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Name: Dharaba Rayjada
Semester: 3
Roll No.: 8
Paper No.: 10 – The American Literature
Enrolment No.: 2069108420180045
Email id: dharabarayjada021@gmail.com
Year: 2017-19
Submitted to: Department of English, Maharaja Krishnkumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.
Introduction
Edgar Allan Poe, was born on 19th January, 1809 in U.S. and died on 7th October, 1849, Maryland. He was American short-story writer, poet, critic, and editor who is famous for his stories of mystery and the macabre. His tale “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) initiated the modern detective story, and the atmosphere in his tales of horror is unrivaled in American fiction. His life is more like a nightmare which no one may wants to live. His father left them and his mother died early in his childhood and as life goes on he goes on loosing all his family members and at last when his wife dies he was left alone in this world. After all these bizarre conditions of life he was dived in the ocean of alcohol and gambling. No one is ready to give him job. He has excelled academically despite his problems of attendance and gambling. Many scholar call him an ‘architect’ of modern short stories. He is the first writer who has lived only on his writings. Here we are looking at his style and structure of writing short stories.
Here I have five stories of Poe through which I am analyzing his style and structure of writing short stories. Three stories are horror stories, which are, “The Tell Tale Heart”, “The Cask of Amontillado”, and “The Fall of The House of Usher”. Other two stories are detective and treasure hunt, “The Purloined Letter” and “The Gold Bug”. Lets very briefly see the summary of all stories.
“The Tell Tale Heart”
It is horrific story of an old man who has vulture eye and his servant has problem with that vulture eye. The servant has planned to kill old man because of his eyes. He killed old man without mercy and cut his body and burry it. He got suspected and policeman came for investigation and he also has make policeman believed in his words but he is constantly hearing the beating of the heart of an old man which makes him uncomfortable and he vehemently admits his crime.
“The Cask of Amontillado”
The story is of a person who is get insulted by his friend and now he wants to avenged. Fortunato is professionally a wine taster and Montresor, who wants to kill Fortunato and he intrigued Fortunato to come to taste rare brand Amontillado. Get him drunk all the way and chained him and walled him alive. We only here a voice for mercy but he is left to die there.
“The Fall of The House of Usher”
The story is of narrator who was called to his friends house because his friend was suffering from some mental disease. Though when narrator arrives at the house of Usher he feel negative there. Usher is living there with his sister and he also believed in superstitions and he feels that they have buried her alive and she is coming towards them.
“The Gold Bug”
It is a story of William Legrand who was stung by a gold-colored bug. His servant, Jupiter, doubts that Legrand is probably turning insane and seeks help of Legrand’s friend, an unnamed narrator. He consents to come to his old friend’s home. Legrand pulls the other two into a thrilling enterprise after decoding a secret message that will lead to a buried treasure. With the theme of cryptography, the story is a forerunner of the genre which is now known as detective fiction.
“The Purloined Letter”
The police prefect approaches detective Dupin with a puzzle: a cabinet minister has stolen a letter from a woman of royalty whom he is now blackmailing. Despite a harsh search of the minister’s rooms, the police find nothing. When the prefect returns a month later and mentions a large reward for the letter, Dupin casually produces the document. Dupin later explains to his assistant, the story’s narrator, that by analyzing the personality and behavior of the minister, he correctly had concluded that the letter would be hidden in plain sight.
Style and Structure
Poe has not written only gothic stories. His writings also include detective stories. He was first to initiate the genre of detective stories. Though he has only written five detective stories but those stories has given new way of creating stories. Here we are looking towards his style and structure of crafting short stories.
Formation
Poe as a writer is very accurate with his writing. He does not write in flow. He writes with plan. From the very beginning he has every thing in mind including the feelings which he wants to make readers feel. According to his formation he will choose the perfect word for perfect feelings. It is said for Poe that in his writing he never include any unnecessary word. Every single word in Poe’s story is important. For example in his short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” in the beginning we have the reflection of house in water and in reflection it looks up side down. This description at that time feels useless but at the end Poe has connected it very well with the destruction of house. So we can see that in his narration he plan every thing and never include any useless thing.
