In his stories “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” Edgar Poe analyze with the great exactness the change of killer’s psychology, that reckless moving from wild gladness to indescribable fear and despair. The author describes the awful scenes of murder without any secrets and not concealing all details.
Here now, let’s observe the scene of murder, which the teller had planned before hand in the story “The Tell-Tale Heart”. The teller wasn’t a mad man, because a mad man cannot plan. The whole week he had fun truing to kill his victim and only on the eighth day he did it.
“During all that week \was as friendly to the old man as \could be and warm, and loving.
Every night about twelve o’clock slowly opened his door. And when the door was opened wide enough put my hand in and then my head. In my hand \held a light covered over with a cloth so that no light showed. And I stood there quietly. Then carefully, I lifted the cloth, just a little, so that a single, then small light fell across that eye. For seven night\did this, seven long nights, every night at midnight. Always the eye was closed, so it was impossible for me to do the work. For it , it was not the old man I felt I had to kill; it was the eye, his Evil Eye. And every morning \went to his room, and with a warm, friendly voice \ asked him how he had slept. He cold not guess that every night, just at twelve, I looked in at him as he slept.
The eighth night I was more than usually careful as I opened the door. The hands of a clock move more quickly than did my hand. Never before had \felt so strongly my own power; I was now sure of success.
The old man was lying there no dreaming that I was at his door. Suddenly he moved in his bed. You may think I became afraid. But no. The darkness in his room was thick and black. I knew he could not see the opening of the door. I continued to push the door, slowly, softly. I put in my hand, with the covered light. Suddenly the old man sat straight up in bed and cried, “who’s there???!”
I stood quite still. For a whole hour \did not move. Nor did hear him again he down in his bed. He just sat there, listening. Then \heard a sound, a low cry of fear which escaped from the old man. Now \ knew that he was sitting up in his bed, filled with fear; I knew that he knew that I was there. He did not see me there. He could not hear me there. He felt me there. Now he knew that Death was standing there.
Slowly little by little, I lifted the cloth, until a small, small light escaped from under it to small light escaped from under it to fall upon – light escaped from under eye! It was open wide, wide open, and my anger increased as it looked straight at me. I could not see the old man’s face. Only that eye, that hard blue eye, and the blood in my body became like ice.
Have I not told you that my hearing had become unusually strong? Now I could hear a quick, low soft sound, like the sound of a clock heard through a wall. It was beating of the old man’s heart. I tired to stand quietly. But the sound grew louder. The old man’s fear must have been great indeed. And as the sound grew louder my anger became greater and more painful. But it was more than anger. In the quite night, in the dark silence of the bedroom my anger became fear for the heart was beating so loudly that I was sure some one must hear. The time had come! I rushed into the room crying “Die! Die!” The old man gave a loud cry of fear as I fell upon him and held the bedcovers tightly over his head. Still his heart was beating; but I smiled as I felt that success was near. For many minutes that heart continued to beat. I took away the bed-covers and held my ear over his heart. There was no sound. Yes he was dead! Dead as a stone. His eye would trouble me no more![3] But the process of murder wasn’t over yet. The author describes how cruelty the killer dealt with the dead body of the old. He wrote: “You should have seem how careful I was to put the body where no one could find it. First I cut off the head, then the arms and the legs. I was careful not to let a single drop of blood fall on the floor. I pulled up three of the boards that formed the floor, and put the pieces of the body there. Then I put the boards down again, carefully, so carefully that no human eye could see that they had been moved”[4] The killer thought that nobody would know about the murder, he was glad, that he wouldn’t be punished, but was his fear and horror that were the threat of revealing the murder. And that happened: “ My head hurt and there was a strange sound in my ears. I talked more, and faster. The sound became clearer” suddenly I knew that the sound was not in my ears, it was just inside my head. At that moment I must have become quite white. I talked still faster and louder. And the sound too became louder. I was a quick, low, soft sound, like the sound of a clock hear through a wall, a sound I knew well. Louder, louder, I stood up and walked quickly around the room I pushed my chair across the floor to make more noise, to cover that terrible sound. I talked even louder. And still the men sat and talked, and smiled. What it possible that they could not hear?
No! They heard! I was certain of it. They knew! Now it was they who were playing a game with me. I was suffering more than I could fear, from their smiles, and from that sound louder, louder, and louder. Suddenly I could fear it no longer. I pointed at the boards and cried, “Yes! Yes, I killed him. Pull up the boards and you shall see! I killed him. But why does his heart not stop beating? Why does it not stop!?”
The same pages of made murder we can see in the story “The Cat of Amontillado”. The main character of the story decided to kill his friend if we may say so, named Fortunato, because he as the hero said “had hurt him a thousand times and he suffered quietly.” So, he promised himself that he would make him pay for that, that would have revenge. Fortunato was a strong man, a man to be feared but he had one great weakness; he liked to drink good wine; and indeed he drank much of it. It happened, once that our hero met him in the street and he decided to treat him the wine Amantillado, and then to make his horrible murder, he took him to very strange and horrible place, where were only cold stone walls and terrible darkness.
