Edgar Allen Poe: Horror, Tragedy, And Darkness

If you have ever read any Edgar Allen Poe, you immediately get taken over by a dark, eerie feeling...
All of his writings strikingly influence much of the modern horror movies we pay money to see today, almost two hundred years later... Where did he get such graphic ideas? And what influenced him to put such soul and heart into his writings? He's a modern genius! If he was still alive, Edgar Allen Poe would be controlling Hollywood right now as a writer or a director..

So what influenced him to be a horror writer? Well, if you knew any of the history behind this man, you would know that most of his life he was actually viewed as a critic, one of the best of his time in American writing. But before all of this, he was a just a little boy when both of his parents died. He was taken in by a foster family, and went to boarding school, and by the age of 18, he decided to join the Army. (for apparently five dollars a month)?!

During his career in the army, he finds out his foster mother passes away. He gets an early discharge from the army, and continues persuing writing. Critics often said that Poe has a theme of a "death of a beatiful woman" in much of his writing, due to the fact that he often lost women he was close to in his life. Not only does that stem his roots to sadness, but we can't forget that most of his life he grew up in poverty just managing to survive. Poe has even had women that he loved leave him due to his heavy drinking and use of opium. This darkness seems to have built around him ever since he was a little kid, with the death of his parents...

Many people often called his writings 'vulgar'... Ralph Waldo Emerson apparently said to Poe's "The Raven", "I see nothing in it"... Obviously Poe's writings were meant to be written in such a way that it displeased peoples tastes, I think Poe was just trying to give the idea of how dark life really can get at certain points, and fueling his dark memories in his stories to "shock and awe" his readers. This was unheard of at the time, which, in my opinion, makes Poe a genius.