Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is perhaps more a more critically acclaimed name than Lovecraft and despite both being considered the forefathers of modern horror literature, their writing styles are quite different. Lovecraft’s style is ‘wordy, profuse, yet capable of delivering a short sharp shock,’[1] whereas Poe’s is more poetic. Poe has a talent for bringing out the beauty present in even the direst situations. H.P. Lovecraft stated that in Poe’s work ‘we have an effect of lyrical phantasy almost narcotic in essence’[2]. It is Poe’s use of language that draws the reader into his dreamscapes so effectively, and once they are in there, he unleashes terror after terror on them. Lovecraft was a known admirer of Poe, but he is far from being the only one taken in by his poetic style, Indick says that Poe writes ‘in a florid and gorgeous tapestry of words so evocative of mood and place that in themselves they heighten the tension.’[3] With focus on two of his well-known tales, it will become apparent why Poe has gained this reputation. Like Lovecraft, there are several key themes which crop up in Poe’s works, one of which they have in common is madness, which will be explored in relation to The Black Cat[4], and much like we will see with Lovecraft, Poe wrote tales of horror relating to social fears of the time, as in his famous Masque of the Red Death[5].
Poe creates fear with the theme of realistic horror in The Masque of The Red Death, a story that personifies some of the diseases that affected his contemporary readers. However the very personification of a disease moves the story into a grey area of realism. Although the disease in the story bears a resemblance to tuberculosis, something that Poe had an ‘intimate acquaintance’[6] with having lost his mother and later his wife to the disease. Although the illness in the story is named in the title as the Red Death, Poe’s personal experiences with tuberculosis ‘surely contributed to Poe’s conceptualisation of the Red Death’[7]. However the fact that the disease was personified lifts the story out of the realms of possibility. It is worth considering that Poe’s reasons for doing so could have been to distance his story from the real tragedy that had occurred in his life. Poe’s personal experience aside, ‘plagues and pestilence have evoked fear and awe since time immemorial.’[8] (p. 1521) and this social fear provides the reader with a story that is scary no matter when it is read. Even in the 21st century, we have witnessed mass panic over SARS[9] and Swine flu[10]. Although these diseases never resulted in an epidemic in the western world, the media coverage highlighted how much of a fear disease can be.
Poe describes the process of The Red Death early on; ‘the whole seizure, progress, and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.’(p. 269) This rapid spread shows that the Red Death is much swifter in claiming life than the contemporary diseases Poe would have experienced, such as tuberculosis or a ‘severe epidemic of Yellow Fever in 1841’[11] (p. 1522), given that The Masque of The Red Death was written in 1842, the social fear of disease would still be prevalent, and by highlighting just how quickly the Red Death kills you, as well as it’s ‘much higher death rate and communicability’[12] than those contemporary diseases, the reader was forced to imagine something worse than a very real horror they had lived through.
The name of the disease itself is important to the story. The Red Death instils horror on several levels. The use of a colour before the word death instantly brings to mind thoughts of the Black Death that ravaged so much of the world’s population, instantly making The Red Death terrifying by association. The colour red itself has strong connotations with violence and blood, and this is made further evident by Poe’s descriptions, saying of the disease ‘blood was its Avatar and its seal – the redness and the horror of blood’ (p. 269), the repetition of the word blood and red, along with the capitalisation of ‘Avatar’ overload the reader with horrific imagery. This continues throughout the story, when describing the black room in Prince Prospero’s castle, the window panes are described as ‘scarlet – a deep blood colour’ (p. 270). The reinforcement of bloody imagery throughout the text maintains the tension, especially for contemporary readers who had to live with tuberculosis, like Poe himself. The story can almost be seen as a coping mechanism for Poe, allowing him to commit some of his feelings towards a disease that deprived him of ‘his mother (1811)…and his foster mother Frances Allan (1824)’[13] (p. 56). The constant repetition of red serves as a constant reminder for Poe and his readers of the blood that tuberculosis sufferers coughed up, and that ran from the mouth and nose of those inflicted with Yellow Fever.
The Red Death is undoubtedly triumphant at the conclusion of the tale. No hope is left for his readers, and they can only take comfort in the fact that it has taken the life of an evil prince. Prince Prospero is the first to succumb to the Red Death, ‘he is defeated in the quite literal face of death by giving into his own emotions of terror and hysteria.’[14] (p. 55) After his death, the remaining revellers siege upon the perpetrator of Prospero’s demise, only to find ‘which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.’ (p. 273) at this moment that the reader truly realises that the figure is the Red Death, and not just someone in disguise. As soon as the figure turns from something tangible and explainable into something the mind cannot comprehend the horror is ramped up. This relates with Freud’s theory on the Uncanny, suddenly, ‘everything that ought to have remained…hidden and secret has become visible’[15]. Often in the gothic something unexplainable is that way as soon as it enters the story, however here something completely rational is made irrational very quickly, and this contrast amplifies the terror caused by the presence in red.
