By: Allie Kizer
I sat in slight shock, watching my petite Honors English teacher hoist herself up onto a desk at the front of the class. She hunched over, held out her arms like crooked wings, and began to recite. "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary..."
My slight obsession with Edgar Allan Poe began here, as a wee little high school Freshman. The drama with which The Raven was presented to me was fascinating. It's a story with powerful imagery that makes you wonder what kind of tragedies and hardships the author had been through; a poem with such beautiful, yet dark language and rhythm; a poem that can't simply be spoken in a monotone voice void of emotion, but one that increases in energy until the narrator is shrieking and then fading off into the sadness of the final line.
Surely, it was a bit odd for a seemingly normal teenage girl, with no particular fancy for things that are grim and bleak to immediately find a volume of Poe's work at the local library. Anyway, that's what happened, and the following weeks were spent reading anything and everything Poe.
As a child, I loved the feeling of being scared. My favorite movie as a preschooler was Jurassic park, which was considered a fairly scary one at the time, and my book choices were strictly mysteries and horror stories. The thrill of a horror story was an adrenaline rush that was incomparable to anything experienced in my daily life.
After further exploration of Poe's tales like "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Tell-tale Heart", and "The Masque of the Red Death," my fixation only grew stronger. I had come upon respected works of literature that weren't flowery romances or wilderness adventures, but ones that were dark.
Edgar Allan Poe was no stranger to tragedy, facing the deaths of many family members, objects of affection, and experiencing overall abandonment by people he loved. Poe held back none of his dark, twisted thoughts, and out of them came some of the most well known pieces of American literature.
Anti-transcendentalists, such as Poe, believed that nature was a reflection of the struggle between good and evil. Poe's work embodies the idea that a human's life is not always good. Bad things happen, and while some writers have tried to cover this fact, Poe embraced it.
This may not seem like a revolutionary idea, but when I compare it to the typical person’s worldview, I begin to realize how silly humans are. We go through life trying to be good, and thinking that if we’re good enough or lucky enough, we won’t have to deal with anything too hard. We walk through life blind to the fact that the reason we have struggles comes from us.
Poe embraced the bad things in the world, and I (in a different kind of way) do the same every day. As a Christian I realize that every pain, heartache, and tragedy is an aftereffect of the selfishness of us as humans. Our belief that we can rule our lives and get take whatever we want for ourselves is exactly what brought death to the world.
After coming to believe this, the idea of and desire to have a good, happy life with no struggle begins to seem naïve. I know that life will not always be fun, but Christ shows me that the struggle will be worth it. Though I can’t say that Poe believed the same, I am able to find truth in his writing. Poe’s works, beginning with “The Raven,” have helped me be aware that there will definitely be hard times. Yet, they push me to trust that God will be sovereign in them.
I sat in slight shock, watching my petite Honors English teacher hoist herself up onto a desk at the front of the class. She hunched over, held out her arms like crooked wings, and began to recite. "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary..."
My slight obsession with Edgar Allan Poe began here, as a wee little high school Freshman. The drama with which The Raven was presented to me was fascinating. It's a story with powerful imagery that makes you wonder what kind of tragedies and hardships the author had been through; a poem with such beautiful, yet dark language and rhythm; a poem that can't simply be spoken in a monotone voice void of emotion, but one that increases in energy until the narrator is shrieking and then fading off into the sadness of the final line.
Surely, it was a bit odd for a seemingly normal teenage girl, with no particular fancy for things that are grim and bleak to immediately find a volume of Poe's work at the local library. Anyway, that's what happened, and the following weeks were spent reading anything and everything Poe.
As a child, I loved the feeling of being scared. My favorite movie as a preschooler was Jurassic park, which was considered a fairly scary one at the time, and my book choices were strictly mysteries and horror stories. The thrill of a horror story was an adrenaline rush that was incomparable to anything experienced in my daily life.
After further exploration of Poe's tales like "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Tell-tale Heart", and "The Masque of the Red Death," my fixation only grew stronger. I had come upon respected works of literature that weren't flowery romances or wilderness adventures, but ones that were dark.
Edgar Allan Poe was no stranger to tragedy, facing the deaths of many family members, objects of affection, and experiencing overall abandonment by people he loved. Poe held back none of his dark, twisted thoughts, and out of them came some of the most well known pieces of American literature.
Anti-transcendentalists, such as Poe, believed that nature was a reflection of the struggle between good and evil. Poe's work embodies the idea that a human's life is not always good. Bad things happen, and while some writers have tried to cover this fact, Poe embraced it.
This may not seem like a revolutionary idea, but when I compare it to the typical person’s worldview, I begin to realize how silly humans are. We go through life trying to be good, and thinking that if we’re good enough or lucky enough, we won’t have to deal with anything too hard. We walk through life blind to the fact that the reason we have struggles comes from us.
Poe embraced the bad things in the world, and I (in a different kind of way) do the same every day. As a Christian I realize that every pain, heartache, and tragedy is an aftereffect of the selfishness of us as humans. Our belief that we can rule our lives and get take whatever we want for ourselves is exactly what brought death to the world.
After coming to believe this, the idea of and desire to have a good, happy life with no struggle begins to seem naïve. I know that life will not always be fun, but Christ shows me that the struggle will be worth it. Though I can’t say that Poe believed the same, I am able to find truth in his writing. Poe’s works, beginning with “The Raven,” have helped me be aware that there will definitely be hard times. Yet, they push me to trust that God will be sovereign in them.