Why should you read Edgar Allan Poe? - Scott Peeples

The prisoner strapped under a descending pendulum blade. A raven who refuses to leave the narrator’s chamber. A beating heart buried under the floorboards. Poe’s macabre and innovative stories of gothic horror have left a timeless mark on literature. But just what is it that makes Edgar Allan Poe one of the greatest American authors? Scott Peeples investigates. Lesson by Scott Peeples, directed by Compote Collective.

A high forehead topped
by disheveled black hair,

a sickly pallor,

and a look of deep intelligence
and deeper exhaustion

in his dark, sunken eyes.

Edgar Allan Poe’s image
is not just instantly recognizable –

it’s perfectly suited to his reputation.

From the prisoner strapped
under a descending pendulum blade,

to a raven who refuses
to leave the narrator’s chamber,

Poe’s macabre and innovative stories
of gothic horror

have left a timeless mark on literature.

But just what is it that makes
Edgar Allan Poe

one of the greatest American authors?

After all, horror was a popular
genre of the period,

with many practitioners.

Yet Poe stood out thanks to his
careful attention to form and style.

As a literary critic,

he identified two cardinal rules
for the short story form:

it must be short enough
to read in one sitting,

and every word
must contribute to its purpose.

By mastering these rules,

Poe commands the reader’s attention

and rewards them with an intense
and singular experience –

what Poe called the unity of effect.

Though often frightening,
this effect goes far beyond fear.

Poe’s stories use violence and horror
to explore the paradoxes and mysteries

of love,

grief,

and guilt,

while resisting simple interpretations
or clear moral messages.

And while they often hint
at supernatural elements,

the true darkness they explore
is the human mind

and its propensity for self-destruction.

In “The Tell-Tale Heart,”
a ghastly murder

is juxtaposed with the killer’s
tender empathy towards the victim –

a connection that soon
returns to haunt him.

The title character of "Ligeia"
returns from the dead

through the corpse
of her husband’s second wife –

or at least the opium-addicted
narrator thinks she does.

And when the protagonist
of “William Wilson”

violently confronts a man
he believes has been following him,

he might just be staring
at his own image in a mirror.

Through his pioneering use
of unreliable narrators,

Poe turns readers into active participants

who must decide when a storyteller
might be misinterpreting

or even lying about the events
they’re relating.

Although he’s best known
for his short horror stories,

Poe was actually one of the most versatile

and experimental writers
of the nineteenth century.

He invented the detective story
as we know it,

with “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,”

followed by “The Mystery of Marie Roget”

and “The Purloined Letter.”

All three feature
the original armchair detective,

C. Auguste Dupin,

who uses his genius and unusual powers
of observation and deduction

to solve crimes that baffle the police.

Poe also wrote satires of social
and literary trends,

and hoaxes that in some cases
anticipated science fiction.

Those included an account of
a balloon voyage to the moon,

and a report of a dying patient
put into a hypnotic trance

so he could speak from the other side.

Poe even wrote an adventure novel
about a voyage to the South Pole

and a treatise on astrophysics,

all while he worked as an editor,

producing hundreds of pages
of book reviews and literary theory.

An appreciation of Poe’s career
wouldn’t be complete without his poetry:

haunting and hypnotic.

His best-known poems are songs of grief,
or in his words,

“mournful and never-ending remembrance.”

“The Raven,” in which the speaker
projects his grief onto a bird

who merely repeats a single sound,

made Poe famous.

But despite his literary success,

Poe lived in poverty
throughout his career,

and his personal life was often
as dark as his writing.

He was haunted by the loss of his mother
and his wife,

who both died of tuberculosis
at the age of 24.

Poe struggled with alcoholism

and frequently antagonized
other popular writers.

Much of his fame came from posthumous –
and very loose – adaptations of his work.

And yet, if he could’ve known
how much pleasure and inspiration

his writing would bring to generations
of readers and writers alike,

perhaps it may have brought
a smile to that famously brooding visage.