Jessica Cruz

Cruz 1

Olson
AP Lit
October 2nd, 2014 For over hundreds of years, a high percentage of society has been fascinated by the creative styles of writing that can be packed into one simple poem. Many poets are able to portray their life experiences in a very subtle way using the imagery, tone, or even the narrator.
There is one poet in particular that is able to create a very dark and eerie tone his poems and short stories by letting the reader inside his own dark, dark mind. This poet happens to be Edgar
Allan Poe. Over and over again Poe is able to guide the reader into thinking that he isn’t mentally ill in some way, but, lets us know that in his mind, everything was dark, very dark and this lead him to keep himself very mysterious and away from public eye. Most people, when hit with many life changing events, then can decide to go under the radar and Poe does a good job of hiding some of his very own feelings in his short stories and poems.
When Poe starts off a poem, he is sure to set the tone off in the most mysterious way possible to leave the reader thinking and wanting to keep on reading to find out why it is that Poe is so secretive. In the short story “The Tell­Tale Heart,” Poe begins by explaining to the reader that he is not at all crazy, or mentally ill in any way, Instead of telling the reader that he is ill, he explains that the evil events that happen in the novel only made his senses powerful and if anything, what he did was a good thing to his own being, “...But why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses ­­not destroyed ­­not dulled them. Above all was the

Cruz 2 sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily ­­how calmly I can tell you the whole story.”(1­2). This line portrays a type of denial that Poe is in and how much he is truly hiding from his own reality. A very common way people would try and hide from their own reality, even in modern times is through drugs. Drugs have the power to take someone away from their own life for a few moments and through all the heartbreak and pain Poe had to endure, drinking seemed to have become his only out. He would start to binge drink and eventually when he wanted to stop, this is where he would take the opportunity to write his poems. The desire to drink was so intense for Poe, his dark thought would go straight to the paper and this is where the dark, dark themes in his story may come from according to the source Neurotic Poems.
Through­out life, Poe had to go though many losses when it came to having a partner, there was one love in particular, that seems to shape his works more than any other. When Poe was only eighteen years old, he met his first true love. According to Museum News, Poe had a series of letter that he had written and in those letters he explains his love and devotion that he had towards