“Words have no power to impress the mind
without the exquisite horror of their reality”. This quote was from the poet
and a short story writer Edgar Allan Poe. He is recognized for introducing the
British horror story, the Gothic genre, to American literature from the
nineteenth-century. For knowing the perceptions of this author, as a reader you
have to not only read because of loving horror stories, but for comprehending
that for Poe, humanity is more that we see. Edgar Allan Poe chooses certain
themes and motifs for making the reader understand his perspective of the real
human nature.
The themes that Poe puts on his stories was on
the purpose of understanding the lack of self-control of the human being. One
of them is the madness that their characters show from wanting revenge from
another character, in order to feel sane. For example, on “Hop Frog” the main
character wants to kill the king and the other 7 men because of the madness
that he had inside. By killing them, he revenges from other humiliations that
they make to him and Trippetta. Another theme that Poe uses constantly on his
short stories is baseness. On his short stories, he makes their characters to
drive crazy and to make what their uncivilized part tells them to do: to commit
murder, or to become insane. A based character of Edgar Allan Poe has no regard
for others, and he or she only have interest on their own. Madness, revenge and
baseness are themes that Poe uses frequently to show that on the right moment
and time, we do not have control over ourselves and we have to do what our
passions want us to do.
Moreover the themes that he uses, one important
essence of his stories are the multiple and singular motifs that makes his
works so unique. Death is one of the most important motifs of their stories. His
horror stories are a clear example of this motif: in most of his stories, one
of the characters ends dead because another character kills him or her due to
his insanity. Besides most of his horror stories, Poe also included these motif
on their detective stories, in order to make the reader understand that
death(wanting it or not) is part of the life cycle and that one day, every one
of us is going to reach that point, the end. Another motif of Poe’s stories are
animals. On some of his stories, like “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, he
introduces real animals as murderers, like the ourang-outang that killed the
two women. But, on most of his stories, he makes the humans comport like real
animals, and that is some interesting aspect that the reader notice. By these
motifs, the people that read his stories comprehend the real message of what he
is trying to transmit.
Poe, by the use of some specific themes and
motifs on his short stories, achieves catching the reader and making him or her
comprehend that human nature is something more complex that they imagine.
Humans are not only logical and reasonable, we still have flaws and commit
mistakes, but now a days (and also when Edgar Allan Poe lived) society want
people to behave a certain way, forgetting that we still are animals and as
them, we have passions that can lead to our real interests and desires. But
fortunately, by reading his short stories, we can be conscious that on some
point of our lives, on the right moment and time, we can really go unreasonable
and mad and we will not have control of that. As Neal Shusterman says “One
thing you learn when you’ve lived as long as I have-people aren’t all good, and
people aren’t all bad. We move in and out of darkness and light all of our
lives.” In other words, everyone is searching their own happiness and safety
regardless of another people's feelings; because eventually, everyone must live
as they want to live his or her journey in life.
