THE THEME OF TRAGEDY IN EDGAR ALLAN POES TALES OF TERROR essays

THE THEME OF TRAGEDY IN EDGAR ALLAN POE'S TALES OF TERROR essays Although most readers would not immediately recognize it, a number of the so-called "Tales of Terror" by American author Edgar Allan Poe, born in Boston in 1809 and the youngest son of Elizabeth and David Poe. Jr., contain central themes associated with tragedy and tragic drama. With a detailed reading of such tales as "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Black Cat," "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Fall of the House of Usher," the dark presence of tragedy can be strongly sensed, for it not only permeates the plotlines but also the various characters that bring the tale to life as though each was experiencing the sensations and emotions that make up a true tragic figure, replete with misery, denial, fabrications, and death. Ironically, Poe's own life was based on a tragic drama, for it was influenced by many events that were beyond his control, such as the early death of his wife Virginia in 1847 from tuberculosis. In essence, it could be said that Poe had his own "fatal flaw" that finally led to his own death in October of 1849 at the age of forty. The Greek philosopher Aristotle defines tragic drama as "a power capable of raising pity and fear, or terror. . . to purge the mind of these passions. . . to temper and reduce them. . . by reading or seeing those passions imitated" (Hamilton, 56), i.e. tragedy gnaws at one's emotions, thus bringing about a release, or purgation, when the tragic figure is triumphant or victorious over his oppressors or the object of his frustrations. However, since Aristotle's time, literary purists have what constitutes tragedy, yet Poe's own interpretation of this term is "the primordial emotions that rise from the deepest recesses of the human soul" which he described as "the reproduction of what the senses perceive in nature through a veil. . . the naked senses sometimes sees too little but then they always see too muc...