Edgar Allan
Poe, the master of intrigue, el maestro de la intriga
Hoy he
visitado el Museo de Edgard Allan Poe, uno de mis escritores norteamericanos
predilectos.
Today I visited The Edgar Allan Poe Museum; Poe is one of my
much-loved American writers.
Soy un
admirador Poe y le tengo afecto por muchas razones: quedó huérfano a los dos años,
fue criado por la familia Allan que nunca lo adoptó formalmente (Poe no recibió
herencia alguna), la muerte temprana de su amada esposa Virginia Clemm. Poe vivió
en la pobreza, ejerció el periodismo, la literatura y fue un enamorado del
estado de Virginia (ciudad que me adoptó y me ha tratado bien).
I am Poe’s admirer and very fond of him for several reasons:
he was at orphan an age two, he was raised by the Allan family who never
adopted him formally (Poe didn’t inherit any money), the early dead of his
beloved wife: Virginia Clemm. Poe lived in poverty worked as a writer and journalism
and was very fond of Virginia (city that also adopted me and has treated me
well).
Pese a que Poe
tuvo problemas con el alcohol no bebía tanto como se especula; por cuestiones
de salud no tenia tolerancia al alcohol por lo cual se unió en grupo de Richmond que practicaba la abstinencia.
Even though Poe has some drinking problems, he didn’t drink
as much as people speculate; due to health issues and low tolerance to alcohol
he joined a Richmond Chapter that practiced temperance.
Su extraña muerte en una calle de Baltimore donde fue hallado inconsciente originó
la leyenda del gran escritor de cuentos detectivescos y de horror.
His strange death in a Baltimore street where he was found unconscious
origininated the legend of this great horror and detective tales writer.
Siempre que
manejo por Richmond o Baltimore siento nostalgia porque pienso en El gato
negro, Anabel Lee, El Cuervo, William Wilson, El Barril de Amontillado, etc.
Estas historias ha sido una suerte de compañeros
durante mi vida loca.
Every time I drive around Richmond or Baltimore I feel
nostalgia because I think of The Black Cat, The Raven, William Wilson, The Cask
of Amontillado, etc. These stories have been some sort of companion during my Vida
Loca.
Hace cuatro
años escribí un ensayo en Poe para una clase de literatura norteamericana.
Este el borrador que escribí y tuvo
correcciones de la profesora Harman; lamentablemente no tengo a mano esas correcciones
finales.
Four year ago I wrote an essay about Poe for an American literature
class. This is the draft I wrote and had some corrections by professor Harman; unfortunately,
I don’t have those final corrections handy.
Aquí el ensayo escrito con pasión y algunos errores.
Here is the essay written with passion and some mistakes.
Edgar Allan Poe: the master of
intrigue
Edgar Allan Poe is
without a doubt one of the greatest American short story writers of all times with
his important contribution to diverse genres including horror tale, science
fiction, and mystery. Poetry and literary criticism are also part of his vast
creative work which denotes not only talent and a rigorous composition method;
furthermore the influence of his personal life.
Poe usually creates
intrigue as soon as he begins to narrate, even by suggesting that the story is
either irrelevant or by diminishing the truth of the events he is about to
tell. He does it perfectly in The Black
Cat by saying, “For the most wild, yet
most homely narrative which I am about to pen. I neither expect nor solicit
believe.”(1593) Following the same type
of disguise, the voice of the narrator again points out that, “My immediate
purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without any
comment, a serious of mere household
events.”
By using a sort of
reverse psychology technique the writer causes the opposite effect in the reader’s
mind since he will need to continue reading to understand why the writer bothers
to tell such an insignificant story. But Poe is no satisfied with his intention
and creates conspiracy by stating that The
Black Cat’s main character was terrified, tortured, and destroyed by the
mere household events previously mentioned.
What
a perfect set up to trap the reader who now has intrigue to read more to
understand the events the author is leading up to , and more importantly how simple
and small events can destroy a person’s life.
Poe’s
characters are at times similar in perversity and beliefs. The main character
of the Black Cat is no different or less cruel than the character of The Cask of Amontillado. In the Black Cat, the voice of the narrator
knows that a demon of fury has possessed him; thus, he is perverse and abusive
with his wife and brutal toward animals. The situation escalades when he
strangulates his cat without any logical reason; even after the animal was
affectionate to him, “I knew that in doing so I was committing a deadly sin
that would jeopardize my immortal soul.”(1594)
In The Cask of Amontillado, Montresor (the
main character) emphasizes that he is looking for revenge because the
antagonist (Fortunato) has injured him. Montresor wants to punish Fortunato and
hurt him badly, “I must punish but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed
when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the
avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.”(1612)
In both stories,
the characters somehow also are analogous to Poe’s behavior and life style. In The Black Cat the main character describes
a large cask of gin and rum and he compares his increasing anger to alcohol, in
the Cask of Amontillado, Montresor
takes his victim with lies to the vaults where he keeps the amontillado.
Another similarity
is found when both speakers use French and Latin words: Bas relief for low relieve, barroques
for odd, and the cat’s named is Pluto.
The author uses allegory as a device and Roman Mythology is present, for Pluto is the god of dead. We will learn
later why The Black Cat is the cause
of the narrator’s destruction. By mentioning the Cat’s deadly ending, the
author uses foreshadowing, and a literary device to predict or augur later
fatal events. The recurrent use of allegory and symbolism is
present in the Cask of Amontillado as well; the antihero’s name is Fortunato
which means fortunate or providential. However, Fortunato’s destiny is far from
being auspicious at all.
