Five Short Stories of Edgar Allan Poe Essay - 1311 Words

Barnabà ¡s Kanik Five short stories of Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) pioneered many of the most enduring forms of American popular culture, including detective story and the Gothic or sensational tale. I will compare and contrast five short stories of Poe: The Gold-Bug, The Purloined Letter, â€Å"Thou Art the Man†, The Cask of Amontillado and The Pit and the Pendulum. The genre, the purpose and role of the narrator and the parallelism between all of the stories will be examined. The five stories can be split up into two groups by their genre: detective story and gothic horror. The detective stories are The Gold-Bug, The Purloined Letter and â€Å"Thou Art the Man†; while the Gothic horrors are The Cask of Amontillado and The†¦show more content†¦The named detectives, Chevalier Charles Auguste Dupin and Mr. William Legrand both were once wealthy, but a series of misfortunes made them lose their fortune. They live retired from the world, quite antisocially. The method, by which they solve the crimes, is called analysis by Poe: just using logic and observation to find out the truth. In The Purloined letter and The Gold-Bug the detectives have a companion, the narrator who plays the part of the listener; the man who must be enlightened about what is happening, and who thereby passes the necessary information on to the reader. He is the link between the detective and the reader, and in his inability to comprehend the meaning of the clues both fla tters the reader and shows off more brilliantly the sagacity of the detective. All three of the detective stories bring something new to the genre. The Gold-Bug is the first to use cryptography literally to solve the mystery of the treasure, The Purloined Letter shows how obvious a solution can be and â€Å"Thou Art the Man† is the first to feature a crime in which the villain is not a thug or criminal with no emotions, but the beloved friend of the victim. Also, this contains the first â€Å"red herrings†, the fake clues set by the killer to confuse the local people; furthermore this story is the first to feature a murder where the marks made by a riffle barrel are used to solve the crime. The narrator in the detective stories plays a special role, as statedShow MoreRelatedEdgar Allen Poe: Birth and Military865 Words   |  4 PagesThe story of the 19th century Romantic era poet Edgar Allen Poe is an interesting one indeed. Throughout his life he played the role of a writer of short stories, an editor and critic of all works, and poet of emotion; revolutionizing each role through his extremely pragmatic style. 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