When doing a
reflection to a certain art piece, people enjoy relating the piece into the
creator’s life or his background. Similarly, it is very interesting to discuss about the relationship between the story and the writer. And when reading the two stories
of Edgar Allan Poe, 'The cask of amontillado' and 'The telltale heart’, I found
out that two stories are quite similar to the life story of Edgar Allan Poe.
The first
thing that came up to my mind while reading two stories ('The cask of
amontillado' and 'The telltale heart') is insanity. Although there would
be some issue on defining insanity, conventionally saying, both of the
narrators in two stories are definitely out-of-their-minds. They commit murders
with vague motives like 'the evil eye' or 'the thousand injuries.' And after
all, they confess what they had done before they die. Two stories are almost in
the same pattern.
Those two,
similar stories can be linked with Poe’s biography. Like his gloomy stories,
his life was full of hardships and difficulties. He lost his parents and
aggressively disciplined by his foster family. He also married his 13-years-old
cousin who died two years later after that. And after all, he died in the age
of 40. (The cause of his death is not known, but it is believed that he died by
the diseases like heart disease, epilepsy, cholera and rabies.) Numerous
difficulties in Poe’s life can explain the reason why most of the stories of
Poe are dark, gloomy, and somewhat insane.
So, why did
Poe want to write such a gloomy stories?
According to
Freud, the father of psychoanalytic perspective, there exist three parts in
human's mind: id, superego, and ego. Id is what leads human to have a basic
desire while superego is what makes human to act in a socially acceptable way.
In between, ego seeks to please the id's drive in realistic ways. And when one
follows the id rather than superego, ego displays a lot of methods in order to
minimize the guiltiness or anxiety comes from the superego. Some of the methods
are immature like fantasy, projection, and passive aggression while other
methods are mature like humor, sublimation, altruism, anticipation.
Personally, I think Poe tried to sublimate
his socially unacceptable desire that might have been occurred frequently
throughout his life. Sublimation is a mature type of defense
mechanism where socially unacceptable impulses are consciously transformed
into socially acceptable actions or behavior, possibly converting the initial impulse
in the long term. And Poe’s creepy and sometimes insane short stories might
have been used to sublimate Poe’s unacceptable desire (It might be murder?).
To sum up, while reading
up the stories, I get to think Poe highly of his act of sublimation, which is a
mature way to deal with the stress, and his story telling style which is
elaborate and careful enough to express insane elements or events in a quite
gentle manner. I should read Poe’s story more.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Comments!
-Nuri: I liked your analysis of combining the background of the author to the story. However, your first and second paragraph don't seem to fall in the same order- you first start out by talking about the motive and pattern of the two stories and then just jump to Poe's expression of himself in his stories. If you add a few transitional sentences, I think your essay will be great:) And while talking about Poe's background, maybe you can link what parts of his background was influential in his stories.
-Seungwon: Had Poe had a hunky-dory childhood, such mad stories couldn't have been created. I agree wholeheartedly on that point. I do wish you could elaborate a bit more on the link between Poe's life and his works. A bit of specificity is always good.
-Inhee Ho: Surely, Poe's abnormal (though I don't exactly know what 'abnormal' is) life should have affected a lot of his pieces! They are mostly horror, 'killing', mystery, and suffering. I really learned much about Poe's life reading your writing :). I see how much vicissitudes he had in his life. But I sort of don't get how these ups and downs he experienced were taken to his writing. Maybe there was specific disease or motivation he started writing 'Poe-style' stories.
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