Who's your favorite writer? To some people that question's answer is Edgar Allan Poe, for many reasons. A lot of people love his work, his short stories and his mysterious poems. Because of his work people call him the “Master of the macabre,” and they have many reasons to call him that. In this essay we will see why they call him the “master of the macabre” and have textual proof.
In order to see if Poe is the master of macabre we first have to see what macabre is. Macabre is gruesome and horrifying; ghastly; horrible. His work is known for his mystery, his horrifying stories not that they are bad it is that the stories are scary stories. Most of the actions of the characters are ghastly actions. Other definitions of the word macabre are:Of, pertaining to, dealing with, or representing death, especially its grimmer or uglier aspect; of or suggestive of the allegorical dance of death.
Edgar Allan Poe not only uses it but he uses it like a professional, like a master. In the story “The Pit and the Pendulum” the narrator almost dies three times in horrible deaths. One of them is when he is about to fall into a deep, deep pit. He does fall, but before the pit. He trips and falls face flat and that is how he discovers the pit once again a macabre death a horrifying one. Another close death is when a razor sharp pendulum is descending into his body when he is tied up to a table, this one in deed is a horrifying; ghastly close death . He escapes by putting food he had in the ropes so the rats can chew it. The last attempt the Spanish try is by closing the walls on him that way he falls right in the pit. He was rescued by a french soldier when the inquisition is over.
He also masters the macabre in the story “The Tell Tale Heart” the horrible death of suffocation, the narrator pulled a heavy bed over an old person who he loved. We all know that being suffocated is horrofying and one of the worst deaths. He killed him just because the old person had the vulture's eye something that the narrator could not handle. Also an