Edgar Allan Poe

In every story from the mind of Edgar Allan Poe, a bit of his own life had been molded into each piece of his work. This left his readers and critics with a better understanding of Poe's life. Poe displayed his greatest life's achievements and his worst disappointments in a series of stories and poems created throughout his whole life. It is the goal of this research paper to reveal symbolic facts about Poe's life and define these hidden parallels in some of his most famous works.

Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 001809 in Boston, Massachusetts ("Poe, Edgar Allan," Encyclopedia Britannica 540). Poe's parents were David Poe, an actor from Baltimore and Elizabeth Arnold Poe, an actress born in England, who had relocated to Baltimore. At birth, Poe had been cursed. Shortly afterwards, Poe's father abandoned the family and left Poe and his mother to fend for themselves. Not long after that, the cruel hands of fate worked their horrible touch on Poe again by taking his mother. In 1811, when Poe was two, his mother passed away, leaving him with a great loss. After his father's departure and mother's sudden death, Poe was left in the hands of his godfather, John Allan. John Allan was a wealthy merchant based in Richmond, Virginia with the means, knowledge and money to provide a good life for Poe.

In 1815, Poe and his new family moved to England to provide him a classical education. Upon returning from England in 1826, Poe enrolled at the University of Virginia. This was a magnificent achievement for him, because Poe was only seventeen at the time while the normal age for attendance was nineteen (Quinn 130). For the first time, life was going good for Poe. His future looked to be a path paved with gold. When Poe entered college, his path of gold ended quickly. It was only another path of grief and disappointment. Poe soon began to gamble and drink alcohol quite heavily. He developed gambling debts from 2,000 to 2,500 dollars, which caused problems between his godfather and himself (Quinn 130). After eleven months at the university, Poe dropped out mainly because of his debts and drinking, but also for John Allan's refusal to pay for his habits ("Poe, Edgar Allan," Encyclopedia Britannica 540).

Soon after Poe dropped out of school, he and John Allan had many quarrels over his gambling addiction. They finally decided it would be best for him to join the army. He joined under the alias of "Edgar Allan Perry" ("Poe, Edgar Allan," Encyclopedia Britannica 540). In 1829, Poe was honorably discharged, but not before attaining the rank of Sergeant Major. A year later, John Allan scheduled an appointment for Poe with the West Point U.S. Military Academy. Poe had not been in the academy for a year when he was dismissed from West Point. It was after his military career when Poe starting to become a successful writer of poetry and short stories. In 1831, Poems included three of his greatest works: "To Helen," "The City in the Sea," and "Israfel" (Poe, Edgar Allan," World Book Encyclopedia 591). When his poems failed to gain recognition, Poe began to write short stories such as "MS. Found in a Bottle" in 1833. It was around this time when he married his fourteen-year old cousin, Virginia Clemm. Virginia became a very influential character in Poe's later works. In 1840, Poe published a collection of his first twenty-five stories called "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque". Even when this collection failed to sale or gain recognition, Poe continued to write on a daily basis. Then suddenly, in 1843, he sold 300,000 copies of "The Gold Bug". Also in 1843, Poe published one of his greatest works, "The Tell-Tale Heart" ("Poe, Edgar Allan," Encarta Encyclopedia). Then again, in 1845, Poe had some success with his work "The Raven and Other Poems". In 1848, Poe explained his theories on the universe in his well-known piece, "Eureka" ("Poe, Edgar Allan," World Book Encyclopedia 592). . "The Raven" brought Poe the most recognition and finally provided a spot for him among America's greatest writers. Writers and critics were giving great praises to him during this time. It was with his stories of mystery and murder featuring C. Auguste Dupin that inspired one critic to write, "Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?" (Quinn 139). "It is not enough--certainly for literary criticism it is not enough to call his stories, strange, extraordinary, fantastic" is a perfect quote to summarize Poe's works and their effect on critics and people (Edgar Allan Poe, The Dark Genius of the Short Story"). This period of tranquility and good times would turn out to be Poe's last. In 1847, Virginia Clemm died of tuberculosis and in doing so added one more name to Poe's list of lost loves ("Poe, Edgar Allan," World Book Encyclopedia 591). Her death had affected Poe more greatly than any other of his former loses. Poe was once quoted saying: "Each time I felt all the agonies of her death--and at each accession of the disorder I loved her more dearly and clung to her life with more desperate pertinacity. But I am constitutionally sensitive--nervous in a very unusual degree. During these fits of absolute unconsciously I drank, God only knows how often or how much" (Buranelli 38). Despite the tremendous agony Poe felt over Virginia Clemm's death, he still passed a sigh of relief over her passing. In Poe's belief, death should not be feared, but instead it should be sought (Quinn 137). As Poe had said in "For Annie," "The fever called 'Living' is conquered at last" (Buranelli 38). For Poe, when Virginia died she escaped the curse of life.

In 1849, Poe met up with his former sweetheart, Sarah Elmira Royster and became engaged shortly thereafter ("Poe, Edgar Allan," World Book Encyclopedia 591). As life would have it, just days before his wedding, Poe stopped in Baltimore and disappeared. On October 3rd, 1849, Poe was