Givens 1

Thomas Givens

Professor Kennedy

English 1302

25 April 2009

The Marvelous Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe

James Russell Lowell, the famous American Romantic poet, once said, “There comes

Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge, three-fifths of him genius, and two-fifths sheer fudge”

(Lowell). While Lowell was commenting on Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem “The Raven,” I

believe this quote can summarize Poe himself. Poe led a difficult and depressing life; however,

his influence and contributions to literature make his life amazing. He did not even get to enjoy

the highest acclaim of his work; his work reached its highest praise during the twenty-first

century (Wright), roughly one-hundred and fifty years after his death. Edgar Allan Poe had a

very tumultuous life but through all his hardships, he still managed to influence the world.

Edgar Allan Poe was born January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts. Both of Poe’s

parents were actors, and both died when Poe was still an infant. After his parents’ death, Poe

went to live with John Allan, a tobacco merchant in Richmond, Virginia. Poe and Allan had a

difficult relationship, which only got worse throughout Poe’s schooling. He attended school in

both England and Richmond, and at the age of seventeen, Poe registered at the University of

Virginia. Poe was heavily involved in the Jefferson Literary Society and passed all his classes

with good grades; however, Allan failed to supply Poe with enough funds, and Poe created debts

for which Allan could not pay. Allan refused to allow Poe to return to the University of Virginia,

so their relationship started to fall apart further. Poe left for Boston without the aid of Allan and

published Tamerlane and Other Poems one of Poe’s first works (Wright).
 Givens 2

Due to Poe’s lack of money and despite his recent publication, Poe enlisted in The United

States Army as a private in 1827. After two years of service and many promotions to Sergeant

Major, Poe asked for Allan’s aid and discharged from the United States Army. Poe briefly lived

with his Aunt, Mrs. Maria Poe Clemm, in Baltimore until he received an appointment to the

United States Military Academy at West Point. Poe and Allan’s troubled rapport only got worse,

and Poe no longer received any support from his foster father. In 1831, Poe took the only

method of release from West Point; he was expelled (Wright). Poe went back to live with his

Aunt in Baltimore and shortly after he witnessed his brother’s death to cirrhosis of the liver

(Schoell), yet another blow to Poe’s already tragic life.

Poe started editing the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond and asked his younger

cousin, Virginia Clemm, to move to Richmond so they could be together. After multiple

rejections, Poe started drinking heavily. Finally, in 1836 Poe, at the age of twenty-seven, married

Virginia Clemm, his fourteen-year-old cousin. Poe’s relationship with Virginia seems to have

been more for a spiritual feeling instead of a sexual nature. “Poe later intimated that his marriage

to Virginia was never consummated” (Schoell). From 1836 to 1845, Poe continued to edit for

multiple magazines until he published “The Raven,” one of his most successful poems. In 1842,

Virginia Poe suffered a burst blood vessel in her brain and became an invalid, remaining this way

until she died five years later (To Know Poe). Because of this, Poe’s depression and drinking

worsened, which led to a failed suicide attempt in 1848. A year later, in October of 1849, Poe

was found unconscious in the middle of a Baltimore street.

Poe’s death is still a mystery. After being found on the street, he was taken to the hospital

for four days. During these four days, he was in and out of consciousness, so he was unable to

explain what truly happened to him. There are four strong theories to his cause of death but with
 Givens 3

every theory, there seems to be some conflicting evidence to contradict it. Alcohol abuse seems

to be the most widely accepted theory; however, there are many testimonies to oppose this

conjecture. Poe had a history of binge drinking; however, there was a lack of evidence of

conditions such as cirrhosis of the liver. Another possible explanation could be political cooping.

This occurred when political gangs would kidnap innocent bystanders, hold them in a room

called a coop, and force them by the use of hard liquor or drugs to vote illegally in multiple

polling wards. This is a very plausible theory because Poe was found outside of Ryan’s Fourth

Ward polls (Hopkins). However, this was unable to proven at that time.

The third suggested cause of Poe’s death is different medical disorders or ailments. One

of Poe’s nurses claimed he had brain lesions and suffered from “brain fever,” an inflammation of

the brain. In 1848, Poe was diagnosed with heart disease, and a year later Poe himself wrote a

letter to his Aunt Maria Clemm saying that he had the cholera, only to retract it twelve days later

claiming that he was cured. In 1984, Arno Karlen, a biohistorian, proposed, “Poe may have

suffered from a brain tumor in addition to a rare enzyme malady called Alcohol Dehydrogenase

Deficiency Syndrome” (Hopkins). Furthermore, in 1996, Dr. R. Michael Benitez proposed Poe

might have had rabies. Benitez compared the similarity of Poe’s recorded symptoms with the

disease’s typical progression and came up with the aforementioned theory.

