notmysuitcase
Jan 9, 2009
Writing Feedback / About edgar allen poe essay [11]
I'm not sure if my point for the essay is clear, but I guess I'm asking for just criticism first, and then I can explain where I got the idea for doing it after.
Edgar Allen Poe is often revered as a writer who thoroughly understood madness, and is almost as frequently suspected as suffering from it himself. His nearly exclusive use of horror, gore and death as the dominant themes in his literary works seems to support this allegation. My suspicion, however, is that Poe was perfectly sane through out all of life; I look past this false guise of insanity and see Poe for the man he truly was - an immature, attention-seeking shock writer.
Poe's stunted development was inevitable: the untimely deaths of all the people that he loved in conjunction with (I believe) a lifelong sense of self-pity could only lead to a sophomoric distaste to all life offered. This rejection of the pursuit of happiness, in turn, bred a feeling of being "misunderstood" by society. Poe's writings lead one to assume that he felt different from other people, singular, and unable to relate with, "From childhood's hour I have not been/As others were; I have not seen/As others saw; I could not bring/My passions from a common spring." This idea of himself as unique in his sufferings as he exemplified in "Alone," prevented Edgar from writing anything of any true substance, reserving him to the lowly art of shock writing.
The literary products of Poe follow a formula incorporating shock and sophistication. The subject he chooses to write about is always one that is appalling to the public, and he passes it off as poetic with a blazoning of enticing words. In the violent short story, "Berenice," Poe describes Egaeus, severe monomaniac obsessed with the teeth of his dying cousin, Berenice. Poe narrates a life of misery which is only satisfied when the presumably dead Berenice's teeth are torn out. "...And from it, with a rattling sound, there rolled out some instruments of dental surgery, intermingled with thirty-two small, white and ivory-looking substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor." I am not fooled by Poe's execution of pervasive vocabulary as a facade for genius! His writings are an attempt to disguise vulgarity as beauty, and that ultimately, his oeuvre lacks real substance. Edgar Allen Poe is nothing more than an artful adolescent - if stripped of shock tactics and an elevated style, Poe's works are reduced to nothing. I conclude that the substance in his short stories and poetry is entirely nonexistent.
Then again, I'm in no position to chastise shock writing.
I'm not sure if my point for the essay is clear, but I guess I'm asking for just criticism first, and then I can explain where I got the idea for doing it after.
Edgar Allen Poe is often revered as a writer who thoroughly understood madness, and is almost as frequently suspected as suffering from it himself. His nearly exclusive use of horror, gore and death as the dominant themes in his literary works seems to support this allegation. My suspicion, however, is that Poe was perfectly sane through out all of life; I look past this false guise of insanity and see Poe for the man he truly was - an immature, attention-seeking shock writer.
Poe's stunted development was inevitable: the untimely deaths of all the people that he loved in conjunction with (I believe) a lifelong sense of self-pity could only lead to a sophomoric distaste to all life offered. This rejection of the pursuit of happiness, in turn, bred a feeling of being "misunderstood" by society. Poe's writings lead one to assume that he felt different from other people, singular, and unable to relate with, "From childhood's hour I have not been/As others were; I have not seen/As others saw; I could not bring/My passions from a common spring." This idea of himself as unique in his sufferings as he exemplified in "Alone," prevented Edgar from writing anything of any true substance, reserving him to the lowly art of shock writing.
The literary products of Poe follow a formula incorporating shock and sophistication. The subject he chooses to write about is always one that is appalling to the public, and he passes it off as poetic with a blazoning of enticing words. In the violent short story, "Berenice," Poe describes Egaeus, severe monomaniac obsessed with the teeth of his dying cousin, Berenice. Poe narrates a life of misery which is only satisfied when the presumably dead Berenice's teeth are torn out. "...And from it, with a rattling sound, there rolled out some instruments of dental surgery, intermingled with thirty-two small, white and ivory-looking substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor." I am not fooled by Poe's execution of pervasive vocabulary as a facade for genius! His writings are an attempt to disguise vulgarity as beauty, and that ultimately, his oeuvre lacks real substance. Edgar Allen Poe is nothing more than an artful adolescent - if stripped of shock tactics and an elevated style, Poe's works are reduced to nothing. I conclude that the substance in his short stories and poetry is entirely nonexistent.
Then again, I'm in no position to chastise shock writing.