One by one the remaining members of the party expire, leaving The Red Death alone. The final sentence is as chilling as it is succinct, ‘And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all’ (p. 273). Every character mentioned in the tale is now dead at the hands of this illness. Although allegorical, ‘the truth in the story is existential, not moral.’[16] The grand palace Poe described is now scattered with corpses and this would have tapped into the very real social fears of the time that an epidemic would wipe out everyone. Poe discovered in life firsthand that death will take everyone eventually, even those closest to you. He does not shy away from that fact in this story, any ray of hope is extinguished in that final sentence; a sentence that to this day provokes an emotive response.
The Black Cat is a tale that helped Poe shift the focus of the gothic narrative. Ben P. Indick claims that ‘for the first time… The weird tale would not merely provide fear for the characters of the story, but would provide the reader the greater fear of self-identification.’[17] The events of this story in print show a man clearly insane who no right minded person would empathise with. This is the genius of Poe however, as the narrator ‘glosses over the spousal abuse’[18] (p. 97), and instead focuses on the ‘hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder’ (p. 230). Yet even when the narrator commits horrific cruelty upon his cat Pluto, and later another, similar cat, there is a restraint to the way Poe describes his narrators actions. This is part of what makes The Black Cat such a chilling tale, as ‘a closed door is a continuous source of fearful suspense only so long as it remains closed.’[19] By purposefully neglecting to go into detail when describing the narrator’s crimes, Poe is forcing the reader to look inside their own psyche for an image of the events that have unfolded, making each readers individual image a picture of what terrifies them.
[1] Glennis Byron and David Punter, The Gothic, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), p. 144
[2] H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror In Literature. [Ebook] Amazon Media, Available at: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Supernatural-Horror-in-Literature-ebook/dp/B005IZD612/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334933516&sr=1-3 [20/04/2012], p. 22
[3] Ben P. Indick , ‘King and the Literary Tradition of Horror and The Supernatural’, in Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: Stephen King Updated Edition, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House, 2007), p. 8
[4] Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (London: Penguin Books, 1982), p. 223-230
[5] Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (London: Penguin Books, 1982), p. 269-73
[6] Jack Morgan, The Biology of Horror: Gothic Literature and Film (USA: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002), p. 56
[7] Ibid.
[8] Sundaram V. Ramanan and Setu K. Vora, ‘Ebola-Poe: A Modern-Day Parallel of the Red Death?’ Emerging Infectious Diseases, 8, 12 (2002), p. 1521
[9] BBC NEWS (2004) Q & A: Sars. [WWW] BBC News. Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2856735.stm [27/04/2012]
[10] BBC NEWS (2009) WHO Declares swine flu pandemic. [WWW] BBC News. Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8094655.stm [27/04/2012]
[11] Sundaram V. Ramanan and Setu K. Vora, ‘Ebola-Poe: A Modern-Day Parallel of the Red Death?’ Emerging Infectious Diseases, 8, 12 (2002), p. 1522
[12] Ibid.
[13] Patricia H. Wheat, ‘The Mask of Indifference in “The Masque of the Red Death”’. Studies in Short Fiction, 19, 1 (1982), p.56
[14] Patricia H. Wheat, ‘The Mask of Indifference in “The Masque of the Red Death”’. Studies in Short Fiction, 19, 1 (1982), p.55
[15] Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny in Art and Literature, (London: Penguin Classics, 2003), p. 4
[16] Patricia H. Wheat, ‘The Mask of Indifference in “The Masque of the Red Death”’. Studies in Short Fiction, 19, 1 (1982), p.56
[17] Ben P. Indick , ‘King and the Literary Tradition of Horror and The Supernatural’, in Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: Stephen King Updated Edition, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House, 2007), p. 7
[18] Ann V. Bliss, ‘Household Horror: Domestic Masculinity in Poe’s The Black Cat’. Explicator, 67, 2 (2009), p. 97
[19] John Edward Ames, ‘The art of terror: Tap into readers’ fears with 5 techniques for an emotionally rich story’. Writer, 123, 5 (2010), p.23
The Babysitter Murders 