Edgar Allen Poe and His Nightmare World
A Master Storyteller, the Original Halloween Man
Oct 19, 2009
This writer was a major influence in formulating the short story as we know it today. Poe's nightmare world is torn between rational and irrational forces. The reader is never quite sure what is real. It's perfect stuff for a good Halloween scare.
Best Known Short Stories and Poetry
The American short story moved to a new level with his work. The stories completely modernized detective fiction, science fiction and horror. His first publication was the "Fall of the House of Usher" which he wrote at age 30. The most popular writings include "The Black Cat" and "The Raven." The stories featuring C. Auguste Dupin shaped the modern mystery story so much that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle compared Sherlock Holmes to Dupin and now the Mystery Writers of America give out a coveted award every year called "the Edgar."
How Did Poe's Writing Relate to His Own Life?
He lived a short (40 years) hard life with few friends and many enemies. Poe never got off to a good start in life. An orphan at three years old, he was adopted by John Allen. His foster father gave him no true parental guidance, swinging between lenience and extreme discipline like a pendulum. The boy attended the University of Virginia until he developed a gambling problem and Allen withdrew his financial support.
Edgar had a successful two-year hitch in the army and was recommended to West Point. However his attitude and failing grades doomed this endeavor and he was dismissed from the Academy by court martial soon after he enrolled. He couldn't hold a job and moved from city to city working as an editor for literary magazines. Although he was among one of the best editors of his day, increasing magazine circulation often by seven to eight times, the owners and employees found working with him to be extremely difficult. He had a sharp, cruel tongue, and was quick to slash the work of writers he did not like, such as attacking the well-liked Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by accusing him of plagiarism.
He married his thirteen year old cousin when he was twenty-six and she died ten years later of tuberculosis. After her death, life held no meaning for him. He hated life itself. Poe found himself to be totally alone and an absolutely miserable man.
How Did Poe Die?
The man was a first class drunk. Bouts with alcoholism plagued his entire life; he drank himself into oblivion as an escape. He drank to kill something inside himself. His entire life was a long, painfully slow suicide. When his wife died, Poe went on a series of massive benders and died a short time later, after acquaintances found him dangerously drunk and delirious in a Baltimore gutter.
His death was attributed to many possible causes. Alcoholism was very likely but there were other possibilities mentioned at the time: a possible brain lesion form a blow to the head which might have been sustained when he fell into the gutter, brain fever, tuberculosis, epilepsy, diabetes, or even rabies.
The Cooping Theory
One of the most popular scenarios given in many of the Poe biographies relies on the fact that the day he was found in the gutter was a major election day in Baltimore. The place near where he lay was Ryan's Fourth Ward Polls. It was both a bar and a voting site. Baltimore elections were notorious for their corruption and extreme violence.
Political gangs did whatever it took to ensure their candidate's success at the polls. The most common activity was called "cooping." They stole election ballots, bribed judges and intimidated voters. Some political gangs kidnapped innocent bystanders and held them for an indefinite time in a room called the "coop." They forced these people to go from poll to poll and vote over and over again. Sometimes they'd even swap their hostages' clothes and send them back through the polls again, hoping they wouldn't be recognized. The gangs kept them supplied with enough liquor to keep them drunk, but if their victims refused to cooperate, the members beat them unmercifully and threw them out in the street.
Poe was in no physical condition to withstand this abuse although the free liquor might have attracted him at first. He was found wearing filthy, ragged clothing that didn't fit. It seems a very likely possibility that "cooping" might have been the circumstance of his death. He died after a few days in the hospital without ever regaining consciousness.
The Strange Circumstances of His Burial
Poe's remains were buried in Westminster Hall and Burial Grounds in Baltimore, Maryland in an unmarked grave. When small town gossip finally led to a stone being ordered, it was destroyed in a train accident.
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