Theme
The theme of Poe’s story are mysterious and horrific. Poe as a writer has choose to show the humanity their darker side. His horror stories are very effectively described the devil inside the human beings. It is very common that at some point of time on someone any person would have feel like killing, but have not done that act. Poe show us the result that what it would be like if we act upon those feelings. Every single word of Gothic story lead towards more fear. While in detective stories it is the mystery which plays with the mind of readers. Some times it makes readers feel like fool. Because mysteries are so simple and it also ends with simple result. For example in “The Purloined Letter”, Poe has make us believe that letter is somewhere, where it is hard to find but in between it is said also that it is so simple to find and when we come to know that letter was front of our eyes, the smile came on our face which shows that how fool we are that we can’t think this simple. While on the other hand his another story “The Gold Bug” reader has constant conflicts and questions that what is going on. What this calculations are and how it will be solved and if the treasure will be hunt or not. So in this story the mystery is very difficult to solve. This is how Poe chooses his theme and make it alive through his writings.
Settings
The setting of the story plays vital role in giving the overall feeling of the story. Poe has choose his settings very carefully. In his Gothic stories the half of the feeling of fear and the atmosphere of terror is created from the setting only. He also has used light and dark very effectively and death is one of his element in horror stories. For example in his short story “The Tell Tale Heart” he shows that how only one ray of light is passed through door and fall on the eye of an old man. In another story like “The Fall of The House of Usher” where Poe has used darkness. The whole house of Usher is dark and how Usher himself also frightened from light. In the story like “The Cask of Amontillado” the setting is dark and under ground where bones are lying. Poe’s description of places have pictorial quality which make the feeling stronger.
Plot
The plot of the Poe’s story grows gradually. Mostly it has first person narration and the narrator is unnamed in most of the stories. Some narrators are unreliable as one in “The Tell Tale Heart” who in the beginning says that he is not mad but as story moves on we can see his madness. In Poe’s story I don’t feel downs. From the very first sentence story start raising and it leads readers to the height of particular feeling and then it ends at height only. It ends with that extreme feeling which reader has got from reading and left reader to be in that bizarre feeling for some period of time. The plot will not have any interruption or misleads from the main event. It will only focus on the decided feeling which writer wants to give to the readers. It has that ability to clutch the reader. Once any one who has started reading the story will be eager to complete it and if they have to drop it, it will make them uncomfortable. After completing the story also the effect of those words and imagery will not leave readers’ mind easily.
Characters
Poe’s story includes three to five characters. In Gothic stories the protagonists are suffering from over acuteness of senses. They just can’t control their mind. While on the other hand the protagonists of detective stories are so cleaver. All stories does not have ghosts and witches. The effect of horror is generated from a human being only. Poe’s stories are not of some kings or queens it is all about the common man. “The Tell Tale Heart” has servant as protagonist, in “The Cask of Amontillado” two friends are characters same is in “The Fall of The House of Usher”. In detective stories also characters are common human beings like police and politicians. The characters of detective stories are so clever and of gothic stories are abnormal. Those characters are suffering from some mental disease. The disease are so strong that they can even kill some one. The protagonist of the stories are developed in such a way that writer does not give any chances to readers to sympathize with that characters. For example in the story “The Cask of Amontillado” Montresor wants to kill Fortunato and he gave reason that he insults him but through out the whole story there is not a single sentence of insult. So like this Poe don’t wants reader to feel sympathy towards the protagonists. So Poe creates very strong characters in his stories. The protagonists are villain, because they have killed some one. Those villains are smile damned villains. Who don’t let their prey realize that they are going to die. To create this type of characters are challenging. Poe has also make characters like Mr. Dupin famous by his detective short stories. By looking at these things we can say Poe has a great skill of character developing.
Sentences
Poe has used very simple sentence structure. His language is also mostly simple but most of his sentences are long. He uses too many expressions and to describe it he use punctuations and make sentence longer. With those sentences he creates the perfect effect. He choose perfect word for perfect feeling. His villain protagonists are using words like deed, accomplishment, task for the murder. Poe has also used the word mental disease for his abnormal characters but the fact is at that time the mental disease are not found, so the vocabulary and knowledge is far more than his age in which he is living.
Punctuations
Poe is very liberal in using punctuations. For longer expression he will not hesitate to use lots of commas. Comma, inverted comma, colons, question marks, exclamatory marks, semi colons, dash, full stops, he will use every punctuation which make his writing effective. Let’s see one example from his stories.
