i would like to know desperately wheather the characters in poe's short stories have a psychological problem or not.if yes, please write in deatil the specific psychological problems in the characters of these stories,the black cat,the fall of the house of usher and the sphinx

-- Anonymous, May 26, 2001

Answers

The narrator in The Tell-Tale Heart seems the farthest gone. Denies his madness by demonstrating his hypersensitivity and mental acuity- which are the main proofs of his insanity(psychosis?). Delusional, obsessive, hiding his growing hatred of the old man's eye or his guilt behind extremely opposite emotions. Poe, of course knew nothing of Freud. He perhaps expressed a bit of himself in this gross exagerrating of repressed raging emotions(especially under the influence(The Black Cat), The Imp of the Perverse, William Wilson(split personality?). Usher is physically and emotionally sick and unable to withstand the shock that follows the growing terror that preoccupies his thought and art. Biographers often speak of the two Poes, the analytical rational enthusiast and the moody romantic, his mind at those dreamlike times half in the spiritual shadows. As far as psychoanalyzing the characters or Poe, if such can be done, there I am no expert.

"The Sphinx" pits two sides of Poe, or two typical characters, the moody man terrified by "unrealities" and the often depressed but worldly rooted friend. The first sees a monster. The second solves the mystery(Dupin fashion) and reveals the reality as a bizarre misperception of a common insect. Reason triumphant. So in these stories, though none ARE Poe entirely, he may be said to fracture and push to the limit his self and experience in the process of creating characters for the gothic tales.

-- Anonymous, May 29, 2001