critical assessment. essay

The Bounds of Life and Death

In Edgar Allan Poe

Introduction

One cannot think of Edgar Allan Poe without visualizing a duel with the supernatural and the terrifying . There is the image of a figure cowering in horror as a dead bride rises from her cradle , her very being changed . There is the darkness masked in the cruelty of a man possessed with a will and desire for revenge and a hundred bodies writhing in physical-spiritual agony against a backdrop of black-blood halls

This is where we begin to analyze

what manner of man Poe was . He is deemed the master of the macabre and an author of horror . But how does he stir his readers ? How is he different from other horror , who write of the fiends that ride in the dark , bereft of their heads , or of the cruelties of Man ? We are looking into a soul that seeks to reach out to the bounds of Life and Death

It is Death that takes center stage in most of his stories . Either in one form or another , Poe explores the bounds of Life and Death quite differently from other authors . With other works , we know the line between the two states : As long as there are no wars or disease , we are safely ensconced in a state of Life . But Edgar Allan Poe defies that and in his works try to evoke a sense that these states are never safely apart . Death is an ever-present , ever-ominous

We investigate this exploration into the supernatural through three readings : The Cask of the Amontillado , The Masque of the Red Death , and Ligeia . Through three distinct elements , we may identify and make a cohesive definition of Poe 's distinctive style

Imagery

The first indication of something remiss and wrong to the reader is Poe 's style of imagery . From maddening heights to distorted architecture we are made how far we have gone from the comforts of what we know . In The Cask of Amontillado , Poe gives a stark contrast between two settings : the revelry of the surface , its joy and exuberance a sign of life , and the darkness of the catacombs , amid the buried remnants of generations that now come to symbolize the underworld of death . Poe 's portrayal of the tunnels , their seemingly labyrinthine structure , and their suffocating nature , are made more real through subtle gestures : the violent coughing of the tragically doomed character of Fortunato , and his continued struggling for breath . The reader is absorbed into the depths of the catacombs , and himself imagines gasping for air , longing and tempted to go back to the surface . The depths seem to symbolize a slow descent beyond life

Where the characters of The Cask of Amontillado seem to descend slowly to the plane of Death , with Fortunato a drink-obsessed Aeneas guided by the dark obverse of the Sybil , in Masque of the Red Death it is the reverse , for it is Death that ascends the fortress to greet the revelers within . There is again a contrast : Poe , through vivid of the horrors of plague , gives us an indication of the darkness outside and through the eccentric , lavish celebration held by Prince Prospero the main character , we are given an indication of life . The two stories are similar in their juxtaposition of light and dark , life and death with each story forming a literary equivalent to the chiaroscuros so beloved by the painters of the Baroque . However , the bounds between seem unreal to the reader , who cannot help but see the shadows breaking through the bs and creeping closer to the flickering , dying light .The tortuous , tortured imagery of different colors all at the extreme of the spectrum , the puzzled irregularity of structure , the grotesque shapes in the rooms that seem taken from the gargoylesque campaniles of Gothic churches , and the dreamlike character of the ill-fated masquerade of the ball - where the assembled guests were made to wear varied masks in the myriad shapes of the fantastically strange and disturbing - seem to express in an external sphere a vain struggle against an inner fear Then as we look further , we see the presence of a dark-and-red suite that tries to hide yet cannot but hint of a stark reminder of this fear It is as if the ball itself seemed to symbolize the act of taking refuge within the madness of the mind and its different temperaments when there remains the ever-present darkness

Poe used an obvious symbol - the strange image of the Death Bed - as part of the symbolism in Ligeia . In this story , however , the student of the psyche in Poe the artist makes the boundary of life and death not external like the battlements of Mask and the door to the depths as in Cask , but internal , lurking uncertainly in the far more terrifying caverns of the soul . For while he stirs the reader with the strange and terrifying room that was the bridal chamber , with its assortment of lifeless busts and tapestries that seemed to evoke the supernatural , he also focuses on the vessel : Tremaine , the second wife of the narrator who is seemingly caught between the struggle of life and death . She seemed to personify the contrast