“True! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses --not destroyed --not dulled them.” (The Tell Tale Heart)
This is only the first sentence of “The Tell Tale Heart” and we can see how many punctuations he has used.
Repetition of words and actions
To create a certain effect Poe repetitively use the same word or the same action. Though too much of repetition make things boring but he uses synonyms for the words and he does not describe repetition of action but told us the time for which it is repeating. For example in “The Tell Tale Heart” the action of peeping through the door is continued for seven days, the noise of heart is constant and the word ‘louder’ was also has been repeated for many times. In “The Purloined Letter” the act of searching letter by police was repeatedly goes on for three months. So this is how Poe use repetition for creating the particular feeling.
Conclusion
Poe has been born in Romantic period but his writings are different from those of Romantics. Though he also has written romantic poems but his prose writings does not follow Romantic traditions. In the whole different era creating own style of writing and also get success in it, is really showing the struggle through which writer must be gone through. Though we can see in his life that he has suffered a lot emotionally and financially also, so the type of terror he creates through his stories is shows his struggle in real life. Death has played very horrible role in Poe’s life and that’s why his story also includes deaths. But despite all these things we can see the effort which writer has put before and after writing the stories. We can see the result of his hard work and his hard work has given him sweet fruits also. By analyzing his style and structure of his short stories we can definitely say that he has great craftsmanship.
Resources
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edgar-Allan-Poe
https://jaynmehta.blogspot.com/2018/09/passion-perversity-and-poe-introduction.html?m=1
https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-edgar-allan-poes-stylistc-elements-221183
https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-structure-in-writing-and-how-does-it-affect-meaning.html
https://flynngray-wordpress-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/flynngray.wordpress.com/2015/11/23/edgar-allan-poe-short-story-structure-and-narrative-technique/amp/?amp_js_v=a2&_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQECAFYAQ%3D%3D#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fflynngray.wordpress.com%2F2015%2F11%2F23%2Fedgar-allan-poe-short-story-structure-and-narrative-technique%2F
Thank you.
Name: Dharaba Rayjada
Semester: 3
Roll No.: 8
Paper No.: 10 – The American Literature
Enrolment No.: 2069108420180045
Email id: dharabarayjada021@gmail.com
Year: 2017-19
Submitted to: Department of English, Maharaja Krishnkumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.
Introduction
Edgar Allan Poe, was born on 19th January, 1809 in U.S. and died on 7th October, 1849, Maryland. He was American short-story writer, poet, critic, and editor who is famous for his stories of mystery and the macabre. His tale “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) initiated the modern detective story, and the atmosphere in his tales of horror is unrivaled in American fiction. His life is more like a nightmare which no one may wants to live. His father left them and his mother died early in his childhood and as life goes on he goes on loosing all his family members and at last when his wife dies he was left alone in this world. After all these bizarre conditions of life he was dived in the ocean of alcohol and gambling. No one is ready to give him job. He has excelled academically despite his problems of attendance and gambling. Many scholar call him an ‘architect’ of modern short stories. He is the first writer who has lived only on his writings. Here we are looking at his style and structure of writing short stories.
Here I have five stories of Poe through which I am analyzing his style and structure of writing short stories. Three stories are horror stories, which are, “The Tell Tale Heart”, “The Cask of Amontillado”, and “The Fall of The House of Usher”. Other two stories are detective and treasure hunt, “The Purloined Letter” and “The Gold Bug”. Lets very briefly see the summary of all stories.
“The Tell Tale Heart”
It is horrific story of an old man who has vulture eye and his servant has problem with that vulture eye. The servant has planned to kill old man because of his eyes. He killed old man without mercy and cut his body and burry it. He got suspected and policeman came for investigation and he also has make policeman believed in his words but he is constantly hearing the beating of the heart of an old man which makes him uncomfortable and he vehemently admits his crime.
“The Cask of Amontillado”
The story is of a person who is get insulted by his friend and now he wants to avenged. Fortunato is professionally a wine taster and Montresor, who wants to kill Fortunato and he intrigued Fortunato to come to taste rare brand Amontillado. Get him drunk all the way and chained him and walled him alive. We only here a voice for mercy but he is left to die there.
