For such a fan of Edgar Allan Poe, I’m woefully under-read of his works, especially his short stories. (I felt a little guilty about this when I visited the Poe Museum a few weeks ago.) So, I’m working on fixing that. Happily, my local library system is participating in The Big Read, which is a month-long event that celebrates Poe’s works. Love!
(Also, I’m very grateful for Project Gutenberg, which has rescued me from toting around my very thick, heavy volume of Poe’s collected works.)
“The Tell-Tale Heart”
I’m pretty sure this is one of Poe’s stories that I had read years before, but I read it again recently as a refresher. It’s sufficiently creepy enough to please me.
Obviously, as a Poe fan, I have a fascination with the morbid and macabre. (At least, that’s what I tell myself and how I explain my love for TV shows about true crime and other shows like Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.) What I really like about Poe’s writing, and “The Tell-Tale Heart” in particular, is that he uses the narrative so effectively as to draw me right into the head of a crazy person. And I think it’s safe to say that the narrator of this story fits that description perfectly.
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“The Masque of the Red Death”
I enjoyed this story, but didn’t love it completely. The ending seems a bit rushed and I wish that Prince Prospero were in the story more, rather than the narrative being built up around him. Also, I thought it was curious that Poe devoted so much time to describing the surroundings (especially the colors of the various rooms), but not so much attention for the climax of the story.
However, the description of the Red Death pretty much freaked me out. I have all kinds of phobias related to the body, and the very idea of bleeding out of one’s pores makes me shudder. (And typing those words just now makes me shudder!) A good Poe story, but not my favorite.
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“The Black Cat”
Creepy, creepy story. Very similar to “The Tell-Tale Heart,” it involves a narrator who flies off the handle one day (quite literally) and commits a murder, only to have his conscience eat away at him thereafter. Unlike the former story, though, the protagonist of “The Black Cat” is very quick to blame his lunacy on the demon of alcohol. There are bits of this story that are pretty difficult to read–if you’re an animal lover, you’ll no doubt cringe during some parts. (I know I did.) But the ending is certainly worth it.
