2.7 Fantastic stories. E .Poe’s Heroes

Edgar Poe’s heroes are capable to realize even the most critical circumstances. For example, Roderick Usher, was deadly frightened by the murder he made, but nevertheless with mathematical exactness he realized the scene which took place in the vault, Usher and his sister were buried alive by himself. Edgar Poe deal with the subject of death in his short stories. Almost in each Poe’s story we see death of course, the stories which deal with death can’t be funny, they are again horrible, awful, full of sorrow and disappointment.

For example if take such story as “The mask of the red death”. The name of the story tells for itself. And now how the author describes some moments connected with death: “The Read Death had long been feeding on the country. No sickness had ever been so deadly so great a killer or so fearful to see. Blood was its mark – the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains and a sudden feeling that the mind was rushing in circles inside the head. Then there was bleeding through the skin, though it was not cut or broken and then death! The bright red spots upon the body and especially upon the face of the sick man made other men turn away from him, afraid to try to help. And the sickness lasted, from the beginning to the end, no more than half an hour”!

Alongside with death in Poe’s stories we can see fear walking decide it. We may observed the following picture of fear in the story of William Wilson. The coldness of ice filled my whole body. My knee trembled, my whole spirit was filled with horror. I moved the light nearer to his face was this-this the face of William Wilson? I saw indeed that it was , but I trembled as if with sickness as I imagined that it was not. What was there in his face to trouble me so? I looked, and my mind seemed to turn in circles in the rush of my thoughts. It was not like this surely not like this that he appeared in the daytime. The same name, the same body; the same day that we came to school! And then there was his use of my way of walking, my manner of speaking! Was it, in truth, humanity possible that what I now saw was the result and the result only of his continued efforts to be like me? [9]

Filled with wonder and fear, cold and trembling, I put out the light. In the quite darkness I went from his room and, without waiting one minute, I felt that old school and never entered it again!

The same picture we can see in the story “The tall of the House of Usher”, and it is fear, which makes Roderick Usher feel ill, which is his main with which he is fighting; “Roderick Usher, whom I had known as a boy, was now ill. When I arrived I felt something strange and fearful about the great old stone house, about Usher himself. He appeared not like a human being , but like a spirit that had come back from beyond the grave. It was an illness, he said, from which he would surely die. He called his sickness fear. “I have”, he said “no fear of pain, but only the fear of its result lose my life, and my mind, and my soul, together in some last battle with that horrible enemy: “FEAR!”

Edgar Allan Poe considered his method of describing the events in such way, that could have effect, that could impress the reader. Perhaps that’s why he chose such colors as black, dark, red blood, violent etc.

Death is emerges as a main heroine in his stories. And that’s why all his stories are called the stories of horror.

Detective stories

A critic who was capable alike of extreme partiality and extreme severity, a poet who profoundly affected the development of French verse, a master of the short story, whose “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque” are among the triumphs of romantic horror, he also launched the American detective story upon its checkered career with yarns like “ Murder in the Rue Morgue” (1843).

Edgar Poe’s three stories “The murder’s in the rue morgue”, “The Mystery of Marie Roget” (1842) and “The Purloined Letter” show how Poe’s work set the standard for the detective genre. Besides we may include here his story “The Gold Bun” which considered to be the most popular among the readers. One of the his main characters in defective stories is Duplin; The writer gave him everything that he wanted to do. He is a clever smart and talented person. He constantly trains his mind, works out his own method, which helps him to guess any mystery of course he has common features with other Edgar Poe’s detective heroes as Legran, Arthur Gordon Pim. Hance Pyall. Duplin combined all features, everything in details in mathematical accurate calculations, in order of the facts, in intuitions of an analytics who proves the hypothesis. If we compare two Poe’s stories “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter” with one of Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Dancing Men” we’ll see the heavy reliance of Sherlock Holmes, creator on the work of his predecessor Poe. Poe’s stories and protagonist have more depth than Conan Doyle’s because Holmes’ methods relies entirely on logic and Duplin relies on behavior and nuance. Investigating the murders in the Rue Morgue Duplin displays his unusual, his own method of investigation. Now, in the following passage we may see how this author describes it: “ I soon noticed a special reasoning power he had, an unusual reasoning power. Using it gave him great pleasure. He told me once, with a soft and quite laugh, that most man have windows over their hearts, through these he could see into their souls. Then he surprised me by telling what he knew about my own soul, and I found that he knew things about me that I had thought only I could possibly know, His manner at these moments was cold and distant. His eyes looked empty and far away, and his voice became high and nervous. At such times it seemed to me that I saw not just Duplin but two Duplin one who coldly put things together and another who just as coldly took them apart.[10]

“ at first I saw nothing strange in this. Duplin had agreed with me, with my own thoughts. This , of course; seemed to be quite natural. For a few seconds I continued walking, and thinking; but suddenly I realized that Duplin had agreed with something which was only a thought. I had not spoken a single word. I stopped walking and turned to my friend. “Duplin”, I said, “Duplin, this is beyond my understanding. How could you know that I was thinking of” Here I stopped, in order to test him, to learn if he really did know my unspoken thoughts.

