The theme of death in selected works of Edgar Allan Poe Term Paper

The theme of death in selected works of Edgar Allan Poe - Term Paper Example Some of the romanticism that has surrounded the history of Poe has created a mythology that is not fully supported by history. However, his stories do reflect the prevalence of death within his life, his construction of the dialogue about the subject placing it in a position of darkness and shadow. Poe wrote about death in such a way to express the theme through universal concepts that touched upon the fears of all human beings about the inevitable encounter they would have with death. Death The theme that will be discussed in this essay is death. Poe uses death as a central theme to most of his works as he relates stories that end in death, ponder death, or speak about crossing the boundaries that separate life from death. Poe has been analyzed for the psychological foundation for the themes from which he creates his work. Peeples states that â€Å"Theorists and critics quickly recognized the opportunities that Poe presented for psychoanalytical study, given his fiction’s em phasis on hidden motives and detection, altered states of consciousness, sadism, and obsession, as well as the self-destructive tendencies he exhibited in his own life† (Peeples 30). ... It may never be fully clear the extent to which his work is devised through literary intent and how much is reflective of a dark soul developed from the difficult events in his life. Poe is remembered as a morose drunk, lost in the laments of the loss of his wife, but he was not merely a gothic figure up in a darkened room penning out his tales of horror. Poe was actively seeking a literary career and intended to become a known author of his time. This can be understood by the activities he engaged in towards getting published. His work, â€Å"The Raven†, was his first published work which appeared in 1845 before he lost his wife in 1947 to tuberculosis (Bloom 46). It is a myth of literary history that it was written after she died and that he wrote it in his despair, maddened by alcohol and grief. It is a romantic notion, but it does not reflect the facts. When exploring the possible foundations for the work that Poe has created, some of the themes begin to emerge as reflecti ve of his personal experience. While the myth has taken aspects of his life and connected them in a way that has created an image of the man, his reality did provide a pool of resources from which to explore the theme of death and the many horrific connective themes from which his work was drawn. He approaches death through terror and horror, his stories built upon the predication that death has a connection to darkness. There is beauty in his horror, but little beauty in his death, his concepts built upon a romanticism that defines the experience of death as literary tragedy, a result of shadowed intent. In this exploration, one might surmise that the writer may