Edgar Allan Poe had very many tragic things happen to him throughout his life, mainly his parents dying when he was young. He seemed to be continually surrounded by death, which might have contributed to his attraction to the Gothic genre and the more psychological thriller types of stories.  Throughout his life he continued to work on his poetry and stories.  His interest in the Gothic genre of writing will be examined in the following exhibit.  I will specifically look at his work and note important points about these works and what they mean to the Gothic genre.


Every picture that was found of Poe was dark and almost sad.  Never does Poe have a smile on his face or even a remotely pleasant look.  All of the pictures are, of course, black and white, but very dark at that.  The only bright part of the picture is his pale, sickly looking face, with sunken in eyes and bags underneath them.  Clearly he was an unhappy man, which can also be seen in his work.

Edgar Allan Poe is well known for his Gothic poetry and his Grotesque descriptions in his stories and movies.  The description of grotesque may be different from what most believe it to mean.  Gothic Fiction and the Grotesque by Maximillian E. Novak clearly describes grotesque to mean a story having a mixture of elements, such as, oraganizational structures, ideas and characters in the work with supernatural or bizarre attributes throughout the story.  Throughout his works you can see him play around with his Gothic wor beginning with the story "Metzengerstein" and moving on to other works that are significant in his life or that have some very important Gothic elements that should be examined.

Another view of Poe's works is that of mockery.  Some believe that the only way to read a Poe story or poem is to psychologically analyze it.  A quote taken from this book states "Mr.Thompson claims to have found 'the key' to a 'new style of reading Poe', which, he says,' is to be found in the twentieth-century emphasis on the concepts of tension and irony.' "  By doing this, Poe consequently becomes a very uninteresting person.  It's as though he is hiding behind this mask of the Gothic genre, when in reality he is in a completely different genre.  A review from an American Literature book by David H. Hirsch clearly states that Poe really shouldn't take as much of the credit for the Gothic genre as he does, but should take more credit for the Germanic Romantic irony genre. 


This is just another one of the ways that one can interpret Edgar Allan Poe's work, but I focused more on the fact that Poe was a Gothic genre writer.

Metzengerstein has often been noted as one of the first stories to introduce to people the genre of Gothic or Horror.  Many different views have been expressed about this story.  One idea is that this story is often seen as humorous because of the exaggerated amount of gothic ideas used to where it is almost comical.  I believe that he was simply experimenting with the ideas behind a Gothic story.  From there he realized what might make a story more horrific or more believably Gothic to those avid readers of his.  These ideas can be found in more detail in an American Literature book that has a section in it titled Poe's "Metzengerstein": Not a Hoax.  written by Benjamin F. Fisher.  Poe often uses specific ideas in his Gothic stories.  I believe that Metzengerstein was the starting place for all of his major pieces of work.  For example, in Metzengerstein and The Fall In the House of Usher Poe ended the story with a fire and the people related to that house, family, or story who were bad were destroyed along with the house.  All evil was removed.
Poe chose this story to be published in the Saturday Courier to capture reader's attention and make them want to read more of Poe and more of the Gothic genre.  Which, he was the main capturer of for that time.  This reveals to me that Poe knew exactly what he was doing in the exaggeration of the Gothic genre and from there on he would continue to make the stories less exaggerated while at the same time he was still grasping the readers attention.

The illustration is a great representation of the story Metzengerstein because of Poe's extensive use of fire in destroying the evil at the end of stories, like I mentioned before.  The fire representing the house that has caught fire and the evil that is within it.  The horse floating above the fire represents the horse that the main character had a strange infatuation with which actually led to his demise.  The fact that a fire is being illustrated makes a point to the audience by saying that this is a pivotal point in the story and there is a lot of importance behind the fires in his stories.  I find it very interesting that several of his stories end with fires.

When first looking at this picture I got an eery feeling. I was able to tell immediately that the man sittign in the chair was going through some sort of distress.  This is an excellent representation of The Raven.  It's important to note the Raven sitting on the mantel.  It almost makes you imagine what it would be like to have a run-in with an animal that is speaking to you.  If you look closely you can see a white cloud-looking shadow in the middle of the picture, this is representative of the lover that the man has lost.  Everything is represented in this picture and is great at aiding the Gothic genre and telling the story in a Gothic way.

Edgar Allan Poe was a great writer and his work clearly shows that.  He was one of the greatest writers in the Gothic genre and most people claim him to be the creator of and most well-known Gothic writer of all.  His works not only represent the Gothic genre but represent his life and some of the different things that happened to him during it.  The causes of Poes death still remains a mystery, after the death of his wife, Virginia, Poe became very lonely and was accustomed to drink alcohol because of her death.  Poe's life is just as interesting as his work, they seem to go hand-in-hand.  Poe brought many interesting works of literature into the world and the Gothic genre was most definitely shaped by him.

This picture to the right is one of his gravestone.  You can see that at thetop there is what seems to be a raven at the top.  Poe, quite literally, took his Gothic work to the grave with him.