“How did I know you were thinking of chantilly? Why do you stop? You were thinking that chantilly is too small for the plays in which he acts”.

“That is indeed what I was thinking. But tell me in Heaven’s name, the method if method there is by which you have been able to see into my soul in this matter.”

The story “The Gold Bug” is very popular among many readers. The writer himself considered it “ the Ruckiest”. The great popularity of “The Gold Bug”, marked Gervi Allen, is that there is almost absent morbid motives, which prevailed in many other works of Edgar Poe”.[11] And how Alexander Block pointed out thatin Edgar Poe’s stories there were morbid motives connected with hurting state of psychology. “The Gold Bug,” judging by its genre usually is joined the famous detective stories as “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” “The Mystery of Marie Roget” and “The Purloined letter”, the main hero of which is a detective amateur Sh. August Duplin.

The author called these stories “logical stories”, in which the power of logic and analytical wit is displayed. And this logical power is clearly described in “The Murders on the Rue Morgue”, when Duplin calculated the killer. The writer constantly made the reader to be wonder and amazed by Duplin power to think and do right conclusions. He himself was surprised “ I will not say that I was surprised. I was more than surprised, I was astonished. Duplin was right, as right as he could be. Those were in fact my thoughts, my unspoken thoughts as my mind moved from one thought to the next. But if I was astonished by this. I would soon be more that astonished.

One morning this strangely interesting man showed me once again his unusual reasoning power. We heard that an old woman had been killed by unknown persons. The killer, or the killers, had cut her head off, and escaped into the night. Who was this killer, this murderer? The police had no answer. They looked everywhere and found nothing that helped them. They did not know what to do next. And so they did nothing . But not Duplin. He knew what to do. The author shows the sympathy describing his hero. He describe him as “ an unusually interesting young man with a busy, forceful mind. This mind could, it seemed, look right through a man’s body into his soul, and uncover his deepest thoughts sometimes he seemed to be not one, but two people one who coldly put things together, and another who just as coldly took them apart”

Edgar Poe’s essay “The chess automat of Meltrel” was the first work, where Poe showed he as an infallible logic and an acute analytic over amazing the method, which later Sherlock Homes immortalized in his works

Speaking about Edgar Poe’s short stories of about his “Tales of Grotesque and Arabesque” we can’t help mentioning his fantastic stores. His fantastic stories are the model of that fact, how the comic and the serious get with inside one genre. Edgar Poe requires from his reader a little trust, a little fantasy and takes him to the world of cosmic space to the edge of the earth to the mysterious Antarctica and makes him or determine his age, or step back in order to appreciate fantastic wonders of technique of the 19th century.

“Unusual adventure of Hans Pfae” is an original ad amazement fiction, which inspired Jule Verm to create the novel “Five weeks on the air globe” The beginning and the end of the fictions make the reader enjoy himself with humor watching the smart citizen making fun of fool burgomaster and professor. The middle part of the fiction the story of Hans about traveling to the Moon is a serious and scientific adventure story with great details. As a real scientist experimentation, Pal observes his own physical state and behavior of animals, he doesn’t miss any important observation. He tells about different of atmosphere, he knows physics, mechanics, geography and astronomy.

And because of it European decadents called Edgar Poe as “Reckless Edgar”. In this story he shows an erudition of a real scientist, he does scientific prognosis and creates eh adventure such an unexpected, such a new, that it rouses great interest of the reader.


Conclusion

 


Информация о работе «Artistic peculiarities of short stories by E.A. Poe»
Раздел: Иностранный язык
Количество знаков с пробелами: 80398
Количество таблиц: 0
Количество изображений: 0

Похожие работы

Скачать
216773
0
0

ams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. His poetry is noted for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor, especially as compared to that of his contemporaries. John Donne's masculine, ingenious style is characterized by abrupt openings, paradoxes, dislocations, argumentative structure, and "conceits"--images which yoke things seemingly unlike. These features in combination with ...

Скачать
138558
0
0

... frequent use of dashes, sporadic capitalization of nouns, off-rhymes, broken metre, unconventional metaphors have contributed her reputation as one of the most innovative poets of 19th-century American literature. Later feminist critics have challenged the popular conception of the poet as a reclusive, eccentric figure, and underlined her intellectual and artistic sophistication. Emily Dickinson ...

Скачать
106400
0
0

... , Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, V.S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad, Vladimir Nabokov was Russian. PART II. WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM’S "OF HUMAN BONDAGE" AND JOSEPH CONRAD’S "LORD JIM" 2.1 The Moral Sense in Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim Lord Jim (1900), Joseph Conrad’s fourth novel, is the story of a ship which collides ...

Скачать
77873
0
1

... the remarkable words of their leader, Brewster: -- "It is not with us as with men whom small things can discourage or small discontentments cause to wish themselves at home again." 2   2.1.3 Puritan Colonies in New England The companies of settlers who followed the Pilgrims within the next few years were composed of the same sturdy, independent class of thoughtful, high-minded men. They were ...

0 комментариев


Наверх