Madness in Various Poe Works Essay

And much of Madness and more of Sin

And Horror the Soul of the Plot.

To what extent does your reading of Poes other worlds reflect this view? Make detailed reference to any three pieces of writing.

Poes other worlds are many-a-time those created in the human mind with the let the heart rule the head principle as their foundation block. Such worlds are created by the human mind as avenues not always of escape from reality, but also as pathways to deal with indescribable emotions and ideas, unspeakable suffering, torture and pain, unfathomable fear and anxiety that cannot be put into words, and so forth, all of which are highly illogical and likely to render one completely insane if attempted to externalize and deal with in the real world. Ironically, however, most of the characters in these other worlds that Poe creates try to reason out their various situations in an attempt to make sense of them, but of course, they usually fail to do so or if they do seemingly manage to come to a conclusion, it is often a rather unbelievable and impossible one. In that sense, Poe creates worlds within worlds the world of the mind of the character within the characters world within the world of our mind within the real world and this contributes greatly to the Madness and Horror of Poes works as we find ourselves being dragged deeper and deeper into a neverending abyss of the unknown, the uncanny and the impossible. With regards to Sin, many of Poes works are filled with torment, regret, loss, alienation, darkness, dread, brutality, etcetera and all this concocts up a great sense of guilt in at least one of the characters as well as a sense of being in the presence of something or someone evil, thus linking the various plots back to Sin. As such, in my opinion, Poes other worlds reflect the above given view extensively. For the purposes of this essay, three short stories from Poe will be looked at The Fall of the House of Usher, The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Pit and the Pendulum.

In The Fall of the House of Usher, much of Madness is firstly found in the Usher siblings A settled apathy, a gradual wasting of the person, and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical character, were the unusual diagnosis. of Madeline Usher, and as Madelines condition continued to significantly deteriorate to a point of demise, the narrator notes that so does Roderick Ushers physiological, psychological and emotional state. Two techniques here are used to bring out such Madness. Firstly, irony is found in Madelines diagnosis as despite it being a rational attempt to figure out her disease, the resulting one-liner still remains unusual and highly obscure we are given no clues as to where such apathy come from, how and why she is undergoing such a wasting, and neither do we know what this cataleptical character is and the only possible thing we can truly conclude is that Madeline has become lost in her own realm of Madness, which is, in itself not much of a conclusion at all. Note that towards the end, the narrator also attempts to use reason to calm Roderick and explain the strange phenomena surrounding the house and them, but also fails as all the terrors he (Roderick) had anticipated do indeed come true. Secondly, a double mirroring effect is shown here, with Madelines condition being reflected through Rodericks acute bodily illness of a mental disorder that oppressed him and his deteriorating state, and such a state being reflected in the narrator himself as he increasingly becomes submerged in the Ushers world of Madness. The entire plot hints at more of Sin, with the narrators travelling back to the place of his boyhood possibly implying a dark and distant past which haunts him, the images of death repeatedly found throughout the story especially the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of the mental existence of invalid which possibly point to the death of the Soul through Sin and hence all that is good, and at the end, Madeline, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, suggesting an incestuous relationship and tainted love. Horror is of course evident in the plot, from the very start at which the narrator arrives at the house to his leaving and the houses collapse, there is an atmosphere of peculiar gloom, sorrow and melancholy that enshrouds the entire plot in eerie darkness in which nothing is clear and everything is unknown. The setting is typically Gothic in nature, with extensive decay, encrimsoned light, gray walls and turrets, ghastly and appropriate splendour, numerous vaults etcetera. The characters that the narrator meets themselves appear to embody such Horror the servant and valet serve him with a dark silence, the family physician made this silence more ominous with his mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity and accosted me (the narrator) with trepidation and passed on, the lengthy description of Roderick remarkably resembles that of a vampire and a bounden slave to an anomalous species of terror, and finally, Madelines fleeting initial entrance distinctly reminds us of that of a ghost, and at the end, when she escapes her coffin and attacks her brother, really appears to be. In The Fall of the House of Usher therefore, the given view regarding Madness, Sin and Horror is indeed present to a large extent in this other world Poe has created which is far from logical and even further from reality. As Roderick Usher himself states, I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR.

The Madness in The Murders in the Rue Morgue begins at the very start with the narrator giving a lengthy discussion on what analysis really is. Such persistence in describing and contemplating one word reflects the complexity and depth of the human mind from which it came. Here again we get that sense of a different realm at work and that it was by some sudden mysterious spur of inspiration and clarity that evoked such thoughts and words from the narrator, which leads to the idea that in a moment of Madness, a clearer realization might be altogether formed, which in itself a mad notion, but which forms the basis to this detective story upon personally inspecting the crime scene of the murders, Dupin becomes immersed in the Madness of his own rapidly churning thoughts and eventually places the pieces of the puzzle together and solves the crime. Madness and Horror intertwine to exist in the brutal murders of Madame LEspanaye (found nearly decapitated) and her daughter (strangled to death by manual strength, and thrust up a chimney, head downwards) which had no definable motive whatsoever The gold was abandoned. and the two victims lived an exceedingly retired life saw no one seldom went out and hence probably did not make enemies making it utterly horrifying that someone or something could kill just for the sake of killing or due to a sudden peak in emotions, that is, in a moment of Madness. Ironically here again, despite all the logical deductions that Dupin makes and all the analysis he undertakes, the resultant conclusion, that an Ourang-Outang of the East Indian Islands brought into Paris by a sailor, belonging to a Maltese vessel was the murderer, still remains rather unbelievable and complete Madness. Horror comes into play at the thought that just like the Ourang-Outang, we are all capable of descending back into our animal roots and of killing another in a fit of Madness. It is even more chilling to see that Dupin is able to think and understand the inner-mind workings of the Ourang-Outang and is the beasts sane and rational human double the Jekyll to its Hyde, that the narrator is Dupins inevitable double as he comes to understand and appreciate the Dupins behaviour and how he works and thus begins to do similarly (refer back to his lengthy and heavy discussion on analysis), and that we as readers are actually doubles of who they all are as we are able to identify ourselves with all three characters as we undergo the same thought processes and feelings as they do, albeit at different stages in our lives the Ourang-Outang is representative of the times we lose ourselves to Madness and Sin and are intensely overwhelmed by emotions such that we lose all sense of rationality, the narrator represents the normal us, and Dupin represents those rare times where we become extremely calm, sane, rational and even sentient. Sin is of course found in brutality of the murders, which is the cornerstone to the whole plot, that be it due to Madness or not, it is not for us to take anothers life and that the thought of the act itself is Horror to all. We as readers again see that in The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Poes other world of mind-play bases itself on the given view.

