Edgar Allan Poe's Insanity

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By: Lena Wanio

English II Honors

Mrs. Thunell

24 March 2015

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        Hook. Edgar Allan Poe struggles personally in the year 1843. He uses pattern and Gothic language as key points in his writings. Poe’s story “The Tell-Tale Heart” relates to his life. Another story of his “The Pit and the Pendulum” also gives information relating to his life. A third story that relates to Edgar Allan Poe’s life is “The Black Cat”. Due to Edgar Allan Poe’s struggle with mental illness, debt, and alcoholism in the year 1843, the Gothic convections, pattern, and language reflects his personal struggle in his works “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Pit and the Pendulum”, and “The Black Cat”.

        Edgar Allan Poe struggles with many things during his life in the year 1843. He struggles with mental illness. In almost all of Poe stories one character always has a mental illness. Many of them like to try and deny their illness, even when they are in asylums or prisons. This may suggest that Poe is in denial of his own illness. Poe Says that murder is a common household event. “The narrators purpose is telling the tale is to mock the events, see humor in his own sadism, and finally ‘to get the reader to identify with him’. But then horror and humor always stood close to one another in literature” (Badenhausen). He says that Poe is trying to make us feel for him and understand where he is coming from. He tries to make something horrible into something funny which a lot of people do now. To make things seem lighter than they are we try to make a joke out of it. Edgar Allan Poe feels trapped throughout his stories, it is a common theme. He feels trapped in things like his daily routine, his mind, with his alcoholism. In his stories the characters feel trapped in similar things, waiting for their sentencing, their daily routines, their minds, alcoholism one feels trapped with his cat.

        Edgar Allan Poe struggled a lot with debt and alcoholism during the year 1843. During this time he gets fired from his job as editor because he is constantly drunk or hung over so he cannot work. He has no way of supporting his wife, aunt, or himself. He does not really has a career in writing at the time, what he does write is all linked to alcohol, his characters are all haunted by alcohol and its effects on him. He is very deep in debt so much he would probably never be able to repay it. In Lepores article it says people would always see him drunk and they knew of his dept. They gave him fifteen dollars to feed himself and family, later that night they found him completely drunk at the bar with no money with him. It also says, “A journalist who met poe on the street of the capital found him seedy and woe be gone”.   He tries many things to try and come out of debt. Eventually he sees an ad for a writing competition. He enters and wound up winning a hundred dollars and it became so popular it had to be printed again. But the money was short lived because he spent it all on drinks at the bar.