Why does Poe choose these themes and motifs?

“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.