In The Pit and the Pendulum, Madness comes from the extreme Horror that exists from start to end in the plot. As in The Fall of the House of Usher, a sense of being lost in darkness and therefore not knowing what such darkness will bring with it, is one of the tools used by Poe to create a sense of the fear of the unknown and the unexpected. As the narrator reflects back on his trial, images such as meaningless spectres, tall candles sank into nothingness, the blackness of darkness supervened, Hades and night were the universe seem yet again to create an abyss of the unknown or a place where the real laws of time and space hold no weight, and of course, the narrators trial and his descent of the soul into Hades implies that Sin, perceived or real, plays an important role in the story as it is what got him imprisoned and tortured, of which the narrator felt was madness the madness of a memory which busies itself among forbidden things. The Horror continues in the various ways the narrator is tormented in his cell; the blinding darkness that caused him to lose all sense of direction and real space its (the cells) size I had greatly mistaken, the circular pit in which he had managed not to fall into by a stroke of good luck, the hideous and repulsive devices...figures of fiends in aspects of menace, with skeleton forms, and other more really fearful images, the intolerable thirst, the enormous rats, the ever-descending razor-sharp pendulum while he lay strapped to a species of low framework of wood, the startling and most intense brilliancy of the walls after he escaped, and lastly the closing walls of the lozenge that the cell transformed into. The Horror above described is probably the worst kind out of the three short stories as it is completely unpredictable and each time the narrator thinks he has escaped, he is placed in a worse situation in other words, his tormentors, the Inquisition, toys repeatedly with his mind and emotions in a repeated game of catch-and-release, all of which intensifies the Madness the narrator undergoes terribly. Here, the pit could be symbolic of a total loss of sanity and of the human soul the narrator describes it himself as an abyss and upon looking into it, Oh! for a voice to speak! oh! horror! oh! any horror but this! and wishes for any death but that of the pit!, which sees similarities between him and Roderick Usher, whose greatest fear is also similar to that of this narrators. Ironically again, we see that the narrator attempts to put the Madness and Horror he experiences into perspective by using rational thought, from his stumbling about around the dark dungeon to try to measure its size to his using of logic to attract the rats to bite off his restrains, but in the end, it is not any of these that saves him but the French army had entered Toledo, resulting in the Inquisition being in the hands of its enemies, which is really Madness due to such an invasion being sudden, timely, miraculous and altogether rather unbelievable; in other words, Madness saves him from Madness (something similar to The Murders in the Rue Morgue where Dupins profound sense of clarity comes really from the Madness in his complex mind and leads to the solving of the Madness in the brutal murders committed). Sin, besides playing the important role of putting the narrator in his prison in the first place, also serves as to bring out the fact that whether for supposedly religious purposes or punishment or whatever else, torment and torture of another human being and of the soul is in itself one gargantuan Sin and is far worse than any Sin that might have been committed by the said offender. From the above, it is again seen that Poes other worlds do depict the given view to a great extent.

Also note that for all three short stories detailed above, the concept of worlds within worlds applies throughout. In The Fall of the House of Usher, the nightmare world of The Haunted Palace exists within Rodericks mind, Roderick exists within the nightmare world of the House of Usher, all of which exists in the narrators mind (the liminal world in this case a nightmarish dreamscape) just before he falls asleep, symbolised by the demise of both Ushers and the collapse of their house, and the narrator exists in the real world, our world. In The Murders of the Rue Morgue, the illogical and irrational world exists in the mind of the Ourang-Outang and is made real in its brutal murdering of two innocent lives, and this world is also existent in Dupins mind (as he is able to understand the Ourang-Outang) but is really intricately woven into the much bigger, complex universe in his mind that seems at times almost sentient and sage-like, and Dupins world also becomes part of the narrators world as he embraces it, and all these worlds of minds exist in a foreign world and time, Paris in the 1800s, to us readers. Lastly, in The Pit and the Pendulum, the narrators world of Madness is present both in his mind and in the seemingly real world of the past, and both worlds are part of the history that forms our world today. Note also that the narration of all the above three short stories are in first-person and that the narrators are anonymous, seemingly normal and rational people who become enshrouded in worlds of Madness, Sin and Horror. Such a concept of worlds within worlds and such narrative techniques used to convey it brings chills to the reader as we suddenly realise that all the narrators can be representative of us here in the real world and that we can easily be the obscure Is in each of the stories or doubles of them, and so to our extreme Horror, we discover that Madness and Sin exist in our lives, albeit more subtly perhaps, just as much as they exist in all of Poes other worlds. Therefore in reading Poe, there is truly:

And much of Madness and more of Sin

And Horror the Soul of the Plot.