It was really a very terrible place. “Fortunato looked uncertainly around him, trying to see through the thick darkness which pushed in around us. Here our brightly burning lights seemed weak indeed. But our eyes soon became used to the darkness. We could see the bones of the dead lying in the large piles along the walls. The stones of the walls were wet and cold” [5] In this terrible place our hero killed Fortunato. He bricked up him with stones, at last he head revenge, and again that fear accompanied the killer: “I heard no answer. Fortunato” I cried “Fortunato”. I heard only a soft, low sound, a half-cry of fear. My heart grew sick; it must have been the cold. I hurried to force the last stone into its position. And I put the old bones again in a pile against the wall. For half a century now no human hand has touched them. May he rest in peace!
2.6 Detective stores “The Cask of Amontillado”
Edgar Poe’s “The Cask of Amantillado” is the story of revenge. Among those who have read the timeless classic “The Cask of Amantillado” by Edgar Allan Poe, some have come away disliking the story because of the speaker’s cruel act of revenge against Frotunato. This opinion is, indeed warranted for such a portrayal of delicious wickedness, however, it is important for the reader to consider the fact that Poe penned that story as a direct reflection of all things that brought him misery. The writer discusses how throughout his life, the author waged war against a multitude of overpowering entities that served to influence him in a distinctly negative manner, among them being that of alcoholism, vanity, greed and pride. Besides the element of revenge, here we can see an extremely tightly women story and how this story was a commentary by Poe on his disclaim of the aristocracy and all that they stood for, as well as his personal belief in the cruelty of society.
To Edgar Poe’s terror stories we also may refer “ The Tall of the House of Usher”. Here we see the ways in which Edgar Poe’s own background experiences, and personal beliefs are reflected. In this story the author employed literary parallels and dualism to connect events, characters and sense. The writer argues that the house is actually personified and as it gradually collapses so does the family within. The madness of an aristocrat old stock is described as the extreme subtlety of human abilities and feelings, as the result of culture, which embarked on the stage of degradation. The terror is defined by psychological state of the hero: “In his manner I saw at once, changes came and went; and I saw at once, changes came and went; and I soon found that this resulted from his attempt to quiet a very great nervousness. His actions were first too quick and then too quiet. Sometimes his voice, slow and trembling with fear, quickly changed to a strong, heavy, carefully spaced, too perfectly controlled manner. It was a family sickness he said, and one from which he could not hope to grow better but it was he added at once, only a nervous illness which would without doubt soon pass away. It showed itself in a number of strange feelings. Some of these, as he told me of them, interested me but were beyond my understanding; perhaps the way in which he told me of them added to their strangeness. He suffered much from a sickly increase in the feeling of all the senses; he could eat only the most tasteless food; all flowers smelled too strongly for his nose; his eyes were hurt by even a little light; and there were few sounds which did not fill him with horror. A certain kind of sick fear was completely his master. I fear what will happen in the future, not for what happens, but for the result of what happens. I have indeed, no fear of pain, but only fear of its result of terror! I feel that the time will soon arrive when u must lose my life, and my mind, and my soul together, in some last battle with that horrible enemy; “FEAR”[6]. The reader is shocked by amazing conciseness revealing of the cram, made by Roderick Usher and sudden collapse of the ancient house took place at so the same time. The story begins with the narrator riding toward the estate of a friend from childhood. While describing the house, the place where the Ushers live, the writer already reminds about that light crack on the background of the building and at the end he shows how it collapses. Here is the picture, which the narrator watched: “ I again looked up from the picture of the house reflected in the lake to the house itself. A strange idea grew in my mind an idea so strange that I tell it only to show the force of the feelings which laid their weight on me. I really believed that around the whole house, and the ground around it, the air itself was different. It was not the air of heaven. It roe from the dead, decaying trees, from the gray walls, and the quite lake. It was a sickly, unhealthy air that I could see, slow moving, heavy and gray. Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I looked more carefully at the building itself. The most noticeable thing about it seemed to be its great age. None of the walls had fallen, yet the stones appeared to be in a condition of advanced decay. Perhaps the careful eye would have discovered the beginning of a break in the front of the building, a crack making its way from the top down the wall until it became lost in the dark waters of the lake.[7] And at the end of the story the author shows how the storm fell on the house: “The storm was around me in all its strength as I crossed the bridge. Suddenly a wild light moved along the ground at my feet, and I turned to see where it could have come from, for only the great house and its darkness were behind me. The light was that of the full moon, of a blood-red moon, which was now shining through that break in the front wall, that crack which I thought I had seen when I first saw the place. Then only a little crack, it now widened as I watched. A strong wind came rushing over me the whole face of the moon appeared. I saw the great walls falling apart. There was a long and stormy shouting sound and the deep black lake closed darkly over all that remained of the “House of Usher”. So was the end, the fall not of only the house, but the fall of the family, which was a very old one, and had long been famous for its understanding of all the arts and for many quiet acts of kindness to the poor, and besides had never been a large one, with many branches. The name had passed always from father to son, and when people spoke of the “House of Usher”, they included both the family and the family home.[8]
2.7 Fantastic stories. E .Poe’s Heroes
Edgar Poe’s heroes are capable to realize even the most critical circumstances. For example, Roderick Usher, was deadly frightened by the murder he made, but nevertheless with mathematical exactness he realized the scene which took place in the vault, Usher and his sister were buried alive by himself. Edgar Poe deal with the subject of death in his short stories. Almost in each Poe’s story we see death of course, the stories which deal with death can’t be funny, they are again horrible, awful, full of sorrow and disappointment.
