The short story writer which I have chosen to research is Edgar AllenPoe. After reading one of his works in class, I realized that his mysteriousstyle of writing greatly appealed to me.
Although many critics have differentviews on Poe’s writing style, I think that Harold Bloom summed it up best whenhe said, “Poe has an uncanny talent for exposing our common nightmares andhysteria lurking beneath our carefully structured lives. ” ( 7) For me, this isdone through his use of setting and narrative style. In many of Poe’s works, setting is used to paint a dark and gloomypicture in our minds. I think that this was done deliberatly by Poe so that thereader can make a connection between darkness and death. For example, in the“Pit and the Pendulum”, the setting is originally pitch black.
As the storyunfolds, we see how the setting begins to play an important role in how thenarrator discovers the many ways he may die. Although he must rely on hissenses alone to feel his surroundings, he knows that somewhere in this dark,gloomy room, that death awaits him. Richard Wilbur tells us how fitting thechamber in “The Pit and the Pendulum” actually was. “Though he lives on thebrink of the pit, on the very verge of the plunge into unconciousness, he isstill unable to disengage himself from the physical and temperal world. Thephysical oppreses him in the shape of lurid graveyard visions; the temporaloppreses him in the shape of an enormous and deadly pendulum. It is altogetherappropriate, then, that this chamber should be constricting and cruelly angular”(63).
Setting is also an important characteristic is Poe’s “The Fall of theHouse of Usher”. The images he gives us such as how both the Usher family andthe Usher mansion are crumbling from inside waiting to collapse, help us toconnect the background with the story. Vincent Buranelli says that “Poe isable to sysatin an atomosphere which is dark and dull. This is one of thetricks which he laregely derived from the tradition of the Gothic tale” (79). The whole setting in the story provides us with a feeling of melancholy.
TheUsher mansion appears vacant and barren. The same is true for the narrator. Aswe picture in our minds the extreme decay and decomposistion, we can feelasthough the life around it is also crumbling. Narration is also an element in Poe’s short story style that appears tolink all of the stories together. He has a type of creativity which lets thereader see into the mind of the narrator or the main character of the story.
Many of the characters in Poe’s stories seem to be insane. The narrator oftenseems to have some type of psychological problems. For exapmle, In Poe’s “TheCask of Amontillado, ” the story opens with a first person narrator (Montresor)speaking about the planning of Fortunato’s death. By the anger and remorse thatMontresor has for Fortunato, one might think that this was a recent incident. It is not until the very end of the story that we realize, that the entire eventoccurred fifty years ago.
David Herbert Lawrence says, “To the characters inPoe’s story, hate is as inordinate as live. The lust of hate is the inordinatedesire to consume and unspeakably possess the soul of the hated one, just as thelust of live is the desire to possess or be possessed be the beloved, uterly. ”(33). Poe’s stories often have narrators that feel extreme hate or extreme lovefor another character in the story. Another example of Poe’s narrative style is seen in his story entitled,”The Black Cat”, where the narrator seems to have an obsession with pets. He hasone “special” pet which is a black cat.
Although their original relationshipwith each other is one of respect and love, the situation soon changes. Thenarrator becomes somewhat possessed with the hate for the car. He turns againsthis wife and stabs his cat in the eye. By the end of the story, he killed hiswife in an attempt to kill the cat. Afterwards, the narrator does not even feelremorse for the wrongful death of his wife.
Instead, he is just happy that thecat dissapeared. This is just another instance in which the reader wonders whatis the driving force begins the narrator’s insanity. Buranelli, “In both Poe’s“The Cask of Amontillado” and his “The Black Cat”, the barrators act withoutconscience. There are no doubts, hesitiations or second thought to impede thenarrative. Both narrators just sought revenge” (77).
Even though there are many more elements to Edgar Allan Poe’s shortstories than just his creative use of narration and setting, these arecharacteristivs which has attracted the most attention. Poe has a way ofwriting in which he does not have to reveal too much, or paint a pretty picturefor the reader in order to attract his attention. In D. H. Lawrence’s Studies inClassic American Literature, the author states, “Poe’s narrowness is like that of a sword, not that of a bottleneck: it is effective rather than constricting.
Nothing adventitious is in his great stories, only the essentials, the mininum of characterization, plot, and atmosphere. By ridding himself of everything except what is precisely to the point, he achieves unity of effect. ” (66). There is also a prominent distinction between right and wrong in Poe’stories.
Viscous characters tend to come to a bad end. This lets the readeraccept these endings as a triumph of good over evil. As stated by Buranelli: “He has created a universe, given it psychological laws without denying the existence of the moral law, and peopled it with characters appropriate to such a universe. Puttng overt mortality out of bounds helps to give him uniqueness” (74). After researching Edgar Allan Poe more in depth, I now have a muchgreater respect for him and a slightly different perspective of his stories.
While it is still evident to me that narrative style and setting have a greatdeal to do with the development of Poe’s short stories, I also realise now thatwe can’t overlap and intertwine with other aspects of the story, making themequally as important. I will end with a quote found in Vincent Buranelli’s EdgarAllan Poe: “Even though Poe is often looked upon as a gifted psychopath who is describing with consumate artistry his personal instablities and abnormalitiesm the fact remains that his superiority is more than a matter of art. There is a violent realism in his macabre writings unequaled by the Americans who worked in the same genre.”
