Common Elements in all of Edgar Allan Poes Short Stories

Edgar Allan Poe is a name that is prominent in literature as a slightly obnoxious, gruesome writer. His short stories and poems are sure to send a shiver down any reader’s spine with his vivid imagery. But if one takes the time to read all sixty-nine of his short stories, he or she would find many common elements that become slightly monotonous. Even though he uses some similar ideas, it is what separates his work as distinctly â€Å"Poe†. After dissecting each of his stories, it is intriguing to find what components he tends to repeat. The most prominent likeness of Poe’s stories is the unnamed narrator. There are only a few of his works that he actually names the speaker: â€Å"The Cask of Amontillado†, â€Å"Berenice†, and â€Å"The Facts in the Case of†¦show more content†¦21), which were her teeth. Perhaps he used it so often because it is one of the most terrifying ways to die, or maybe to express feelings of what he wanted to do to someone. If the latter is true, it would explain why hatred is in so many of his pieces. Hatred is the recurring motive for many of the crimes in Poe’s fictional stories. This motive is seen in, â€Å"William Wilson†, â€Å"The Black Cat†, â€Å"A Tell-Tale Heart†, and â€Å"The Cask of Amontillado†. In these writings, there is hatred of a cat, an eye, a man, and hatred of a doppelganger that turns out to be the narrator himself. These all show what horrible things can happen when a madman is consumed with such a powerful emotion, which seems to be Poe’s favorite driving force. Once the hatred eventually drives the narrator to murder, they have to find untraditional places to hide the bodies. In Poe’s stories, he most always has his homicidal characters conceal the corpse to keep from getting caught. In â€Å"A Tell-Tale Heart†, the narrator decides to put the old man under the floorboards. The narrator in â€Å"The Black Ca t† conceals his wife behind the plaster walls of his cellar. The killer ourang-outang in â€Å"The Murders in the Rue Morgue† shoves a young lady’s body up a chimney. â€Å"The Cask of Amontillado† ends with a proclamation about his successful burial, â€Å"for the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. Rest inShow MoreRelatedEssay on The Romantic Side of Edgar Allan Poe 1061 Words   |  5 Pagesthinking at all. Almost every movie or book nowadays has a trace of romanticism in it. Romanticism started around the 1800’s as a contradiction to rationalism. Rationalism was a thinking that attempted to use rational thinking and reason to solve the problems being faces at its time. Romanticism is basically the opposite of those thoughts. Romanticism is described as, a revolt against Rationalism that affected literature and the other arts, beginning in the late eighteenth century.(Elements of LiteratureRead MoreGothic Literature : Edgar Allan P oe928 Words   |  4 PagesSouthern Gothic), Washington Irving and the ever-so-famous Edgar Allan-Poe. 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