The fourth, and possibly the most outrageous, idea was conspiracy theories. Due to Poe’s

career as a literary critic, and with his unusually critical pen, he created many enemies. Poe was

also the center of many rumors of different affairs with married women and was known to court

wealthy widows. This led to many jealous romantic rivals or protective relatives of the women

he admired (Hopkins). None of these theories has been proven, but the mysteriousness of his

death is almost fitting for the man that created the detective story we know today.
 Givens 4

One of Poe’s best-known short stories is “The Tell-Tale Heart.” “The Tell-Tale Heart” is

a story of a man driven to commit murder. The narrator of the story is a man that is haunted by

his neighbor’s “vulture eye” (Tell 1233) and ultimately leads to the narrator murdering the old

man. While the narrator is mad due to a disease he mentions, it is not the only reason he kills the

old man. The old man’s crippled eye is what leads to his inevitable death. The narrator declares

that he loves the old man, that the old man has never wronged him; however, the disfigured eye

is what leads to his demise. The feeling of the eye on the narrator is what leads to the ensuing

madness. Poe describes the old man and his disfigured eye so vividly to give the reader an

image in mind. If Poe can get the reader to see the eye, then the reader might feel the same chill

that the narrator suffers every time the eye is affixed on him. If the reader experiences the same

chill as the narrator, the murder of the old man might not seem as surprising but almost

warranted.

Within this story, Poe decided to emphasize the sense of hearing. Poe decided to use the

sense of hearing so much, because when imagining this story, the sense of hearing is the easiest

to manifest within a reader. While getting lost in a story it is not always easiest to feel what the

characters feel or see what they see, but Poe makes the reader of “The Tell-Tale Heart” hear the

same sounds that the narrator hears. Although his sense of hearing is what shapes the character

most, throughout the essay he tries to validate to the reader that he is not a mad man despite his

actions. He is almost trying to persuade the reader that he is not crazy and what he did was

necessary. The narrator is a very determined and steadfast man, standing night after night for

hours on end until he finally works up enough rage to kill the old man. While the man is

obviously mad, he has the intelligence to cautiously kill and conceal the old man. He would live

as a free man if he had been able to silence his guilt in front of the officers.
 Givens 5

Poe writes this story in a supernatural way. The idea that the narrator’s disease accented

his senses so well he was able to hear the beating heart of the old man beneath a mattress or the

idea that the neighbors would be able to hear it is a bit exaggerated. Although the old man was

deceased and dismembered, the narrator continued to hear the beating of his heart beneath the

floorboards. To a sane mind, the idea that a simple eye could lead to such madness and murder is

supernatural, but to a mad mind, it might just be plausible.

Another one of Poe’s most famous short stories is “The Cask of Amontillado.” This

story, just as “The Tell-Tale Heart,” deals with hatred, murder, and strong madness. While the

narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” felt insulted or hurt by the old man’s eye, Montresor, the

narrator of “The Cask of Amontillado,” declares that a peer of his, Fortunato, insulted him.

Although Montresor states that he endured the “thousand injuries of Fortunato,” when Fortunato

advanced to insults he vowed revenge (Cask 1227). Both Montresor and the narrator of “The

Tell-Tale Heart” seem to take things out of context; to take revenge and commit murder due to a

vulture eye or insults is a bit outlandish. Poe wrote with a great deal of exaggeration in his

stories.

Both of the aforementioned stories are set in a dark, gloomy, and foreboding setting. One

unfolds in a shadowy house full of creaking floorboards and doors, the other a catacomb littered

with past ancestors. Poe knew that sinister and mysterious places help to bring out the fear in

people; not being able to see what might be coming at the reader lets his imagination wander. In

both stories, after the murder has been committed, both Montresor and the narrator conceal the

bodies in hidden compartments, one in the floor under baseboards and the other in a niche

covered up by a freshly laid wall. This shows that both of Poe’s characters, while mad, were also
 Givens 6

cunning. The narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” would have successfully hidden the body if he

had quelled his guilt, and Montresor hushed his guilt until fifty years later.

