McGowan Poe

In his stories and poetry, Poe depicts depravity of the natural world from a somewhat different angle than Puritan writers such as Rowlandson. While Rowlandson believes that humans must work directly against the evils of nature in order to achieve salvation, Poe represents this conflict in the sense that the evils of nature manifest themselves in human depravity. The Raven explores this through the lens of a man's slow sink into insanity as a result of his interaction with nature (in this case, a raven). The important question to ask regarding this poem is whither the root of depravity lies within nature, the raven, or within the man's conception of nature.

"Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore -
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'"

This quote is the first tangible instance in which the man's insanity is made apparent. Upon reading this, we have to ask ourselves the extent to which the man is displacing his inner conflict upon the raven, as a raven would not have the power of speech. Thus, we would have do deduce that the root of depravity lies within the man rather than within the bird. It merely manifests itself in his interaction with the raven. Rowlandson would beg to differ, arguing that the spirit of the devil lies within this bird and is possessing the man, as he is vulnerable and susceptible to the influence of nature. 

In "The Masque of Red Death", Poe represents the nightmare of nature as a disease called the Red Death: "No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal--the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution." Human Depravity comes into play with the Prince Prospero's reaction to the presence of the disease. Rather than attempting to help his dominions, "he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys." Here, it is clear that the prince is attempting to defy nature by means of consolidation of wealth and social status. However, this plan backfires when the ghastly figure, presumably representing the fact that nature is socioeconomically indiscriminate, enters the masquerade and subsequently kills all of the guests:

"And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay." Thus, it seems that in this story, human depravity lies within the erroneous attempt to defy the course of nature.