Paper Summary:

This paper discusses Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Black Cat," "The Premature Burial", and "The Fall of the House of Usher." It explains how a strange, unnerving familiarity with the characters and situations can be sensed, which allows the reader to subconsciously relate to the macabre experiences and thoughts of the main protagonists.

From the Paper:

"Yet unlike a good number of his American contemporaries, such as Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne, Poe was the penultimate stylist, due to his unconventional approach to subject matter and themes as found in his "tales of terror" which for the most part focus on the bizarre and the unexpected. Also, his various characterizations, such as the "old man" in "The Tell-Tale Heart" and the unidentified protagonist in "The Black Cat," are the result of his theory of literary creation which revolves around two specific points--first, every word and phrase is directed towards a single effect, and second, the use of this single effect must reflect "a vision of truth and the essential condition of human existence and a certain psychological intensity" (Gale Biographical Studies, 2). As Poe himself so acutely declares, "In the whole composition, there should be no word written of which the tendency. . . is not to the one pre-established design" (Magill, Critical Survey, 478)."

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