Narrating the Undercurrents of American Culture

Edgar Allen Poe

On the Edge

• Through flashback, Poe’s narrator reveals the incidents which bring him to the point of facing his own death on the very next day.

• We learn of the narrator’s personality, which is monstrously altered apparently by an addiction to alcohol.

Clues

• Remember that Gothic Literature employs the literary device of the grotesque.

• “Grotesque”, an adjective, derives from the Italian, meaning “grotto” or “cave”.

• The “cave” used in the gothic sense is the mind, the inner world.

• Gothic writers explore the inner world of the main character.

Pursuing the Clues

• Look for words in the story that refer to the mental state of the character.

• Look for conflicts that result from a character’s lack of self-control.

• Look for names or places that suggest darkness or what is hidden.

• Look for actions that defy rational explanation.

• Notice as well that Poe provides us few concrete details.

• His language is often spare and suggestive.

(“I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my

wife.”)

• We must enter into our own imaginations to develop the context of the setting, the action, and the physical appearance of the characters.

What Is Really Going On?

• Remember, we are expected to enter into the character’s mind, and by so doing, enter into our own as well.

• What motivated the character to act as he did? By extension, what motivates us to act as we sometimes do?

• Poe believed that our irrational actions (pleasant one moment, crabby and irascible the next) result from our “perverse” nature.

Our Dual Nature• Look for characters who exhibit

separate personalities.

• Look for situations that involve two separate states of being.

• Look for unexplainable events.

• Look for characters in torment—usually a consequence of guilt.