Draft for IP-3rd Body Paragraph not made yet, still deciding whether I can make it flow well

David McKnight

Hour 2

Barnes

Poe-ignant Writing

            Poe seeks to link his readers to his characters and gradually draw them into a world of darkness and insanity, as evidenced by the development of the main characters in his works, his in-depth depictions of psychological stress and gruesome portrayals of morbid scenes, and his allegorical references.

            In The Black Cat, the protagonist opens with the claim that, despite all appearances from the story, “mad [he is] not”. A similar claim is made by the narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart, who claims that the voices he hears are merely due to his “acute hearing”. These timely utterances expedite the formation of connections between the reader and the aforementioned characters from The Black Cat and The Tell-Tale Heart (whom we shall henceforth refer to as “Bob” and “Rudy”) by providing the belief of sanity as a relatable trait. Poe then takes the reader, through flashbacks, to an earlier point in time, and proceeds to create a feeling akin to slowly being dragged into a muddy lagoon via retarding the temporal feel of the personality shifts of the characters. For example, Rudy “by degrees - very gradually – [making up his] mind to take the life of the old man”. Similarly, Bob “grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others”. This gradual change also feels much more believable than a simple, abrupt change, allowing the stories to feel creepier.

            Poe is portrays his sanguinary scenes in his stories horrifically to maintain an aura of disturbing horror. For instance, Bob “took from [his] waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket”. Described in a like manner, Rudy “dragged [the old man] to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him”, and proceeded to “dismember the corpse”, and “cut off the head and the arms and the legs”. Poe also delights in elaborating upon his characters’ mental anguish. When the policeman visit Rudy’s house, Rudy “gasped for breath”, “talked more quickly”, “paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides”, “foamed” and “raved”; regardless of whether or not Rudy actually performed these actions, his psychological instability is made clear. Bob also has his share of conflicted mindsets, going from loving his cat (and other beings) to loathing them to loving them to loathing them, his movements becoming increasingly erratic with each alteration.

            Poe’s writing style amplifies the horrors created in his stories to a ghastly effect, taking that which is already unsettling and making it downright disturbing, crafting a world of insanity to suck readers in and make them shiver.