, aim that he reached. In the story he narrates the adventure of a group of pioneers that crossed the Atlantic Ocean in a flying machine. At that time, nobody had done that before, so it quickly caught the attention of the readers. Like science fiction stories, this story has scientific facts combined fiction. When I read this, I understood why people believed the story. Poe was not only a writer, he was a scientist too. He even wrote a treatise about the origins of Universe. That is why he was able to write such a convincing story. I must admit that this was the most entertaining news I have ever read in my life (Science fiction, 2013). But Poe is most known, not for science fiction genre,

Page #

Victor Alfonso Tzorin Sagastume but for horror genre. Poe did not invented horror genre, but he reformed the genre. He wrote about what the other authors were afraid to write. What is interesting is that most of his horror stories focused, not in supernatural elements like ghosts and witches, but in human madness. Poe makes you feel how the murders feel and that is something scaring. It is scaring because it is that dark side, that savage nature, that desire to do what is forbidden that we all have and are afraid to deal with. A perfect example of this is The Black Cat. The Black Cat is the story of a man who is about to be executed. He narrates the story of how he ended like that. He says that he was really fond of animals. When he married, at a young age, he shared this love with his wife. Of all the animals he had, he preferred Pluto, a black Cat. Pluto was his favorite pet. But things changed when he face certain difficulties in his life. He started drinking and became a monster. One day he just cut out one of the cats eyes. He felt a little bit of remorse but he quickly forgot it. One morning he decided to hang up the cat and that is what he did. That night, a fire destroyed his house but he thought that there was no connection between the two events. The time passed and one day he found another cat like Pluto, juts that this cat had a white splash on its fur. He liked the cat and took it home. Soon he started hating the cat and he hated it more when he realized that the white splash on its fur had the shaped of the gallows. One day, possessed by a perverse feeling, he tried to kill the cat, but instead killed his wife. He hid her corpse in the walls of the basement and is relief by the fact that he cannot find the cat anywhere. When the police came to investigate they did not find anything. But, when the police were about to live, he hit the walls to demonstrate that there is nothing in there. A horribly crying was heard. When the police opened the walls, they discovered the corpse of his wife and the missing cat. This story does what horror stories must do; it creates a feeling of fear. But you are afraid not because of the perverse act the protagonist

Page #

Victor Alfonso Tzorin Sagastume did, but because you might do the same thing. Now you know why Poe is called the Master of Horror (Horror story, 2013). I admired Poe. He was an excellent writer. He was able to cause fear in the hearts of his readers, but he also made them imagine with futuristic technologies and captivated them with suspenseful stories of crimes and detectives. He even was a scientist. Poes contrib utions to literature were so powerful, that we still appreciate them in todays movies and series. How could George Lucas have written Star Wars without Poes unquestionable help to popularize the genre of science fiction? How could CSI exist if Poe had not invented detective genre? How people could enjoy of those scary movies they like to watch if Poe had not reformed the horror genre? If you are interested in reading Poes stories, I recommend The Fall of the House of Usher and other tales. It contains Poes best detective, science fiction, and horror stories. Bibliography: Detective story. (n.d.). Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved May 25, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/159456/detective-story 2013, from

Giordano, R. (2005, June 27). A short biography of Edgar Allan Poe. Edgar Allan Poe, short stories, tales, and poems. Retrieved May 22, 2013, from http://poestories.com/biography.php Horror story. (n.d.). Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/272144/horror-story May 24, 2013, from

Poe's Life. (n.d.). Edgar Allan Poe Museum : Poe's life, legacy, and Works. Retrieved May 23, 2013, from http://www.poemuseum.org/life.php Science fiction. (n.d.). Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved May http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/528857/science-fiction 24, 2013, from

Page #