Poes psychosomatic Turmoil - Research Paper Example

Poe’s Psychosomatic Turmoil, Traumatic Experiences and Ruptured Psychology and their Influences on his Writings Psychosomatic torments and turmoil in Allan Poe’s works are so engaging that they have always inspired readers as well as scholars to question whether the realistic facades of Poe’s works comprises his real life experiences. Indeed a thorough analysis of Poe’s writings as well as his life shows that the “ruptured psyche”, “wounded ego” and disordered personality of Poe’s characters bear comparison with his real life. The life Poe sketches in his works is fraught with terror, haunted with the fear of losing the most loved ones and the anger of being abused. Referring to the influence of Poe’s life on his writing, Marie Bonaparte says, “Most critics of Poe’s work analyze it in direct relation to his life experiences in only the most subtle way. Much of his poetry and some of his prose reflect his obsession with the death of a lover” (Bonaparte 623). Longings for the affection and love of the nearest and dearest ones were further deteriorated by the animosity of his step-father. In fact, the stepfather soon turns the inferiority-complex in Oedipal Complex. Along with these traumas, Allan Poe has experienced nightmares throughout his whole life. Instead of being afraid he soon learnt to apply the nightmarish effect in his writings, as in his book, Edgar Allan Poe, Vincent Buranelli says: He took to inspecting with meticulous exactitude his psychological states when he hovered between sleep and wakefulness, found his mind occupied with shadows of ideas “rather Psychical than intellectual,” and learned to some degree to control them. (26) In a letter to Mr. Allan (April, 1833) Poe writes about loveless bleak world where he was suffering from isolation and destitution: “Without friends, without any means, consequently, of obtaining employment, I am perishing — absolutely perishing for want of aid… For God’s sake, pity me and save me from destruction (O’Neill 7). Obviously Poe’s longings for the camaraderie and compassion of the near relatives, together with his stepfather-induced Oedipal-complex greatly help Poe to perceive the revengefulness of the inferior and to conjure up the horrible revenge character like Montressor in “the Cask of Amontillado”. Though the “Cask of Amontillado” dominantly echoes the theme of revenge, the ruptured psychological evidences such as inferiority-complex and Oedipal complex, that Allan himself has been familiar with during his lifetime behind Montressor’s revenge. Indeed these ruptured psychological complexes are evident in almost all of Poe’s characters. If his real life inferiority complex and oedipal complex exhibit through the convulsive personality disorders like alcoholism and murderous intension in “the Cask of Amontillado”, “the Black Cat”, “The Premature Burial”, “The Tell-tale Heart” etc, the losses of his loved ones and the existential void induced by these losses are vividly emergent through the necrophilic fantasies in works such as “Ligeia” and “The Raven.” But the same existential cavity in Poe’s life has helped him to create a bleak world void of love and haunted by the fear of death, revenge, injustice and a world where people are affected with hyperesthesia, hypochondria, love-sickness, hypersensitivity to humiliation, abnormally revengefulness, etc. Such bleak world is evident in “the Fall of the House of Usher”. The loss of Poe’s mother when he was at three years old, the absence of a father, the death of his consumptive wife who soon died, the antagonistic relationship with Mr. John Allan, frustration in love and the subsequent indulgence into gambling and alcoholism etc have influenced his writings in a number of complicated ways. Though specific evidences in any specific piece of work can directed referenced to a traumatic event, experience or object, the traumatic events and experiences in Poe’s life have some effects on the themes and styles of his writings. For example, “Ligeia” and “Raven” are remarkable for necrophilic fantasies, whereas “the Cask of Amontillado” reminds an astute reader of Poe’s antagonistic relationship with his foster-father since the Oedipal Complex in this story can be directly related to that relationship. Yet there is another objective evidence of Poe’s real life experience. It is the oft-repeated recurrence of “catalepsy” in stories like “The Premature Burial”, “the Fall of the House of Usher” etc. Indeed Poe himself was familiar with the “death like trance” of Jane Craig Stanard, a mother of one of his friends (Silverman 26). But the more or less common themes such as the themes of death, indomitable will to take revenge, love-sickness, inferiority complex, oedipal complex, and other psychological semi-maniacal complexes are the more subtle and complicated influences of Poe’s real life on his writing. Poe’s obsession with death has been resulted from the deaths of his two loved ones. Comprehensibly in Poe’s works, “Death” has two-fold meanings: first death is the tyrannical demon that snatches away one’s love, affection and one’s means to live. Secondly, it is the ultimate and acute penalty for a sinner. Death as a snatcher is evident in “Raven”, “Fall of the House of Usher” and “Ligeia”. In these works of Poe, the narrators are obsessed with the deaths of their loved ones, as Poe himself was preoccupied with the death of his mother and wife. For a three years old boy Poe, a consumptive mother dying beside him “was never to fade from his memory” (Bonaparte 7). The narrator’s obsession with beautiful and intelligent Ligeia who is dead now can be considered as the outcome of Poe’s obsession with his mother’s death. Regarding Poe’s obsession with death, Georges Zayed says, If death assumed such importance in Poe’s works, it is because more than others he came to know the tragic content of the word—and at a very early age. It struck several times “at his chamber door”; it took away his parents, then Mrs. Allan, his adopted mother, and Mrs. Stanard, and his brother; finally his young wife, his beloved Virginia. How could he have escaped from his obsession with it and from the terror