Edgar Allan Poe and the Concept of Death
One of the most puzzling detective writers, Edgar Allan Poe still remains to be a mystery for both experts in literature and common readers. In his stories E. Poe attempted to draw the image of death, an incredible and at the same time an inevitable enemy of the human race.
Death is all-powerful as well as the feeling of fear or even horror of a human in the face of death. It is not accidentally that the author places his characters in a space isolated from the world – it can be a torture chamber, well, jail, old estate – where they are remained alone, as if in coffins, face to face with their fears. This isolation plunges a man into reflections about himself, and his own consciousness becomes the object and the subject of the analysis. There in the human consciousness the author tries to find a portrait of death.
Death is regarded by E. Poe as a new birth. This idea is the way out of persistent horror in front of inevitable death. The writer makes a surprising attempt to render human feelings and the transformation of consciousness before death, at the moment of death and after death. E. Poe proclaims that here on Earth a man is submerged into an unusual state of consciousness, which is close to hypnosis. From the author’s viewpoint, this pathological condition closely resembles death: when a person is in such a state of mind and soul, that senses almost lose their receptivity.
E. Poe’s favorite metaphor was “a caterpillar that turns into a butterfly”. A man experience the same metamorphosis when finds himself on the edge between life and death. When one passes away, he or she finds a perfect and complete embodiment. Hence, death is the way the author views the concept of freedom. He often emphasizes freedom in his stories. For instance, in the short story "The Cask of Amontillado" events take place during the carnival. Such setting is chosen to symbolize freedom: "It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the carnival season, that I encountered my friend." (The Cask of Amontillado) It is obvious, that death and freedom go hand in hand with madness in the quote.
The detailed description of horrific events and mad characters suggests to the idea that everything in E. Poe’s works springs from personal experience. Indeed, virtually all the stories and poems are written in first person narration and bear the imprint of mental pathology. Main character is a depressive individual plagued by all sorts of phobias such as ones of death and being buried alive, of loss of his beloved, of madness: "They heard! -they suspected! -they knew! -they were making a mockery of my horror!" (The Tell-Tale Heart) In" The Cask of Amontillado" the author does not speak clearly about the reason for revenge: "The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge.” (The Cask of Amontillado) That implies that the cause could be madness. Also, some baffling insane ideas are reflected in the other story "The Tell-Tale Heart": "It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night." (The Tell-Tale Heart)
E. Poe himself suffered from such a great number of fears and phobias, that the only way to cope with mental problems was to create an imagery world. E. Poe’s characters are constantly haunted by strange ideas, obsessive thoughts about committing bloody crimes and murders; and virtually in every story someone dies as a martyr.
The fear of death and the way to overcome it is one of the major themes of E. Poe’s works. He describes all the anguish and horror that a man unleashed, claiming that death is an unnatural part of life. An intriguing question there is whether E. Poe himself overcame the fear of death or not. Throughout his life E. Poe was trying to find an answer to the question about afterlife, about the meaning of what is called death. Actually, he succeeded and pointed out the only power that could stop death. It is love that can withstand the horror of death; passionate, unrestrained and unearthly love, that unites a single man and a single woman; and these relationships are sacred and indissoluble.
Of course this conclusion is the result of the author’s personal experience in love and death. First, it was the death of his mother that he took hard. The mother’s image haunted him during all his life. Even his wife Virginia bore similarity to his mother. Second, the death of his wife, whom he survived for only two and a half years, so deeply affected him that he was never able to recover. E. Poe wrote a number of stories and poems, where the main character was a young and outstandingly beautiful woman, who met an untimely end. The image of a passed away young girl is presented by the author as true beauty. In death he finds beauty and life. Death is regarded as a triumph. A good example is the closing sentence in "The Cask of Amontillado", which sounds pompously enough: "May he rest in peace!" (The Cask of Amontillado) Taking in account all this, it seems ironical, that the circumstances of E. Poe’s own withdrawal from life are unclear so far.
Works cited
Poe, E. A. “The Cask of Amontillado”. Archive.org Web. 7 April 2016 at http://archive.org/stream/thecaskofamontil01063gut/1063.txt
Poe, E. A. “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Americanenglish.state.gov Web. 7 April 2016 at http://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/the_tell-tale_heart_0.pdf
