Biography of Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most famous authors in history. He is famous for his creepy and mysterious plots. Poe will go down in history, because of The Raven, The Fall of The House of Usher and many more of his writings. His writings were an inspiration for movies and books. Poe's works can be compared to many other writers by comparing literary elements that have been put in many other stories.

The Scarlet Ibis is an amazing story. It was written by James Hurst and published in 1960. Even though Poe and Hurst lived over a hundred years apart from each other, theY still have much in common. The Scarlet Ibis is about two brothers. One brother is not named. He is the narrator. The other brother is Doodle, who has some sort of disability. Over the years the one brother teaches Doodle to walk, swim and other actions. In the end Doodle dies from some sort of accident in the rain, because his brother left him behind. The theme of sadness from that story is in many Edgar Allan Poe stories. The House of Usher for example. Both stories have a dark theme to them. In both stories people die. Rodrick dies when his sister comes back to life and comes to him. The unnamed narrator describes the scene well. bore him to the floor a corpse (Poe 117). The main character is distraught by this sad event. This is how Poe made his stories sad. He wanted it to be sad. There is a theme of heartbreak in each. It isn't a main theme in Poe's stories, but it shows up many times.

Another similar trait with the The Scarlet Ibis and Poe's stories are the point of view. The Tall-Tale Heart, The Fall of the House of Usher and The Cask of Amontillado have the same point of view as The Scarlet Ibis. Every one of these stories are from a first person perspective. In The Scarlet Ibis you see the point of view from the brother. In The Tall-Tale Heart, you see the point of view from the unnamed main character. Then in The Cask of Amontillado the narrator is Montresor, while in The Fall of the House of Usher it is also first person. This can be said for most of his stories. It is limited so you do not know what other people except the main character are thinking. That's what makes these short stories good. There is always a mystery.

The plot in the The Man who Sent Rain Clouds has some details that it shares with The Tall-Tale Heart. In The Man who Sent Rain Clouds an old man dies. His grandsons find him. They don't tell the police or the priest that he died. They are hiding that he died only for a short segment for the story. In The Tall-Tale Heart, another person dies. The main character hides the fact that he died. He puts the body under the floorboards, and doesn't tell anyone. First of all I dismember the corpse(Poe 19). He is explaining the process of hiding the body in this example. Poe is trying to show everyone the unstable mind of the man in the short story. Later in the story someone eventually finds out that someone has died. In The Man who Sent Rain Clouds it was the priest and in The Tell-Tale Heart, it was the police. Both main characters in the story have sinned in a way. The man Leon from The Man who Sent Rain Clouds did not go to church every week. But in the other story our character killed a man. The old man's Hour has come (Poe 19). Then he hid the body under the floorboards. This shows us how wrong the main character is being in this. They have both broken the Ten Commandments.

A Day's Wait is about a father and his sick son. The Fall of The House of Usher is about a man and his sick friend. The conflict in both stories are the same. There is a sick person with a main character watching over him. They try to comfort their loved one, but it doesn't work. Schatz the sick boy believes he will die any day now, and he is just waiting. That goes the same way for Rodrick the sick friend. Each main character is disturbed at their loved ones state of mind. They try to grasp control of reality, but they can not do it fully. The unnamed character in The Fall of The House of Usher runs away from it all From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast (Poe 117). This example shows us how he doesn't understand what is going on so he ran. That is also what Poe is trying to convey to us.

Edgar Allan Poe's short stories are very similar to many other stories surprisingly. There are many more examples of this in other stories. These were just a few. Poe's stories can be taken many different ways. They could be sad, scary or comedic to different people. Poe made the stories that way for a reason. He has made many things that everybody still looks up to for ideas. He wanted to be an inspiration, and he accomplished that mission in writing.

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