Edgar Allan Poe was a great writer whose very well-known but along the path to success, he had many struggles. A writer is someone who enjoys putting any thought or Idea down on paper and making the story come alive. There are many different types of writing such as persuasive, narrative, and even many kinds of poems.
There are so many writers around the world today and it all started from the beginning of time. Writing is so important because it has allowed us to keep memories that actually happened in our world. If it were not for writers, then we would not know when and how things started or came to be. Many stories and Poems are also an escape for others. When you start reading a book or poem, it can help you to relate and put yourself in the story. Writing can help you clear the mind and focus on more things in life. When you jot something down, it makes you feel like that thing or feeling in coming from out you onto the paper and is a great resource for yourself to let it all out. That is exactly what Edgar Allan Poe did in his writing. He is well known for his dark and mysterious poems. Edgar Allan Poe went through many things, he was always feeling a little sad or dark and that is what he expressed through his own writing. That is what makes each writer unique. Everyone feels and acts different and if you express your ways through your writing, it will stand out.
Edgar Allan Poe was a great writer that is very well known, but the path to success had many complications behind it. The life of Edgar Allan Poe began when he was born on January 19, 1809. As a child, when he was only about three years old, Edgar’s parents died leaving him to be a Foster child and move to Virginia with John and Francis Allan. Growing up, Edgar went to many great schools as a kid that gave him the best education, which soon led to him attending the University of Virginia. Later, that is when Edgar started to write his own poems. One of his very first poem was Tamerlane. This poem along with another set of collection actually did not receive any recognition for his work sadly. He had many financial problems in his life due to too much gambling and not having support from his parents. He was forced to leave his University and Military because of his financial issues. However, that did not seem to get to Edgar. Later in his life as an Adult, he moved into his aunt’s house so that he could get back on his feet and away from John and Francis Allan. They did not seem to get along with each other and he knew it was best to move on. He then got married to his own cousin, Virginia who was only thirteen years old which seems somewhat odd but getting married at such a young age for women was very normal back then. Edgar started writing many different kinds of short stories to magazines and became the editor of Southern Literary Messenger. Over the next ten years or so, Edgar started writing some of his best poems that he is now famous for such as, The Fall of the House of Usher,”” The Tell-Tale Heart,”” The Murders in the Rue Morgue,”” and The Raven.
Poe soon developed a reputation as a fearless critic who not only attacked an author’s work but also insulted the author and the northern literary establishment. Poe targeted some of the most famous writers in the country; one of his victims was the anthologist and editor Rufus Griswold. With his writing growing everywhere, Virginia his wife soon died with a disease which left Edgar feeling very depressed. He loved her very much and he felt as if he could not live without her. Because of her death, he increased his alcohol intake and his life started to go downhill. October 3, 1849 Poe died four days later of acute congestion of the brain. Evidence by medical practitioners who reopened the case has shown that Poe may have been suffering from rabies. Although Edgar Allan Poe has so many struggles with loss of loved ones, not having his real parents, no financial support, and many failures in writing, he ended up being one of America’s very first writers to become a major figure in world literature. He left behind a legacy and proved that doing what you love can be hard and complicated at times, but in the end its worth is and you can be successful. It took him a long time to get himself where he wanted to be.
The Raven is one of Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous poems that he has written. In this poem is talks about the Narrator and a black raven. It starts out with the Narrator sitting in his house reading a book in the middle of the night. When all of a sudden, he hears a knock at the door but no one is there when he opens it. Then he hears a tap on the window and a black raven flies into the room. The Narrator asks the Raven about his dead wife for hopes of seeing her in heaven again. But the only response he gets is Nevermore. This makes the Narrator sad a feeling lonely again because every question and hope he has for him and his wife that he loved so much is still not the answer he is looking for. Back into the dark he goes, he says his wife’s name but only gets an echo of her name and that is the end of the poem. The raven, as Poe explains it in The Philosophy of composition, is chosen as a plausible vehicle for the repetition of the refrain-the word nevermore. The bird is thus a figure for mechanical poetic repetition. The purveyor of the burden has to be a bird: the intentional relation to a signified is denied through the nonhuman repetition of a pure signifier. The word nevermore, offered here as the most poetical of words, in fact crops up uncannily in Wordsworth’s essay too as a distinguishing poetic mark. (Bloom 22)
I think the meaning behind this poem is a reflection of Edgar’s life. Edgar went through the same thing when his wife died. He was very sad and lonely and I think that this poem was a way to express his feelings that he lost hope of ever seeing her again. The second poem Annabele Lee is another well-known poem that talks about a love so deep that it will last forever. Both of the characters that we do not know are very young. The speaker states that they are both children who are kingdom of the sea. Then a big gust of clouds come over Annabele Lee leaving her dead. He believes that the angels did this because they were so jealous of the love he had for Annabele Lee. So then, the relatives come taking her away and putting her in a tombstone, but that does not stop the speaker. Every night he will end up next to her dead body. The speaker also sees Annabel Lee wherever he goes. In the clouds, stars, and daily interactions. The whole poem is showing the reader that their love is inseparable and that it will last for all eternity. Dreams are reflections of our inmost, often subconscious, feelings; and that literary creations such as Poe’s are essentially like dreams. (Rein 1) Poe loved to reflect how he felt through his poems and use a combination of a huge imaginative dream. He uses real life scenarios along with something so exaggerated that it makes it much more interesting for the reader to read. Because his wife died from a disease, I feel as if he was putting them in a situation that she was Annabele Lee. The love they had was amazing, and he thinks about her all the time.
