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Edgar Allan Poe
The narration in "The Cask of Amontilado" is provided by a first-person point of view from an arguably unreliable and manipulative narrator, Montresor. The narrator opens the story with vague and...
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Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe uses many different elements of style in his writing. Most commonly, he uses first person narration. You can find first person narration in many of his works, including "The Raven",...
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Edgar Allan Poe
Many of Edgar Allan Poe’s more famous short stories do not rely in the least upon extensive or in-depth character development. Basic characteristics or idiosyncrasies are provided in the opening...
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Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe is recognized as the father of the mystery story and also the horror story in American Literature. Poe's life held so much unhappiness that is it not surprising that he chose to...
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Edgar Allan Poe
The narrator of the story, a man imprisoned by the Spanish Inquisition, describes the mode of torture inflicted upon him after he discovers the pit inside his cell. Once he can avoid it, his...
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Edgar Allan Poe
There are two kinds of evidence that could be used to prosecute the narrator. One is his confession, which he has provided. The other is the body of Fortunato, which remains walled up in the...
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Edgar Allan Poe
Diction refers to word choice and is related to the tone and mood of a literary work. Syntax is the arrangement of words within a sentence. Connotation relates to the implied and contextual...
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Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer who lived from January 19, 1809 to October 7, 1849. During his life, he did not see much financial success as a writer. In 1827, he enlisted in the Army under...
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Edgar Allan Poe
"The Angel of the Odd" is a humorous story by Edgar Allan Poe that places a skeptical narrator into a series of absurd situations. Through these actions, the Angel tests the narrator's belief in...
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Edgar Allan Poe
A refrain is a line or set of lines that repeats at regular intervals in a poem. With that in mind, "Alone" by Edgar Allan Poe does not have a refrain, but it does have other elements of sound to...
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Edgar Allan Poe
Poe's work, like that of any great author, is not monolithic in theme or style. One could arguably make the case that within his oeuvre, contradictory worldviews are expressed—or perhaps it's more...
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Edgar Allan Poe
Poe often uses visual imagery—a vivid description of things that we might then see in our mind's eye—to create scenes that we can visualize in our own heads. For example, at the beginning of "The...
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Edgar Allan Poe
The humorous elements in "The Cask of Amontillado" are extremely dark and ironic, in keeping with the general tone of the story. One particularly chilling example occurs when the hapless Fortunato...
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Edgar Allan Poe
The primary image in "The Raven" is the picture of the raven sitting above the bust of Pallas above the speaker's "chamber door." Through this image and other diction choices associated with it,...
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Edgar Allan Poe
We might assume that both the evening star and the moon in Poe's 1827 romantic and somewhat Gothic poem "Evening Star" are actually symbols of the women in his life. Poe describes the moon and the...
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Edgar Allan Poe
The short story by Poe is about a king and his 7 advisers who enjoy practical jokes. They have enslaved two dwarfs. One is a male whom they call Hop-Frog and the other is a female who they have...
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Edgar Allan Poe
When analyzing a poem, it is best to identify the controlling metaphor. Often the title is a clue, as it is with Poe's poem, "The Spirits of the Dead." For, these words seem to be the key to...
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Edgar Allan Poe
First, it would be helpful if you clarified this. Are you looking for a factual response or an interprative response. I presume that you are looking for what kind of music Poe listened based on the...
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Edgar Allan Poe
All three stories deal with untimely death, premature burial, and the grotesque. In Cask A man tricks a rival into a crypt and seals him alive within the walls. The Tell-Tale Heart shows a man...
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Edgar Allan Poe
When Poe discusses the idea of nature, he holds it in high reverence but also acknowledges its mysterious and frightening qualities. Poe was fascinated with the macabre, so clearly the terrifying...
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Edgar Allan Poe
The poem “Alone” by Edgar Allan Poe was not published during his lifetime. It was not until 1875 that the poem was verified as being an authentic Poe poem written in 1830 when Poe was only...
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Edgar Allan Poe
The narrator describes a "disease" which fell upon Berenice. He says that the disease caused "a spirit of change" to sweep over her, and that this "spirit" pervaded "her mind, her habits, and her...
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Edgar Allan Poe
Sensory language is referred to as imagery in literature. Imagery is defined as the forming of mental images, figures, or likenesses of things. Therefore, in order to form the most realistic...
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Edgar Allan Poe
America's own Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is one the nation's greatest writers. He is considered the father of the modern horror story as well as the father of modern detective fiction. He was one...
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Edgar Allan Poe
"Fairy-Land" is a poem by Poe where he creates a fantastical landscape which is inhabited by fairies, who fly around and are shown to inhabit this curious universe. The opening first few lines...