“The Fall of The House of Usher”
The story is of narrator who was called to his friends house because his friend was suffering from some mental disease. Though when narrator arrives at the house of Usher he feel negative there. Usher is living there with his sister and he also believed in superstitions and he feels that they have buried her alive and she is coming towards them.
“The Gold Bug”
It is a story of William Legrand who was stung by a gold-colored bug. His servant, Jupiter, doubts that Legrand is probably turning insane and seeks help of Legrand’s friend, an unnamed narrator. He consents to come to his old friend’s home. Legrand pulls the other two into a thrilling enterprise after decoding a secret message that will lead to a buried treasure. With the theme of cryptography, the story is a forerunner of the genre which is now known as detective fiction.
“The Purloined Letter”
The police prefect approaches detective Dupin with a puzzle: a cabinet minister has stolen a letter from a woman of royalty whom he is now blackmailing. Despite a harsh search of the minister’s rooms, the police find nothing. When the prefect returns a month later and mentions a large reward for the letter, Dupin casually produces the document. Dupin later explains to his assistant, the story’s narrator, that by analyzing the personality and behavior of the minister, he correctly had concluded that the letter would be hidden in plain sight.
Style and Structure
Poe has not written only gothic stories. His writings also include detective stories. He was first to initiate the genre of detective stories. Though he has only written five detective stories but those stories has given new way of creating stories. Here we are looking towards his style and structure of crafting short stories.
Formation
Poe as a writer is very accurate with his writing. He does not write in flow. He writes with plan. From the very beginning he has every thing in mind including the feelings which he wants to make readers feel. According to his formation he will choose the perfect word for perfect feelings. It is said for Poe that in his writing he never include any unnecessary word. Every single word in Poe’s story is important. For example in his short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” in the beginning we have the reflection of house in water and in reflection it looks up side down. This description at that time feels useless but at the end Poe has connected it very well with the destruction of house. So we can see that in his narration he plan every thing and never include any useless thing.
Theme
The theme of Poe’s story are mysterious and horrific. Poe as a writer has choose to show the humanity their darker side. His horror stories are very effectively described the devil inside the human beings. It is very common that at some point of time on someone any person would have feel like killing, but have not done that act. Poe show us the result that what it would be like if we act upon those feelings. Every single word of Gothic story lead towards more fear. While in detective stories it is the mystery which plays with the mind of readers. Some times it makes readers feel like fool. Because mysteries are so simple and it also ends with simple result. For example in “The Purloined Letter”, Poe has make us believe that letter is somewhere, where it is hard to find but in between it is said also that it is so simple to find and when we come to know that letter was front of our eyes, the smile came on our face which shows that how fool we are that we can’t think this simple. While on the other hand his another story “The Gold Bug” reader has constant conflicts and questions that what is going on. What this calculations are and how it will be solved and if the treasure will be hunt or not. So in this story the mystery is very difficult to solve. This is how Poe chooses his theme and make it alive through his writings.
Settings
The setting of the story plays vital role in giving the overall feeling of the story. Poe has choose his settings very carefully. In his Gothic stories the half of the feeling of fear and the atmosphere of terror is created from the setting only. He also has used light and dark very effectively and death is one of his element in horror stories. For example in his short story “The Tell Tale Heart” he shows that how only one ray of light is passed through door and fall on the eye of an old man. In another story like “The Fall of The House of Usher” where Poe has used darkness. The whole house of Usher is dark and how Usher himself also frightened from light. In the story like “The Cask of Amontillado” the setting is dark and under ground where bones are lying. Poe’s description of places have pictorial quality which make the feeling stronger.
Plot
The plot of the Poe’s story grows gradually. Mostly it has first person narration and the narrator is unnamed in most of the stories. Some narrators are unreliable as one in “The Tell Tale Heart” who in the beginning says that he is not mad but as story moves on we can see his madness. In Poe’s story I don’t feel downs. From the very first sentence story start raising and it leads readers to the height of particular feeling and then it ends at height only. It ends with that extreme feeling which reader has got from reading and left reader to be in that bizarre feeling for some period of time. The plot will not have any interruption or misleads from the main event. It will only focus on the decided feeling which writer wants to give to the readers. It has that ability to clutch the reader. Once any one who has started reading the story will be eager to complete it and if they have to drop it, it will make them uncomfortable. After completing the story also the effect of those words and imagery will not leave readers’ mind easily.
