I need help with why Poe used so much ambiguity in his short stories and what is the significance of it. preferably dealing with THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER and THE TELL-TALE HEART

-- Anonymous, March 26, 2001

Answers

Hey if you get any info please send it to me .. I am doing a term paper on this and I would like as much info as possible.. thanks! :-)

-- Anonymous, March 29, 2001

I guess the obvious answer to this would be the suspense factor.

Poe liked to keep you guessing, and one of the greatest things about his work (as any true x-files fan will tell you) is that at the end of the story there are very few answers. The very fact that you don't know what happened, that he didn't tell, keeps you coming back again and again, reading it trying to find that one elusive clue taht whill make everything clear, only its not there.

hope that helped

-- Anonymous, March 30, 2001

Yes and the importance of this cloudy mystery is to create a mood, a strong emotion of the unknown. When he does suddenly end his stories they sometimes fall flat(The Pit and the Pendulum) when the resolution is only an anticlimax to the epitome of terror, unlike the Tell-tale Heart which ends at the highest moment of horrible revelation. Remember, it is not meaning but the aesthetic effect that Poe tries hardest to achieve. He hated morals or didacticism in this context.

-- Anonymous, April 26, 2001

I think that an interesting way to look at Poe` s ambiguity is in terms of Todorov` s analysis of the fantastic. The fantastic is built on hesitation, i.e. the inability to be certain of a supernatural or a natural explenation to events. As regards The Fall of the House of Usher, Todorov categorises it as a story of the Uncanny (i.e supernatural explained in natural terms) bordering on the fantastic.

-- Anonymous, June 23, 2001

Poe was a joker, a prankster...

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2002

Sharon, I really liked your response

-- Anonymous, May 28, 2002