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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).
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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
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death but with 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.
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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.
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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
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also 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
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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 motherin-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.
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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>.