All of Edgar Allan’s poems are very interesting and take you into an adventure of his own life. The poem Alone is a great example of how the speaker is feeling or in other words, how he has been feeling his whole life. The title Alone gives away most of the story behind it, but it starts out with him talking about a childhood that was different from everyone else. He experienced things differently and had something different happen to him when he was younger making him sad during his life. He was alone and no one could ever relate to him. No one will deny that he has been the most misunderstood. (Regan 1) Then he goes on to tell us that everything he has ever loved was alone and not what others loved. The poem ends with a mystery that we will never know and a storm that has a blue sky with a demon. The mystery is unknown forever but it could possibly reflect what was making him so sad in his life. To show how different he was, he ended the poem with a clear blue sky and a demon. I think that this could possibly mean he is showed as a happy person with many cheerful people around him but deep inside he was a demon. Something bad happened and he will forever be sad about it. The setting in this poem is all about the natural world. It describes the leaves, autumn, lightning, and many other outside environmental objects. Overall, this poem seems to just be talking about a childhood in the wilderness and being alone, but truly is about how he never felt the same as everyone else around him. The speaker is literally all alone along with a mystery we will never know.
In conclusion, Edgar Allan Poe was and still is to this day a famous writer known for his crazy imaginative, depressing, sad, creepy, and dark poems. He had a hard life full of depression, death, and lost love. Through his writing, he was able to express how he felt and who he really was. It was an escape and he was great at doing what he loved. That is why is he is known for his work. I really admire what Edgar Allen Poe did, although it was mostly dark and sad, it described who he was. He wasn’t trying to be anybody else but him and he found himself. His writing was very different than anyone’s out there which is what made Edgar Allan Poe so unique. Poe is a true light, though, merely to make of him an accursed poet, seeking inspiration in alcohol and opium, merely to see in him a being resembling his creations, a bohemian living on the edge of society and finding himself isolated from the America of his time. (Fisher 9) Edgar was always different and he knew this, that is why he is known for his amazing talented writing. It’s very different compared to all the writers and he stands out with his feeling of isolation from others. The feelings he felt has helped him to express it through the talent and art work of his own writing and famous poems. All the poems he had were individually crafted and took lots of effort and time to complete.
Poe is very successful at what he did and I know for sure that if you do what you love, you can become successful. Just because he was successful, it doesn’t mean that he was perfect and didn’t have any trials. Throughout his writing and life, he had gone through some terrible times but that’s what shaped him into the person he was. As readers of his writing I think that we all can notice how different he was and it’s amazing. The writing is creative and like nothing else out there. With hard work and determination, anything is possible. Edgar Allan Poe left behind a great lasting legacy that we will never forget. His writing continues to amaze and inspire others from time to time. He taught us that it is okay to feel different and not be like the rest of the crowd. Do what you love and amazing things will happen. Being unique means taking chances and being yourself! Edgar Allan Poe is a great example of this, he took chances, he was himself. Not everyone loved his writing, but he did not stop doing what he loved. He had fallen many time, but in the end got back up. Writing is very important in our world, it keeps memories that will be known of and last forever. Don’t ever stop doing what you love, you may never know what life has in store for you even when it gets really difficult. Edgar Allan Poe was a great writer who became very successful but had many trials along the path to success.
Percy Bysshe Shelley. Poets. org, Academy of American Poets, 6 Oct. 2015, Poe’s Biography
Edgar Allan Poe Museum, www. poemuseum. org/poes-biography.
Bloom, Harold. Bloom’s Modern Critical views Edgar Allan Poe. Chelsea House Publishers: New York. 2006. Fisher IV, Benjamin.
POE AND OUR TIMES: INFLUENCES AND AFFINITIES. Edgar Allan Poe Society. 1986. Regan, Robert. POE A COLLECTION OF CRITICAL ESSAYS. Prentice-Hall: New Jersey. 1967. United States of America. Rein, David. Edgar A. Poe The Inner Pattern. Philosophical Library: New York. 1960. United States of America.
