Edgar Allan Poe
October 26th, 2005 by Laura Moncur in Biography
Edgar Allan Poe specialized in touching on themes entirely too horrible. As a young adult, we were forced to read The Tell-Tale Heart several times. The school system seemed to overlook the fact that he had written many other stories. Sadly, senior year, the curriculum called for The Masque of the Red Death, which is entirely too allegorical for teenagers.
They should have made us read The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar. It was a brilliant story about forestalling death using hypnosis. It shows the early American viewpoints on science and hypnosis, where they were intermingled as if both were equally valid. It’s also creepy as they come. If only they had assigned that story.
I would have also liked to read the The Cask of Amontillado before I became an adult. The petty rage and the sheer horror of the end of it is far more terrifying than The Pit and the Pendulum. Unidentified torturers are far less scary than a friend gone made with angry revenge.
I thought that I was a Poe Specialist until I played the game, The Dark Eye. It is a computer game that is based on the stories of Edgar Allan Poe starring the voice of William S. Burroughs. It is a beautiful reinactment of some of Poe’s scariest stories. You play through each story through the eyes of the villian and the victim. It’s a wonderful game to play when you’re alone home at night during a rain storm.