| Edgar Allen Poe (1809-49) has commanded conflicting responses, whether as a morbid and deranged explorer of the "dark side", or as a rebel-hero, in solitary revolt against a crass and materialistic America. As a journalist, critic and writer he is now best remembered for the Gothic tales reprinted in Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Heavily influenced by the British Romantics - Coleridge, Shelley and Keats - he saw part of his task as a writer to reject the narrow confines of 'realism', and to explore the world of the Imagination and pursue the ideals of Beauty and Art for its own sake. Poe's influence on American and European writing has been remarkable. He was one of the first American writers to acknowledge the talents of Longfellow and Hawthorne, and one of the most vocal in arguing against the prevalent nationalism of early nineteenth century American writing, whilst pointing out the dangers for American writers who simply imitated European examples: a recurrent issue in his tales is the relationship between 'Old Europe' and 'New America'. His writing can be seen as one of the major influences on the French symbolist movement (especially Baudelaire and Mallarme). He is widely acknowledged to be one of the inventors of the modern detective story, most clearly in 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', a precursor to novelists such as Wilkie Collins and Conan Doyle. However, he is best known for his tales of mystery and imagination, and it is for these that he has earned his status as the "Father" of American Gothic. In these tales his treatment of themes such as premature burial or to the literature of the double (in 'William Wilson', 1839, which anticipates Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde) establish new ground, and perhaps have left little unexplored for later writers of the supernatural and unexplained. However, whilst Poe explored new themes and ideas, his contribution to the development of modern Gothic writing lies with his ability to create a variety of forms of symbolist terror, using new structures and creating new forms of narrative tone. | |
Discussion Questions:
| (i) | "The Fall of the House of Usher": This story might be described as a "mounting spiral of terror", in which the narrator, visiting his friend Roderick Usher, perhaps witnesses certain supernatural events , including the death of Usher's sister and her return, and the mysterious sinking of the house into the lake. By the end of the story we do not know anything the narrator has told us is "real", or whether the whole tale is the fabrication of the completely deranged mind of the narrator. The whole tale may well be an elaborate form of symbolic encounter, and we do not know if we are to be most interested in the mental state of the writer, the narrator, or Roderick Usher himself. The key moment at the end of the tale, the declaration of "MADMAN", raises more questions than it answers. |
| 1. The opening of the story suggests symbolic dimensions. The narrator says that he visiting Usher to help to cure or alleviate his malady of spirits, but do we have any clues that indicate the narrator's own need for such a cure? In journeying towards the house (frequently a symbol of the personality) the narrator's own spirits fall - is this a symbolic encounter with, or journey towards, depression, and what is the boundary which is crossed by the journey? Is it significance that the narrator tells us he is accustomed to the pleasures and depressions of opium? How are mood and atmosphere created in these opening paragraphs, e.g., the cumulative effects of language and imagery? Is it significant that the house is so close to the lake, the "waters of the unconscious"? |
| 2. When he meets Usher what does the narrator think of his mental state? It is clear that his outward reserve conceals an underlying nervous agitation, a "sensibility of temperament" and passionate devotion to music (the world of art?), coupled with a lack of vitality, an 'abnormal failure in the family line, and a morbid acuteness of the senses. What is significant here? What also might be the significance of his 'rhapsody', "The Haunted Palace"? Is it indicative of his absorption into the morbid, signified also by his interest in "natural science" and his belief in the "sentience of all vegetable things"? |
| 3. Is Lady Madeleine real, or a figment of the narrator's or Usher's imagination? What does the narrator feel when he first sees her, and how does he respond to the news that she has passed away? Could Madeleine be a psychological part ("twin") to Usher? How does Usher change after he and the narrator have interred Madeleine's body? What are we to make of the reappearance of Lady Madeleine and the events surrounding it, particularly the mirroring of events from the reading of Mad Trist and the death of Usher at the hands of Lady Madeleine? |
| 4. The story ends with the narrator taking flight and the house falling into the waters? Did this happen, or is it all a hallucination on the part of the narrator? Is this the narrator playing a kind of game of self-referentiality on the reader (the House literally falling or the images dissolving at the end of the story)? What form of explanation does the story itself suggest - is it to be explained in terms of the logic of the supernatural? |
| 5. Clearly the story poses problems of reading and interpretation. Can the story be read as a "realist" tale, or is it a symbolist tale or allegory? Is it a comment on the values and lifestyle of a degenerate and aesthetic aristocracy? Or is it a form of psychological encounter and, if so, who and what is being encountered? Is it meant to be interpreted at all, or is it simply a journey into the world of the Imagination (echoing the importance of art, music and literature within the tale, as means to an alternative reality)? |
| (ii) | "The
Tell-Tale Heart.": This is, by any
definition, an intriguing tale, suggesting symbolic interpretations, but
also creating a nightmarish world with a reason of its own: once again we
are forced to either accept or reject the testimony and interpretation of
the narrator. It begins in medias res, with the narrator's state
of madness (and having a lunatic for narrator does raise certain narrative
problems!), attempting to explain why he has killed the old man. He suggests
that the impetus was an obsessive thought, the fear of the 'eye' ('I'?)
which is the catalyst for the meticulously planned attempt to murder him.
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| 1. In the story it's worth noting how the narrator achieves a curious kind of psychological doubling - an identification with the old man at the time of disturbing him in the middle of the night, and yet a completely psychopathic detachment, evidenced by the feeling of triumph and elation which precedes the murder. What is the effect of this on the reader, in terms of who we identify with? Does it compel the reader to become psychoanalyst, "reading behind" the narrator's presenting confession, and forced to encounter 'other' states of mind, and trying to explain why, i.e., find a rational reason for the irrational? |
| 2. The fact that the narrator hears the heart is significant: what does it suggest? Is it symbolising the narrator's awakening sympathy for the old man, awakening to human feeling? Why does the narrator dismember the body: is this significant. |
| 3. The story ends with the arrival of the police - why do they arrive? - are they the real police? He hears the heart while they cannot (indicating his conscience?) - is this significant? And what are we to make of his growing fury and final confession: is this evidence of his psychological state? |