Misfortunes In Edgar Allen Poe's Life

Edgar Allen Poe lived a sad, unhappy life. Many people he knew and loved died. He suffered through poverty his entire life and he tried to drown his sorrows with alcohol. These three unfortunate attributes of his life greatly shape many of his stories. He lived a sad life that held within it a great many misfortunes. The characters in his stories often face similar misfortune and tragedy. Had Edgar Allen Poe lived a happier life without these misfortunes, these tragedies, his writing would not have been the same dark and gloomy tales that they are today. Poe’s father left him at a young age. After that his mother soon received tuberculosis and passed away soon after. The other horrible tragedy in his life was the death of his wife Virginia, who also died of tuberculosis. His mother’s death appears briefly in the poem The Raven, where all these events occur in december, which is the month when his mother passed away, so it was likely a difficult time of year for him personally. …show more content…
He had to endure death and poverty. In his sorrow he tried to drink away his sadness. He grew addicted and soon alcohol held a tight grip on his life. He hated and loved alcohol. His Alcoholism is shown most noticeably in The Black Cat and in The Cask of Amontillado. In The Black Cat the character starts to drink and becomes violent and makes terrible decisions. This relates back to Poe’s own addiction because alcohol made him do horrible things to the people around him. In the story The Cask of Amontillado one character is being dragged down deeper into tunnels as he drinks more and more wine. In the story he is eventually walled up in the tunnels, chained and unable to escape. This is a metaphor for Poe’s alcoholism. He felt that the more he drank the worse his life became. The character being chained and walled up is a metaphor for Poe’s addiction and how he could never escape it. Poe’s death is unknown but it is most often credited to alcohol

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