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Edgar Allan Poe
In both tales, the dominant effect of horror is achieved in part because the form of death comes through a particularly horrible disease that the story's characters dread. In "The Masque of the Red...
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Edgar Allan Poe
Poe is using a characteristic (for him) rhetorical move in which he says how bad it would be to do a certain thing then goes on to do exactly that thing. In this story, he talks about horrible...
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Edgar Allan Poe
The fear of death has a profound impact on the characters in "The Premature Burial" and "The Masque of the Red Death." In both works, death occupies central importance in the characterizations. In...
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Edgar Allan Poe
A high school assignment asking you to find and critically analyze similes in a story is intended to help you learn to read stories closely, to appreciate how stylistic devices enhance the effects...
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Edgar Allan Poe
Absolutely. Hop Frog not only gets to humiliate the councilmen of the King, and the King himself, but he also gets to insult them to their faces, scare them, disarm them, and put them in an...
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Edgar Allan Poe
One of the things Edgar Allan Poe is known for in his short stories is a unreliable narrator who wants us to believe that he is perfectly sane even as he reveals his most heinous acts with the...
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Edgar Allan Poe
Both poems contain a somber tone and include supernatural elements. Edgar Allan Poe’s tragic backstory is woven into his poetry, and these two poems utilize a dark tone to express his complicated...
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Edgar Allan Poe
Poe uses a number of literary devices in "The Lake" (also called "The Lake-To--" in other texts). Poe uses metaphor in the very first line ("In the spring of my youth it was my lot"). Here, the...
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Edgar Allan Poe
Regarding the first question about the use of "farther" or "further" in line 57, it appears that Poe used "farther" in the poem. You will find texts of the poem online, and probably in print, that...
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Edgar Allan Poe
There are a number of reasons Poe's works remain popular today: First, Poe came up with compelling plots. He knew how to tell a frightening story and how to build suspense. In "A Cask of...
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Edgar Allan Poe
Poe created a technique that he termed "Arabesque"; with this technique there is a playfulness, a twisting and returning to ideas, a balance and integration in which Poe "teases out the latent...
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Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe's story "Silence-A Fable" can be confusing given the story's form. The story is being told from the perspective of an unnamed listener. Essentially, it is a frame story--meaning...
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Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe uses a variety of poetic devices in his dark, haunting poem, "Dreamland." Here are some of them. 1) Rhyme: The poem consists of rhyming couplets, meaning that line a and b rhyme,...
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Edgar Allan Poe
Poe’s poem is thought to addressed to Frances Osgood, a prominent poet in New York with whom Poe famously flirted – probably platonically -- for several years. The gist of the poem is fairly clear:...
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Edgar Allan Poe
The mood of 'The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion" is an odd one to identify. It is an other worldly mood of safety following a mysterious suffering. Mood is the atmosphere of overall...
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Edgar Allan Poe
You didn't specify what story you were referring to, so I am going to take a leap here and assume that your question comes from the story "The Black Cat" where the narrator kills his wife. In this...
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Edgar Allan Poe
Poe was a master at creating spooky and suspenseful moods in stories. In "The Pit and The Pendulum," his narrator is subjected to gruesome torture during the Spanish Inquisition. Poe toys with the...
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Edgar Allan Poe
In Poe’s Gothic short stories like “The Fall of the House of Usher” and his portraits of madmen and grotesques such as “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado,” he is a master at...
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Edgar Allan Poe
In his short stories, Edgar Allan Poe manages to convince the reading public that individual readers are interested in stories that have to do with death and dying largely because he develops and...
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Edgar Allan Poe
Both Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, the authors cited here, are well known for themes of death and mortality occurring in their works. Poe's approach tends to be one exploring the...
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Edgar Allan Poe
Ah, well there are other things about vampires besides "teeth". For example, they are immortal: But it is mere idleness to say that I had not lived before - that the soul has no previous...
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Edgar Allan Poe
In describing the Chateau that the narrator and his valet come to find while seeking refuge in the night, Poe paints a picture of a place that was once very grand, and is now falling to pieces....
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Edgar Allan Poe
Since the speaker of the poem appears to be wallowing in solitude and grief, it's a good idea to look for glimmers of hope in his thoughts and speech to see what it is he might want--aside from all...
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Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe's poem "Alone" was never published during his lifetime. He wrote it in 1829 and, as a young man, was experiencing intense, conflicted feelings about his childhood and family life....
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Edgar Allan Poe
Figures of speech, or figurative language, are types of language that are not meant to be taken literally. Here are some examples from Poe’s poem, “The Sleeper.” Poe uses figurative language to...
