e. a. poe

Poe is kind of a one-trick pony. I had a huge man-crush for Poe in the eight grade, but I haven't read much of him since then. Turns out, he wrote the same story a hundred times.
What is the definition of insanity? Well, I heard once that it is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I don't know if he was expecting something different, but Edgar certainly repeated himself quite a bit.
It's the classic gothic love story over and over again. Boy meets girl. Boy falls for girl. Boy murders girl. Boy blames girl. Give him some credit, though. He did change it up a bit. In the "Tell-tale Heart" boy murders another boy, and boy murders a few animals in "The Black Cat" too.
And while we're on the subject of "The Black Cat," I should tie in a personal story. When I was a bit younger my family got a new kitten.

No, not like that one. She was completely black and had green eyes. As we argued over the name for a few days a white spot began to fill in on her chest. Oddly enough, it somewhat resembled a gallows. Since we could not find a suitable name within the short story, we ended up calling her Poe. Two months later she began to kill birds outside. Her first was a raven.
Anyway, Edgar has a certain fascination with the dead that I find interesting. I am not a regular opium abuser, but I know that Poe was. And I know that these kinds of people in literary history (opium addicts) often have wild opium-induced visions of some kind. Thus, I think that Poe is being taught incorrectly in classrooms. Think what kind of an effect a Dare Officer could have on children if (s)he used these short stories as propaganda: Listen kids, I know that drugs seem like something cool and rebellious to do, but if you do them then you will dismember an old man and bury his remains in the floorboards underneath you. Then when the cops show up, you will be so whacked out that you will confess your crime and then go to jail.