Term Paper on "Edgar Allan Poe's Short Stories. This Theme"

Term Paper 11 pages (4034 words) Sources: 10 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Edgar Allan Poe's short stories. This theme is "burial and redemption." Indeed, the theme of burial occurs in several of Poe's short stories. While expanding on this central theme, reference will also be made to three other stories of Poe, which also reflect this theme. The stories that will be explored are: The Black Cat, the Tell-Tale Heart, and the Cask of Amontillado. In each of the stories, either the protagonist of a primary character kills and buries or buries alive a family member of someone related. The haunting that results from the buriers guilt eventually results in retribution against the killer in two of the stories, the Tell-Tale Heart and the Black Cat. One is left to wonder what motivated this burial in the Cask of Amontillado. In the Fall of the House of Usher (not discussed in this essay, but from the same book where the three short stories are taken), this essayist believes that the burial is a metaphor for the wiping out the remnants of the Usher family along with their castle.

Popular horror/fantasy writers such as Clive Barker and Stephen King are of the opinion that the inspiration for fear-inducing tales, novellas and novels comes from tapping into the human fear of the unknown. Indeed, for most of us, a walk through a street in the pitch dark of night where shadows seem to be jumping at us is much different than walking through the same street in broad day light. Also, any one who's experienced a visit to a cave and the tour guide switching off the lights to give visitors a sense of real darkness will realize that it is not just the darkness but complete sensory deprivation coupled with a feeling of floating.

The instances of burial in the three short stories have to be considered in the context of how the impending doom seeps into a person's consciousness as he or she realizes what is about to befall him or her. Once the burial process is complete, there is no light. There is also the knowledge that the air supply will only last this long. The suffocation that one feels when deprived of oxygen does not come from deprivation of oxygen but from the increases in levels of carbon dioxide. If one were able to scrub away the carbon dioxide as it is being exhaled by the breather, then there would be no sense of suffocation from lack of oxygen, just an eroding away of faculties. And the problems before death are exacerbated if the person being buried is claustrophobic: the agony is significantly enhanced.

In writing this essay, use was made of the book containing these short stories with illustrations by Michael McCurdy (Poe and McCurdy 2005). Interestingly enough, of all the short stories that Poe wrote, this collection contains six stories, three of which will be discussed here. The other two stories, which bear mention (in the following few paragraphs) here also explore the same theme of darkness, a fear of burial, the sense of doom that comes from darkness and that being buried underground is also a metaphor for hell.

The first story in the book, the Masque of the Red Death, Poe describes a nobleman Prince Prospero who holds masquerade balls in his castle. As the story unfolds, the land is besieged by the Red Plague (with some reference to Europe's scourge, the black plague) and the Prince and his courtiers, well wishers and those who found favor with the Prince seclude themselves away from the suffering commoners so that the plague would not affect them. Poe is prescient in describing this communicable disease. He describes to a tee (with certain qualifications as to how long the disease takes from infection to fatality) the viral disease that affected some parts of Africa -- the Ebola virus. Issac Asimov in his collection of essays "The Roving Mind" (Asimov 1983) writes of how ignorant Arthur Conan Doyle was as a chemist in writing the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. And though Asimov castigates Doyle by providing several examples of when Doyle went wrong, he however, forgives Doyle all his mistakes because he believes that in describing the hallucinogenic effects that Holmes (a habitue of tobacco and even cocaine) suffers after experimenting with some herb was very close to the effects of LSD (lysergic ethyl diethanamide). While the receiving areas for most guests in castles were long rooms where people could gather around while the main events took place in the center or facing the nobleman's throne, Price Prospero's home in Poe's Masque resembled that of a funhouse. Each room was at right angles to the next. Each room was also bizarrely decorated in very gaudy colors where the entire room, including the drapes and the furniture was of the same color. Prince Prospero, an eccentric, wanted to create in his guests a unique experience. The most bizarre room however, is the seventh and last room. This room is painted entirely black. This includes the floor and the ceiling. Also the color of the carpet and the drapes match the paint so that one cannot discern where the walls end and the ceilings or floors begin. The only aspects of the room that are differently colored are the windows, which are painted blood red. This only serves to increase the eeriness. One supposes that through Poe, Prince Prospero was trying to create the effect of last room as a metaphor for hell. That any one of his guests who entered this room would get the feeling of sensory deprivation (alluded to earlier) and a sense of impending doom much akin to being buried alive. The ending of this story is not important to this essay. But this paragraph illustrates the constant theme of burial either really or metaphorically in Poe's short stories.

Another story that brings up the fear of burial and the metaphor of hell is perhaps Poe's most well-known: The Pit and the Pendulum. This story was converted into a film whose narrative bore little resemblance to the short story. This story is set during the scourge of the Inquisition in Spain and our prisoner-protagonist, imprisoned for crimes against Christianity, real or perceived, is put into a cell in complete darkness. With a little ingenuity and by keeping his nerve, he discerns that the cell is multi-cornered. But while exploring the cell in the dark he almost falls into a pit in the center of the room. He has no idea that this pit was there and was perhaps put there to entrap the unwary. Our hero also finds that he is tied to a cot, fed once a day, suffers the indignity, the disgust and the fear of having rats crawl about his body in search of food (which he smartly uses to guile the rats into gnawing away at the bonds that bind him) while a pendulum to which a sharp axe is attached swings in a rhythmic motion while it is inexorably lowered to slice him open. This cell, whose walls are metallic (he discovers this later) are designed to ensure a gruesome and terrifying death through several means, all the while beguiling the prisoner into believing that he has escaped one mode of death.

The effective use of darkness, burial and the feeling of impending doom engenders in the reader a sharing of the sense of doom that he person buried faces. There is no immediate answer as to why this theme recurs in almost all the stories in this book -- the ones discussed above and the three stories that will be discussed in depth in this essay. While Poe lived a life full of struggles with his personal demons of alcoholism, indebtedness, failed relationships and dying (a pauper) never being financially or through acclaim being recognized for his abilities, there is no instance of burial being a part of his life. Unless of course, he saw his personal struggles as synonymous with being buried, while continually seeking redemption. This is unlike Franz Kafka, who in his most well-known short story Metamorphosis (Kafka and Appelbaum 1996) where he describes the terrors and struggles of an individual who wakes up having metamorphosed into an insect. We know that Kafka wrote this story as a catharsis to having been brought up by a tyrannical and unloving father.

The first of the three stories that will be discussed today is "The Black Cat." This is a story) of how alcoholism (though the issue of alcoholism is mentioned, at best, obliquely) takes hold of a person and compels him to behave in ways that are contrary to his nature. Eventually the protagonist of the story ends up sliding into a morass of wrongdoing that ends up in murder. As the story unfolds, the protagonist is a mild mannered man who lives well with others and is particularly fond of animals. He has all manner of pets, each of whom thrives under his care. He marries a woman… READ MORE

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