Hutchinson Poe

E. A. Poe

There is no question that Edgar Allan Poe was a dark individual, whose stories portrayed and reveled in this very trait.  While stories like "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" had horrific elements, Poe's writings were of a truly gothic nature at their core. They are usually gloomy and laced with despair. Instead of adding dark touches here and there, like Irving, Poe centers his stories around death, insanity, anxiety, addiction, rage, sex, and all things taboo.  These gothic foundations are what made his stories thrive, and what keeps them alive today.  He hearkens back to a time when humans considered themselves damned, even though they hoped to be saved.  The very essence of human nature is dark and depraved, and the Puritans believed they had to work for God and obey him in all things to try purify themselves of this darkness, even though their salvation was predetermined. Though writers like Irving and Cooper tried to move away from these views, promoting the idea that man is whatever he can make of himself, Poe regresses to the "darker" times, fully exploiting and exposing the darkness within all humans. The characters in his stories show that no matter how hard one fights, one cannot escape his true nature or fate.

Kitty

In "The Black Cat," the narrator relates the tale of how he and his wife owned a menagerie of pets, due to their mutual love of animals.  He notes that even as a child, he was always "especially fond of animals. and was indulged by [his] parents with a great variety of pets." The reader could take this to indicate that this tale of "horror" which he is relaying would have more to do with the animals themselves than with his own hand in whatever happened.  However, it becomes clear that this docile, pleasant man, who swears he is not mad, has a darkness deep within himself. "But my disease grew upon me - for what disease is like Alcohol! - and at length...even Pluto began to experience the effects of my ill temper." The narrator, an apparent picture of human perfection, is not exempt from the temptations and evils that lie in the very core of human existence. After the narrator cuts out the eye of Pluto the cat in a drunken rage, Pluto avoids him as much as possible, igniting yet an even deeper rage in the narrator. "This spirit of perverseness...came to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself - to offer violence to its own nature - to do wrong for the wrong's sake only.." Poe's narrator gave into his human urges, his primal, evil nature, even though he knew as he was hanging Pluto from the noose that he was "committing a deadly sin that would so jeopardize [his] immortal soul as to place it beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God." This is a philosophy that goes against the beliefs of the Puritans. They believed that they had to work constantly toward salvation, and put their absolute faith and truth that God would grant them mercy and save them, as is shown in Mary Rowlandson's Captivity Narrative. However, Puritans did believe that though one should keep working and praying in order to be saved, his fate was already set by God. This view Poe fully supports, as his narrator repeatedly falls and gives into his evil instincts, no matter how hard he may fight. When the narrator brings home a cat that reminded him of former victim, it is in an attempt to quell his guilt. However, he soon finds the same problem with this cat as the last - a general annoyance. This time though, the narrator "avoided the creature; a certain sense of shame, and the remembrance of [his] former deed of cruelty, prevented [him] from physically abusing it...gradually, [he] came to look upon it with unutterable loathing, and to flee silently from it odious presence, as from a breath of pestilence." Try as he may, the narrator could not flee from his destiny and depravity like he fled from the cat.  He soon found himself in a worse predicament than before, murdering his wife in a rage, instead of the cat. Poe's "Black Cat" is a warped version of predestination. There is predestination within predestination.  The narrator did not get away with his crimes, essentially giving himself away and paying for his sins with the noose. There is also the predestination of human nature, though.  Try as he might to fight the rage inside of him, he fell victim to his own depravity.

Death Will Find You

"The Masque of the Red Death" is just another example at how one cannot escape their destiny; in fact, the whole story seems to be an allegory of predestination.  The Prince Prospero runs away from the plague ravaging his kingdom, and he takes a thousand friends with him.  They dance and revel all day and all night long.  For months, the rich and entitled live in secluded bliss while the world outside suffers unimaginable agony.  However, at a Masquerade one night, an unknown stranger crashes the party, "The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat...His vesture was dabbled in blood - and his brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror." This stranger is the Red Death from which the prince and his friends are trying to hide; no one can escape or hide from a destiny that has already been chosen.  Much like Mary Rowlandson when she is taken captive and made to live among the Amerindians, or like Anne Bradstreet when her house burns down and she has no choice but to stand and watch.