Edgar allan poe Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Edgar allan poe - Essay Example Poe’s personal tragedies played a huge role in the shaping of his poems, as did his abuse of alcohol and opium that increased throughout his lifetime. After the death of his mother, Poe became afraid of cemeteries, worried that ghosts or bodies would come out of their graves and come after him (Symons, pg. 27). Though it was not nearly as noticeable as it would be in years to come, Poe’s writing during this time gradually turned darker. He started focusing more on life and death, implementing sorrow and death into his poems. The poems during this era are no longer in print, but they were the onset of the writing that Poe’s fans would come to recognize and associate with Poe. The first poem that was first correlated with the death of someone close to Poe was â€Å"The Raven,† which was written after Poe’s brother had died from tuberculosis. The poem is a sorrowful one, centered on the never-ending remembrances of lost loved ones. The poem is about a woman named Lenore, and the protagonist of the poem spends the majority of the poem talking to the raven that has come into his home. At first the man is unaware of what has entered his house, but he speaks to it anyway, too lost in his thoughts of his Lenore. He wants to believe that what is in his home is her. The speaker becomes so lost to the point that he drives himself insane. The poem reflects the emotions that Poe felt after his brother died. He and his brother had never been close, a fact that disturbed Poe after his brother died. â€Å"The Raven† speaks of constantly remembering someone after they have gone, so much that the deceased person becomes real, yet not real enough to touch or see. The speaker spent the length of the poem hoping that the thing in his house was who he missed the most, but he drove himself insane with these hopes. The same can be said for Poe himself. He spent so much time thinking about the