Myriad Approaches to Death in Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Terror

101 Pages·2016·0.6 MB·English

by  Jenni A. Shearston

Regis University
ePublications at Regis University
All Regis University Theses
Spring 2011
Living in the Mystery: Myriad Approaches to
Death in Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Terror
Jenni A. Shearston
Regis University
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Recommended Citation
Shearston, Jenni A., "Living in the Mystery: Myriad Approaches to Death in Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Terror" (2011).All Regis
University Theses. 550.
https://epublications.regis.edu/theses/550
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LIVING IN THE MYSTERY: MYRIAD APPROACHES TO DEATH IN EDGAR

ALLAN POE’S TALES OF TERROR

A thesis submitted to

Regis College

The Honors Program

in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for Graduation with Honors

by

Jenni A. Shearston

May 2011
ii
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v

I. EDGAR ALLAN POE: DEATH IN AMERICAN LITERATURE 1

II. THE TALES OF TERROR 18

III. UNCONSIOUS URGES: “THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE” AND 38

“THE PREMATURE BURIAL”

IV. TRIAL OF THE SOUL: “THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM” 54

V. SWALLOWED INTO THE SEA: REUNIFIED NARRATORS IN 68

“M.S. FOUND IN A BOTTLE” AND “A DESCENT INTO THE

MAELSTRÖM”

VI. CONCLUSION: DEATH IN LIFE AND THE SEARCH FOR UNITY 86

WORKS CITED 91

iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, I would like to sincerely thank all of my friends and family for their continuous
support and encouragement. Completing a work of this size is always a challenge, and I
certainly could not have finished it without my support group cheering me on.

Second, I would like to thank the Honors Community, including but not limited to
Connie Gates, Dr. Bowie, and Dr. Palmer, for their assistance and encouragement with
completing the requirements for the Honors Program.

Third, a special thanks goes to Vanessa Wos, my acountabilibudy, without whom I most
certainly would not have come as far as I have, and Gus Maxwell, for his help with
countless hours of discussion and brainstorming.

Fourth, thanks goes to my readers, Dr. Swanson and Dr. Dimovitz, for their assistance in
helping me correct sentence structure, content, and clarifying ideas.

Finally, and most importantly, I would like to thank Dr. Hicks, my advisor, for all of his
help and suggestions over the last year and a half. Without Dr. Hicks’s assistance, this
adventure would not have been nearly as fruitful as it has been. A heartfelt thanks and
appreciation to everyone who has assisted me in this process!
v
CHAPTER I

Edgar Allan Poe: Death in American Literature

“The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “Ligeia,” —Edgar Comment [SD1]: Effective  cataloguing?  
Allan Poe’s short stories are some of the most well known in America. His gruesome
tales entrance readers, not simply because of their skillfully woven plots and sinister
details, but because of the level of complexity hidden within them. Throughout the last
two hundred years, the value of Poe’s work has been disputed—while some critics find Comment [SD2]: I  don’t  think  the  function  of  a  
critic  is  to  identify  genius.  
his work to be simply sensational, an attempt at populist appeal through telling gruesome
stories with no real literary value, others argue for Poe’s groundbreaking work in
American literature, as the founder of the modern detective story and as the author who
“led the way into modern literature” (Ziff 80). While there are critics who find Poe’s
depressing and gothic stories to be of no value because they focus predominantly on the
morose representation of death, it is only through an exploration of this theme that Poe’s
artistry can be best understood.
Poe explored death in a way no other American author did, by not only portraying Comment [dh3]: First,  this  is  a  fragment.   But  
more  important,  it’s  too  loose  and  list‐y  to  be  a  
good  thesis.  What  we  want  for  the  final  draft  is  not  
the ways human perceptions of death can become obsessive entrapments that prevent
a  list  of  what  he  does  but  an  analytical  statement  
(indeed  with  elements  listed,  if  appropriate)  that  
acceptance of both death and life, but also the ways those perceptions can become spells  out  what  you  will  be  concluding  about  Poe’s 
treatment  of  death.  
transformative and transcendent. It is in his discussion of death—death as an internal
battle, an exploration of the self and of how to understand and come to terms with
death—of the self, of loved ones, of fear, that Poe breaks from the created American
mass needs and develops his own form of art as an exploration of the self. Poe’s ultimate
1
theory of unity suggests that it is only in death that people can truly be reunited
and become unified; if there is to be one point for all of life, perhaps that point can only
be reached in death: “The remarkable divisions that abound in the work of Poe all say
unity is impossible this side of the grave, and yet for Poe the aesthetician repeatedly
asserts that the single, most important aspect of art is that it alone can approximate unity
on this planet” (Ziff 76). If true unity cannot be established on Earth, then art’s purpose is
to bring humanity as close to unity as possible. Life separates humanity from nature, from
being part of the ultimate unity: “in death alone is a form of unity possible; there man
returns to the sentient wholeness of nature from which living inevitable divided him”
(Ziff 76). Poe’s vision for his tales was to approximate the ideal unity possible with Comment [SD4]: Agreed  with  what  Dr.  Hicks 
says  below  for  that  sentence  being  pulled  into  the 
biography.  This  section  really  gets  to  the  heart  of 
death, not only through exploring his own concept of the afterlife in stories like “M.S.
the  thesis,  too.  Should  this  be  pulled  into  the  
opening  paragraphs?  
Found in a Bottle” and “A Descent into the Maelström,” but also by re-representing unity
through the very creation of his stories. Every precise detail, every extra word, was
intentionally placed to portray one overall affect on the reader; and usually that effect was
to portray the consequences of death.
The Life of a Legend: A Short Biography Comment [SD5]: Check  with  Dr.  Hicks  on  this 
one,  but  usually  for  a  writing  of  this  length,  we  tend  
to  deprecate  general  biographical  information  in  its 
Poe’s tragic life, perhaps more notorious than his gruesome work, has often been
own  section  like  this  in  favor  of  bringing  up 
biographical  info  where  it  is  relevant  to  the  essay’s  
confused as the motivation for the morose themes he repeatedly wrote about. Readers claims  about  the  topic.  This  kind  of  info  can  be  
culled  from  Wikipedia  these  days.  
often think of Poe’s life and his tales as one and the same—“a single impression of eerie
melancholy” (Silverman 1). While the personal events in his life surely affected his
writing to some degree, to dismiss the literary legitimacy of Poe’s work on the grounds of
his troubled character, life, and death would be to underestimate the complexity and
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