Obsession

The descent to Death or her coming to the living characters is always preceded by some symbol of recurrence . This same symbol becomes an object of fixation to each of Poe 's major characters , and in one way or another leads them to their encounter with Death . In The Cask of Amontillado , the doomed Fortunato is gripped by an unreasonable obsession for the wine promised by the narrating Montresor . He coughs suffers through the ordeal of the catacombs and the poison of the nitre all for the sake of this amontillado . Even with the realization of his doom , as he is shackled to the wall , he cries out in utter despair for the amontillado . This fixation might well contribute to his perpetuated screams and agony , and its dark conclusion makes it Poe 's macabre equivalent to the tragic flaws of Sophocles ' Oedipus

In the Masque of the Red Death , the obsessive element is the slow disconcerting sound of the chime of a large ebony clock , which seems to catch those in the ball in terrified rapture . The dark-and-red room which houses the clock adds to the terror , as if it were calling out slowly to the coming of some dark and evil force . As soon as the sounds of the chime die down , the guests immediately return to normalcy , yet would again be gripped by the clock when it chimes again

It is the narrator 's first wife , Ligeia that is the nagging obsession in the story of the same title . Poe pours out such powerful words as would pull the reader to the same confusing mix of feelings of attraction and fixation . It penetrates one 's very being and possesses one 's very thoughts with its echoes of subconscious desire and delirium . From the manner with which they are described , one sees implied an unholy union between the first wife and the bridal chamber for his second wife . The reader has a nagging feeling that the chamber was made as a kind of temple for the memory of Ligeia

Defying Reason

Edgar Allan Poe punctuates this vivid portrayal of the struggle of life and death through a conclusion that defies the reasons and the comforts of the reader . He holds the latter in anticipation of some impending doom , and then ends with a scene that leaves the reader confused and , at some levels , frightened . For it could not make sense it should not make sense . Yet , in Poe 's story , it does , for he seems to say that beyond the strictures of Life reason emerges deficient , that the brief interludes of Apollonian brightness are but so many exceptions to the powers of Bacchus

We are given some indication of it in Cask of Amontillado . Early in the story , the narrator tells the reader that he is planning some form of revenge . This ensures that the reader is caught in apprehension as the catacombs go deeper and deeper . Immediately , one thinks of murder as the conclusion of the tale , and the act itself is therefore little surprise . However , the cruelty by which the narrator bids Fortunato chain and brick within the confines of the catacombs do violence to our sense of reason . It is arbitrary , inhuman and without resolution . The narrator 's final prayer seems disjointed from his cold-blooded yet passionately cruel means of pursuing the crime of murder

The Masque of the Red Death takes this defying of reason to the level of the supernatural and the fantastic . Prince Prospero falls dead with not a blow , nor even a touch against him , even as he comes face to face with an intruder in his ball . Poe scarcely gives details of his death - or of the death of the crowds who throng to seize the intruder , whom they catch in the blood-dark suite . He shows flatly that the intruder has no true form save for his masque of death . The reader is then left only with the images of bodies falling lifeless to the ground : Death has overcome the artifices of and protection , and establishes a mastery that terrifies in the most pre-rational , atavistic sense

In Ligeia , the breaking of reason 's bounds is similarly made through a frightful prodigy . Tremaine 's body is continually convulsed in a struggle between living and dying , but as her body lifts from her cradle , she is suddenly transformed - metamorphosed - into the narrator 's first wife and true love , Ligeia

Conclusion

These , then , are the elements that in synthesis , are the dimensions and stages of Poe 's art , and in which we are given a sense of how Poe illustrates this plane of the supernatural and macabre . Through imagery we are driven , even pulled , to the direction of darkness . In repetition and of obsession we are made more keenly aware of some foreboding doom . Finally , through strange endings that defy reason , we are left out of our senses and psychologically taken away from safety and brought suddenly close to the specter of Death

Edgar Allan Poe 's obsession with Death pervades most , if not all , of his stories . It is a natural sense of horror , and it stirs us beyond our senses and wits . We look at Poe and wonder why . We get an indication that perhaps , his stories and poems indicate an outpouring of his own soul , and a longing for answers beyond . Perhaps the Avatar of Death that is present in many of his poems and short stories was to him also the symbol of his inner desire . Yet he leaves us with this mystery , a mystery that , he reminds us , we will have to face at some point in our life in all its awe and horror

WORKS CITED

Poe , Edgar Allan . The Cask of Amontillado ' The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore . March 18 , 2008

p Poe , Edgar Allan . The Masque of Red Death ' The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore . March 18 , 2008

p Poe , Edgar Allan . Ligeia ' The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore . March 18 , 2008 ...