-Colin
Monday, April 5, 2010
Poe
What's his problem? Mrs. Lopez was saying that the dark nature of his writing can be traced to his dismal relationships with women, but I'm not seeing it. If that were true, shouldn't there be more women involved in his stories? Just thinking of his more famous pieces, I don't find many women involved (e.g. Tell Tale Heart, Cask of Amontillado, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum). Where does all the negativity come from?
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I'm sure Poe's experiences with the women in his life were definitely important in making him such a negative person. However, they definitely weren't the sole cause of his depression. His mental condition (bipolar disorder? or something like that), his financial difficulties, and his chronic alcoholism were also all important factors in shaping the dark nature of his works.
ReplyDelete-Bryce C.
I don't think Poe's relationships with women was his only problem. Poe had many issues like Bryce had said, but I think Poe had the most difficult time dealing with the loss of his beloved ones. Many people around him, including Poe's family members and his fiancee, died of tuberculosis and I believe Poe's biological parents left him when he was a baby.
ReplyDelete-Joanne
Maybe the deaths of the women in his life are the reasons for the absence of women from his works. He could have kept the women out of his works because he felt like he had no one important in his life (after the death of Virginia Clemm) and, consciously or unconsciously, wanted this to reflect in his stories.
ReplyDelete-Audrey
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ReplyDeleteI agree with Bryce as well. The women in Poe's life affected him greatly, no doubt. Those women, however, weren't the only factors that made Poe the way he was.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure every one of us has had one of those terrible days where we don't care about anything or anyone temporarily due to bad experiences with a specific person, or just terrible instances that occurred in our lives. When something unfortunated occurs in our lives one day, most of the time, we become a bit pessimistic for a while, until we recover. In Poe's situation, I can empathize with his behavior, considering not only how tragic some of his experiences were, but also how constant those negative experiences occurred in his life. If I had to suffer through that much tragedy in my lifetime, I think I'd see the glass as half empty myself.
-Chloe Martianou
There are stories with women in them such as the Raven and Annabel Lee. These losses affected him and made him more depressed in all areas of his life. I certainly would agree with everyone that he had issues other than the women, but I think that we are undermining the effect they had on him. Some of the alcoholism and overall depression had to do with the loss. The losses made him depressed and caused him to act out in other ways. Loss could have turned him to alcohol and made him unpleasant to work with so that he couldn't maintain a job. His issues in the rest of his life may have stemmed from the depression that began with the loss of the women he loved.
ReplyDelete~Becca