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In Websters New World Dictionary, fear is defined as anxiety caused by a real or possible danger, pain, etc. Some words found in the thesaurus are fright, terror, horror, panic, dread, and dismay just to name a few. In his stories Edgar Allan Poe does an excellent job of engulfing the reader into a fear that he creates with nothing but words. Something that is very difficult to do in this day and age. For his time no one was better at it. There was no pulsation.
He was stare dead. His eye would trouble me no more (Poe, Tell-Tale 244). Quotes like this are what makes his stories so very frightening. They have amazing symbolism and effects. All of his stories have the same premise of Poe used many different horror symbols in his stories to help make the stories even more frightening for the reader. But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only that one word.
As if his soul in that one word he did out pore (Poe, Raven 316). With this he used an animal as something that can invoke fear into someone. Horror symbols were very important to Poe they are in almost all of his stories. The fury of the demon instantly possessed me. I know myself no longer. My original soul seemed at once, to take its flight from my body (Poe, Burial 157).
The image of a demon gives a sense of fear and horror, it is a very fitting symbol for what is trying to be expressed in the story and that is someone no longer in contact with themselves or reality. In one of his stories the horror symbol is an eye, which lies at the center of his obsession and is repeated throughout (Magill 1647). It becomes the characters obsession and leads to the fear in the story. In the story The Fall of the House of Usher, The story concerns not only the fall of Ushers house- itself a symbol of the end of rational order- but also the shock to the narrators assumptions, the dissolution of his In his stories Poe also used grotesque themes in his stories. These themes helped set the mood and put some gore into the stories. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered in so brief a period as had Roderick Usher (Poe, Fall 120).
This makes you wonder what could have happened to this man what he could possibly look like. It helps make the stories come alive and seem very real. Waters were so inky a hue as to bring to my mind a panorama more deplorable no human can imagine (Poe, Descent 44). This makes you try to think of horrifying things that might frighten yourself, but no one else. In the pitch-black room we see little of the victim, the old man whose baleful eye is refracted through the deranged mentality of our informant (Levin 145). This also gives you a sense of grotesque quality with the theme of the eye and a In his stories Poe describes what effect the haunting has on the characters themselves.
To be buried while alive, is beyond question, the most terrific of these extremes has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality (Poe, Burial 295). This shows that the haunting in the stories greatly effects the characters in the stories and by the characters being afraid the reader puts themselves in the characters shoes and has some of their same emotions. And now at the dead hour of the night the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror (Poe, Tell-Tale 243). This is something almost everyone can relate to it being too quiet that you are afraid. The reader is affected by it because they can relate to it and understand why the charter is horrified.
Things like the characters being overtake by sudden and unexampled catastrophes, as though the laws of Nature, heeding some hidden behest, cause the very elements to rear up in a violent manifestation make for a very sudden and haunting impact in the stories (Hoffman 138). It is very difficult to invoke fear into someone, but Poe was able to create that fear in his stories. Six hours of deadly terror that I endured have broken me up body and soul (Poe, Descent 43). Things like this help to do the job of creating fear in the stories.
There are many different words that Poe has used to help create this fear. There was no pulsation, he was stone dead, his eye would trouble me no more (Poe, Tell-Tale 244). This is what helps in the task of creating the fear. It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself to affix violence to its our nature (Poe, Burial 158). Things of this nature are what made them frightening. When Poe wrote as the landing was reached, these sounds, also, had ceased and everything remained perfectly quiet give you both a strange sense of both calm and fear leading to an experience Poe's works were not only scary, but they were also very powerful masterpieces.
It is impossible to say how I first concerned the idea, but it haunted me day and night (Poe, Tell-Tale 239). Things like this were what created a powerful and moving story. His works are also moving because of things like the charm-the great charm- is that they are glimpses of a great field, of the whole deep mystery of a mans soul and conscience (James 368). Stories are made powerful not by what they are about, but whats in them. There happened to me an event such as never happened before to mortal man-or at least such as no man survived to tell of it (Poe, Descent 43). With such powerful content the story becomes very memorable and powerful.
Poe was able to express powerful feelings with lines like during the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens help to set the mood and create an excellent setting to make a powerful Poe achieves his goal of creating fear with his descriptive style of writing. Fear can lead people to do many things and in his stories Poe vividly expressed that. He is the innovator of most modern horror stories. Will there ever be another writer who can create such a sensation of fear in the readers with such power and emotion? Bibliography: WORKS CITED Feidelson, Charles.
Poe as a Symbolist. Twentieth Century Interpretations of the House of Usher. New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc, . 1969. James, Henry. Essays on Literature American Writers English Writers. New York: Literary Classics of the United States Inc, . 1984.
Hoffman, Daniel. Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc, . 1972. Levin, Henry. The Power of Blackness. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1958. Magill, Frank N. Magill's Survey of American Literature. New York: Marshall Cavendis Co. , 1991. Poe, Edgar Allan. The Murders in the Rue Morgue.
Edgar Allan Poe Selected Tales. Oxford University Press, 1998. 123 - 134. Poe, Edgar Allan. A Descent into the Maelstrom.
Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. New York: The Macmillan Co. , 1963. 43 - 62. -- -. The Fall of the House of Usher. 115 - 136. -- -. The Premature Burial. 295 - 312 -- -.
The Raven. 314 - 318. -- -. The Tell-Tale Heart. 239 - 245
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Research essay sample on Poe And His Haunting Grotesque Theme