For example if take such story as “The mask of the red death”. The name of the story tells for itself. And now how the author describes some moments connected with death: “The Read Death had long been feeding on the country. No sickness had ever been so deadly so great a killer or so fearful to see. Blood was its mark – the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains and a sudden feeling that the mind was rushing in circles inside the head. Then there was bleeding through the skin, though it was not cut or broken and then death! The bright red spots upon the body and especially upon the face of the sick man made other men turn away from him, afraid to try to help. And the sickness lasted, from the beginning to the end, no more than half an hour”!
Alongside with death in Poe’s stories we can see fear walking decide it. We may observed the following picture of fear in the story of William Wilson. The coldness of ice filled my whole body. My knee trembled, my whole spirit was filled with horror. I moved the light nearer to his face was this-this the face of William Wilson? I saw indeed that it was , but I trembled as if with sickness as I imagined that it was not. What was there in his face to trouble me so? I looked, and my mind seemed to turn in circles in the rush of my thoughts. It was not like this surely not like this that he appeared in the daytime. The same name, the same body; the same day that we came to school! And then there was his use of my way of walking, my manner of speaking! Was it, in truth, humanity possible that what I now saw was the result and the result only of his continued efforts to be like me? [9]
Filled with wonder and fear, cold and trembling, I put out the light. In the quite darkness I went from his room and, without waiting one minute, I felt that old school and never entered it again!
The same picture we can see in the story “The tall of the House of Usher”, and it is fear, which makes Roderick Usher feel ill, which is his main with which he is fighting; “Roderick Usher, whom I had known as a boy, was now ill. When I arrived I felt something strange and fearful about the great old stone house, about Usher himself. He appeared not like a human being , but like a spirit that had come back from beyond the grave. It was an illness, he said, from which he would surely die. He called his sickness fear. “I have”, he said “no fear of pain, but only the fear of its result lose my life, and my mind, and my soul, together in some last battle with that horrible enemy: “FEAR!”
Edgar Allan Poe considered his method of describing the events in such way, that could have effect, that could impress the reader. Perhaps that’s why he chose such colors as black, dark, red blood, violent etc.
Death is emerges as a main heroine in his stories. And that’s why all his stories are called the stories of horror.
Detective stories
A critic who was capable alike of extreme partiality and extreme severity, a poet who profoundly affected the development of French verse, a master of the short story, whose “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque” are among the triumphs of romantic horror, he also launched the American detective story upon its checkered career with yarns like “ Murder in the Rue Morgue” (1843).
Edgar Poe’s three stories “The murder’s in the rue morgue”, “The Mystery of Marie Roget” (1842) and “The Purloined Letter” show how Poe’s work set the standard for the detective genre. Besides we may include here his story “The Gold Bun” which considered to be the most popular among the readers. One of the his main characters in defective stories is Duplin; The writer gave him everything that he wanted to do. He is a clever smart and talented person. He constantly trains his mind, works out his own method, which helps him to guess any mystery of course he has common features with other Edgar Poe’s detective heroes as Legran, Arthur Gordon Pim. Hance Pyall. Duplin combined all features, everything in details in mathematical accurate calculations, in order of the facts, in intuitions of an analytics who proves the hypothesis. If we compare two Poe’s stories “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter” with one of Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Dancing Men” we’ll see the heavy reliance of Sherlock Holmes, creator on the work of his predecessor Poe. Poe’s stories and protagonist have more depth than Conan Doyle’s because Holmes’ methods relies entirely on logic and Duplin relies on behavior and nuance. Investigating the murders in the Rue Morgue Duplin displays his unusual, his own method of investigation. Now, in the following passage we may see how this author describes it: “ I soon noticed a special reasoning power he had, an unusual reasoning power. Using it gave him great pleasure. He told me once, with a soft and quite laugh, that most man have windows over their hearts, through these he could see into their souls. Then he surprised me by telling what he knew about my own soul, and I found that he knew things about me that I had thought only I could possibly know, His manner at these moments was cold and distant. His eyes looked empty and far away, and his voice became high and nervous. At such times it seemed to me that I saw not just Duplin but two Duplin one who coldly put things together and another who just as coldly took them apart.[10]