Characters
Poe’s story includes three to five characters. In Gothic stories the protagonists are suffering from over acuteness of senses. They just can’t control their mind. While on the other hand the protagonists of detective stories are so cleaver. All stories does not have ghosts and witches. The effect of horror is generated from a human being only. Poe’s stories are not of some kings or queens it is all about the common man. “The Tell Tale Heart” has servant as protagonist, in “The Cask of Amontillado” two friends are characters same is in “The Fall of The House of Usher”. In detective stories also characters are common human beings like police and politicians. The characters of detective stories are so clever and of gothic stories are abnormal. Those characters are suffering from some mental disease. The disease are so strong that they can even kill some one. The protagonist of the stories are developed in such a way that writer does not give any chances to readers to sympathize with that characters. For example in the story “The Cask of Amontillado” Montresor wants to kill Fortunato and he gave reason that he insults him but through out the whole story there is not a single sentence of insult. So like this Poe don’t wants reader to feel sympathy towards the protagonists. So Poe creates very strong characters in his stories. The protagonists are villain, because they have killed some one. Those villains are smile damned villains. Who don’t let their prey realize that they are going to die. To create this type of characters are challenging. Poe has also make characters like Mr. Dupin famous by his detective short stories. By looking at these things we can say Poe has a great skill of character developing.
Sentences
Poe has used very simple sentence structure. His language is also mostly simple but most of his sentences are long. He uses too many expressions and to describe it he use punctuations and make sentence longer. With those sentences he creates the perfect effect. He choose perfect word for perfect feeling. His villain protagonists are using words like deed, accomplishment, task for the murder. Poe has also used the word mental disease for his abnormal characters but the fact is at that time the mental disease are not found, so the vocabulary and knowledge is far more than his age in which he is living.
Punctuations
Poe is very liberal in using punctuations. For longer expression he will not hesitate to use lots of commas. Comma, inverted comma, colons, question marks, exclamatory marks, semi colons, dash, full stops, he will use every punctuation which make his writing effective. Let’s see one example from his stories.
“True! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses --not destroyed --not dulled them.” (The Tell Tale Heart)
This is only the first sentence of “The Tell Tale Heart” and we can see how many punctuations he has used.
Repetition of words and actions
To create a certain effect Poe repetitively use the same word or the same action. Though too much of repetition make things boring but he uses synonyms for the words and he does not describe repetition of action but told us the time for which it is repeating. For example in “The Tell Tale Heart” the action of peeping through the door is continued for seven days, the noise of heart is constant and the word ‘louder’ was also has been repeated for many times. In “The Purloined Letter” the act of searching letter by police was repeatedly goes on for three months. So this is how Poe use repetition for creating the particular feeling.
Conclusion
Poe has been born in Romantic period but his writings are different from those of Romantics. Though he also has written romantic poems but his prose writings does not follow Romantic traditions. In the whole different era creating own style of writing and also get success in it, is really showing the struggle through which writer must be gone through. Though we can see in his life that he has suffered a lot emotionally and financially also, so the type of terror he creates through his stories is shows his struggle in real life. Death has played very horrible role in Poe’s life and that’s why his story also includes deaths. But despite all these things we can see the effort which writer has put before and after writing the stories. We can see the result of his hard work and his hard work has given him sweet fruits also. By analyzing his style and structure of his short stories we can definitely say that he has great craftsmanship.
Resources
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edgar-Allan-Poe
https://jaynmehta.blogspot.com/2018/09/passion-perversity-and-poe-introduction.html?m=1
https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-edgar-allan-poes-stylistc-elements-221183
https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-structure-in-writing-and-how-does-it-affect-meaning.html
https://flynngray-wordpress-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/flynngray.wordpress.com/2015/11/23/edgar-allan-poe-short-story-structure-and-narrative-technique/amp/?amp_js_v=a2&_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQECAFYAQ%3D%3D#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fflynngray.wordpress.com%2F2015%2F11%2F23%2Fedgar-allan-poe-short-story-structure-and-narrative-technique%2F
Thank you.
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