Poe used an ominous tone in his greatest literary works. Three of his well-known pieces,

the two-abovementioned short stories and his famous poem “The Raven,” are written in a

mysterious manner. It is not just a coincidence that most of his stories embody the same

elements of the modern detective story; his invention of this genre is Poe’s greatest contribution

to world literature (Wright). His creation of the character Dupin, presented in “The Murders in

Rue Morgue,” “The Mystery of Marie Roget,” and “The Purloined Letter,” formed the archetype

of the current detective. Poe used the Gothic literature genre to help explore and describe the

psychology of humans experiencing abnormal conditions. “Typically, his characters are at the

mercy of powers over which they have no control and which their reason cannot fully

comprehend” (Wright). Poe created the current day detective story, but he did not stop there.

Poe has been called the creator of modern science fiction. “Poe’s science fiction stories

profoundly influenced later masters of the genre such as Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and Isaac

Asimov”(Wright). Poe published a total of twenty-nine short stories.

While Poe’s prose made a huge impact in literature, his poems, “The Raven” in

particular, have done just as much. “The Raven” has been parodied, imitated, and remade

hundreds of times in pop culture. The Baltimore Ravens got their name through the influence of

Poe’s work; their mascot name is Poe. The famous television show “The Simpsons” has

parodied “The Raven” on one of their many episodes. These are just two examples of the

hundreds of pop culture references that Poe’s poem “The Raven” has influenced. However,

Poe’s poetry was not a big hit at first. His early poetry received mixed reviews and failed to

establish him as either a popular or a critically acclaimed author (Wright). Poe published another
 Givens 7

thirteen poems including “Annabel Lee” and “The Bells.” In 1848, Poe published a scientific

prose poem, “Eureka.” Poe believed it to be his greatest achievement. Poe wrote to his mother-

in-law: “I have no desire to live since I have done ‘Eureka,’ I could accomplish nothing more”

(Wright).

Poe was not only a fiction writer; throughout his life he wrote a great deal of literary

journals and worked in an editorial capacity for a variety of newspapers and magazines. As a

critic, Poe was outspoken. He highlighted the mechanical boundaries of the books he reviewed

and accused many authors, most famously Henry Longfellow, of plagiarism. Poe did everything

he was able to do to keep his name well known, even going to the extent of reviewing his own

work anonymously. However, most of Poe’s theoretical assertions were made in the essays and

lectures he wrote during the end of his life.

Edgar Allan Poe was, and still is, a very influential writer. He introduced the modern day

detective story and helped shape science fiction, as we know it today. His work is known all

over the world, and his work continues to influence others. While Poe had a very troubled life,

without such drama and depression I do not believe half of his work would be as monumental as

it is today. Poe may be two-fifths sheer fudge, but he is definitely three-fifths pure genius.
 Givens 8

Works Cited

Hopkins, Robert. "The Mysterious Disappearance and Death of Edgar A. Poe." Southern

Quarterly 44 (2007): 41-60. Literary Reference Center. Collin County Community

College, Frisco. Web. 19 Apr. 2009 < http://search.ebscohost.com >.

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Cask of Amontillado”. Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for

Readers and Writers. Eds. John Schilb and John Clifford. 3rd Ed. New York:

Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006, 1226-1231. Print.

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers

and Writers. Eds. John Schilb and John Clifford. 3rd Ed. New York: Bedford/St.

Martin’s, 2006, 1232-1235. Print.

Schoell, William. ""Muddy" and Virginia." Mystery & Terror: The Story of Edgar Allan Poe.

Greensboro: Morgan Reynolds Inc., 2004. Literary Reference Center. Collin County

Community College, Frisco. Web. 19 Apr. 2009 <http://search.ebscohost.com>.

"36896. Lowell, James Russell. The Columbia World of Quotations. 1996." Bartleby.com: Great

Books Online -- Encyclopedia, Dictionary, Thesaurus and hundreds more. Web. 18 Apr.

2009 <http://www.bartleby.com/66/96/36896.html>.

"To Know Poe." The Weekly Reader 7 Jan. 2004: 20-20. Literary Reference Center. Collin

County Community College, Frisco. Web. 19 Apr. 2009 < http://search.ebscohost.com >.

Wright, Thomas. "Poe, Edgar Allan." 2004. Oxford University Press. Collin County Community

College, Frisco. Web. 18 Apr. 2009 <http://www.oxford-americanliterature.com>.