Does anyone know any points i can attribute to my term paper on how poe was hiding his true message he wanted to get across by useing his themes of death repeatedly, like in alone, how it was hited at being written after death but the story isn't about how life only ends and that's the only good, it how he missed out on all the good and now he is paying for it after death...along those lines i guess.. it's only an 11 english A class so, BS is acceptable. THANK YOU SO MUCH!..

-- Anonymous, March 10, 2002

Answers

BS stands for better stuff? Trying another slant is good speculative game but it flies in the face of the evidence. Death as a theme of the times(high mortality rates, dark romantic traditions, etc. Personally Poe was hurt very often. Orphaned as a baby, orphaned again from the Allans. Death of a mentor, Mrs. Stanard. Equating his loss of Ellen Royster as a death(The Assignation). The poem "Alone" is a bold poem from his youth with strong Byronic influences. I think poe is trying to point out he is one of those poets set apart by life, by vision in a new and tortuous place from which he cannot move, though he would like to. He rejoices in memories of wonderful things of the past and has ecstatic Hope for the future and the fate of his lost loved ones. But his is stuck at the point of loss and oppressed, often terrified by those same inspirations. yes, he sometimes feels a traitor to these divine inspirations and his holy inspiration and heals not well from his wounds. Yet he feels bitter and doubtful too about these ephemeral ideals and the artifices of Art that give them an in between life.

I think mainly he is honest in not moving from the mark, though often shaken and appalled or bitter. He wrote MUCH else that was not lugubrious or gothic and very often ends with hope and trust in reason and ingenuity combined with strength of will to survive adversity and solve mysteries. the "demon" in "Alone" as with the ghouls in other works is neutral more than evil another instance of the vagueness of the haunting Poe experienced that was both hard to communicate and to characterize as horrible or good. The terror of awe, the experience of vision or dream would be more like. And Poe does not cheapen his Muse by containing it or using stock terms of definition or traditional comfort in faith. (See Baudelaire's poem on his own poetic calling)

-- Anonymous, March 11, 2002