which it instilled in him? (Zayed 93) According to Kenneth Silverman, Poe’s characters’ phantasmal yearning for their deceased lovers is essentially Poe’s lifelong sought for “motherly succor” (). For Poe, death is the melancholic opposite of love, as he says in “The Philosophy of Composition”, “the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world [and] the lips best suited for such a topic are those of a bereaved lover” (Poe). The origin of Poe’s characters’ necrophilic desire lies in Poe’s yearning for “motherly succor” that was invoked by the loss of his loved ones. Another poem “Annabel Lee” makes reference to the loss of his cousin child-bride Virginia. Referring to Poe’s obsession with the death of his loving cousin-bride, Bonaparte comments, “Virginia, throughout her short life, remained a child by the side of her maturer husband. But he, in infancy had dearly loved his beautiful ailing mother, many and many a year ago” (Bonaparte 127). Poe’s commonly cherished theme of necrophilic fantasy again comes at the conclusion of the poem “Annabel Lee”: “Andso, all the nighttide, I lie down by the side / Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride / In her sepulchre by the sea— / In her tomb by the sounding sea” (Poe, “Annabel Lee”) In Allan Poe’s works, death as the highest possible degree of punishment is more subtly associated with his real-life traumatic experiences. Since death is the cruelest demon that robbed Poe of the meaning of his life, for some of Poe’s characters horrible slow death has been used as the ultimate punishment. But the psychology to punish by burying alive originates from Poe’s inferiority that was enflamed by the animosity of his foster-father as well as the lack of emotional support from his near and dear ones. Poe was thoroughly familiar with the inferiority of complex of an orphan and with one’s wounded ego. Referring to Poe’s adamant behavior to stick to his aim while suffering from the inferiority complex, Silverman says, “In wanting to excel and to command, Edgar resembled many other orphans, in whom a feeling of nonexistence and the need to master changeable surroundings can produce a will for power.” (Silverman 25) Indeed Montressor’s wounded ego as well as inferiority is a convincing reminder of Poe’s personal life. Montressor’s adamancy to punish Fortunato greatly echoes the life struggle of Poe’s life. Montressor justifies his murder saying, "I must not only punish, but punish with impunity" (Poe 17). Here is the reflection of Montrsor’s wounded ego in his speech, “Nemo me impune lacessit" or "No one assails me with impunity" (Poe 14). In his book Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance, Kenneth Silverman points out the fact that Montresor’s motto behind the murder of Fortunato has a greater implication in the social-context of Scotland. Obviously as Womack says, "Nemo me impune lacessit" is also the national motto of Scotland”. It is not any coincidence that Allan Poe chooses the same motto in his revenge story. According to Kenneth Fortunato is the pure reflection of Poe’s foster father John Allan, as he says, “[John Allan] much resembled Fortunato in being a man 'rich, respected, admired, beloved,' interested in wines, and a member of the Masons" (Silverman 317). Also in the story, there is the touch of hatred against the aristocratic class institution. Though Montresor’s economic status has not been stated clearly any where in the story, Fortunato is described a rich, honorable and well-to-do type of man. He is more represented as an arriviste who is allowed to enjoy the privileges of an aristocrat in the context of the carnival. Montresor describes him as “a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine” (Poe 17). In this regard, Montresor’s grudge can be interpreted as the resentment of the middle class against an aristocrat, as Stuart and Susan Levine assert, “Resentment against aristocratic 'priviledge' of all kinds reached a peak in Jacksonian and post-Jacksonian America....Poe's tale is related to innumerable articles in American magazines of the period about the scandalous goings-on of continental nobility." (Levine 454, 455) In Poe’s case, “to bury alive” and “the fear to be buried alive” are associated with different meanings. Indeed an overall knowledge about the traumas of Poe’s life can help one to pursue the difference between the meanings of these two terms. When Montressor buries Fortunato alive with a horrible revengefulness, “burying alive” is to be perceived as the uttermost punishment. But like Poe in his real life, Montressor can be considered as the representative of those less fortunate people who suffers the pain and suffocation of a buried man while they are alive. On one hand, there is the sinister desire of Montresor for vengeance and on the other hand, there is the folly of pride of Fortunato. But horrible revelation of the dark inner self of Montresor seems to haunt the readers that Montresor’s grudge is so deep rooted that he takes pleasure in that “Fortunato slowly dies, the thought of his rejected opportunities of escape will sting him with unbearable regret, and as he sobers with terror, the final blow will come from the realization that his craving for the wine has led him to his doom." (Quinn 500). Therefore for Poe, the “fear to be buried alive”, as it is in “the Premature Burial”, is a type of distrust to the world that inflicted so much pain on Poe. Works Cited Buranelli, Vincent. Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1961. Bonaparte, Marie. The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Translated by John Rodker. London: Imago, 1949. Levine, Stuart and Susan, The Short Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe: An Annotated Edition. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990, 454-455 O’Neill, Edward H, ed. Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Tales and Poems. NY: Dorset Press, 1989 Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1941. 500 Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991. Zayed, Georges. The Genius of Edgar Allan Poe. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing Company, Inc., 1985. Read More