Poe’s main characters
are refined, speak French, and have a taste for alcohol. In real life, Poe was
an alcoholic who was expelled from college; his brother Henry also died of
alcoholism. In The book The Art of the short story, (his
biography) also confirms that Poe’s personal life one way or another inspired
him to create peculiar characters. Poe is described as, “a person with
irregular habits, high demanding standards, unpredictable temper, and excessive
drinking.”(707)
In the Cask of Amontillado, Montresor describes his vault similar to the
catacombs of Paris and uses Latin phrases. I. e. Nemo me impune lecessit which means no one insults me with impunity.
Furthermore, at the end of the Cask of
Amontillado he says to Fortunato, “In
pace requiescat”which means may
he rest in peace. Fortunato is drunk and can barely breathe because air is
scarce meanwhile Montresor is plastering a brick wall leaving him inside.
Coincidental as in
the Black Cat’s, the main character plastered
a wall leaving his wife’s dead body inside. Even though he has killed his wife
with an axe by accident the perversity pattern is very noticeable. His initial
intention was to kill a cat that has a bear resemble to Pluto or it is Pluto’s ghost.
The cat like a real god of dead has brought blood and murder.
In The Black Cat, the main character
understands the existence of God and Law; yet, his freedom of choice is to disobey,
“Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment to
violate which is law, merely because we understand it to be such?”(1594)
Poe
excels at suspense in his stories and follows a defined and logical structure: beginning, middle, and end. Irony, astonishment, sarcasm, and fatality are
usually present at the last part. The
Black Cat ends with the police discovering the crime thanks to a voice that
cries from within the walls; when the walls are later tore down the dead body
of his wife is found next to the cat.
The author’s
intention is to cause an arousal out of the reader, either to love or hate the
main character or hero. It is imperative to be aware that a main character
could also be an antihero like Hawthorne’s Rip
Van Winkle. The voice of the narrator through the whole story tries to
validate the intention of the author: to prove his hypothesis and/or or reach
the climax foreseen at the beginning. In the
Black Cat, a mere event destroyed the life of the narrator like the hero
announced; in The Cask of Amontillado,
Fortunato was punished with impunity as Montresor promised. But the dexterity
of Poe is to maintain the reader on guard since there is not insinuation of how
the antagonist will be punished. We can foreshadow that something will happen, except
the ability of the author will not let the reader outline the conclusion.
In The Tale and its Effect, Poe is very
clear about his writing style, “A skillful literary artist has constructed a
tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents;
but with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out
.he then invents such incidents.”(725)
Poe’s
literary work is consistent. Choose a story and the conclusion will be alike:
astonishment at the end. The Tell -Tale Heart,
William Wilson, the Black Cat, and, the
Cask of Amontillado are just some of the stories that validate his writing
techniques and criticism.
In his writing The Philosophy of Composition, the
maestro Poe confirms that his style
is preconceived and intentional, “Nothing is clear {clearer} than every plot,
worth the name. Must be elaborated to its denouement
before any thing be attempted with the pen.
It is only with the denouement (from
French denouer, “to untie”) constantly in view that we can give a
plot its indispensable air of consequence, or causation, by making the
incidents and especially the tone of the points, tend to the development of the
intention.”(1617)
David Ketterer,
English Professor at Concordia University (Sir George Williams Campus) in
Montreal, Canada has written The Rationale of Deception in Poe mentioned a list of stories where the
doppelganger theme is used as a device. By this, Ketterer implies that Poe’s stories
talk about two persons who are really one. In The Science Fiction Element in the Work of Poe: a Chronological Survey
Ketterer states that the result of the narrator's mutilating his black cat is a
projection of those aspects of his personality he wishes to exorcise. (http://www.depauw.edu)
According to the
Merriam Webster dictionary doppelganger comes from the German word doppel which means double and the word ganger means goer. By definition, doppelganger is a ghostly
counterpart of a living person. (http://www.merriam-webster.com)
Either
intentionally trying to tell about his personal life or to challenge the
reader, Poe’s short stories using the doppelganger
creates at bizarre atmosphere showing the duality of a person: a lovely husband
who becomes a violent person and a murderer or an apparent normal citizen like
Montresor who kills his friend Fortunato because he insulted him. Although, the
story never elucidates what Fornunato did to Monstresor.
Poe’s personal
life was surrounded by tragedy : orphan at two, his wife died after 11 years of
marriage; the writer himself died at age forty under odd conditions after being
found in poor health and incoherent in a Baltimore street.
D.H Lawrence, a
famous American writer said about Poe, “He was an adventurer into vaults and
cellars and horrible underground passages of the human soul. He sounded the
horror and the warning of his own doom.”(708)
It is a fact that not all critics and scholars
will agree about which were Poe’s real intentions to write about such diverse
and controversial topics: doppelganger, psychological issues, murders, violence,
and repression; however, most readers will agree that even though his stories were
written in the 1800’s , they still are an inspiration for modern writers worldwide.
Work Cited
Poe,
Edgar Allan. “The Philosophy of Composition” “The Black Cat” “The Cask of
Amontillado”
The
Norton Anthology American Literature.
Wayne Franklyn, Philip F Goura, and Arnold Krupa. W. W Norton Company.
New York-London, 2007. 1593-1594-1612-1617
Poe,
Edgar Allan. “The Tale and its effect” and “Biography” The Art of the Short
Story. Dana Gioia and R. S. Gwynn.
Pearson Longman. New York-Boston-Paris, 2006. 708-725
Ketterer,
David. “The Science Fiction Element in the Work of Poe: a Chronological Survey.”
2005
The
Merriam Webster Dictionary. “Definition of Doppelganger”
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