What really happened with E. Poe? Explore mistery surrounding his death (Essay Sample)

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Abstract
Edward Allen Poe is a renowned Poet and Author who lived in the early 19th century. His work is a source of inspiration to many writers who view him with great reverence. For the short time that he lived, Edward managed to produce great Poems and short stories that centered on mysticism and early versions of science fiction. His work has been lauded as the predecessor to the modern detective story literature. Such literature involves a mystery or crime that occurs. An investigator or detective then tries to find out the truth by studying and following through the events that led to the occurrence. Even though a great writer, Poe’s life was neither good nor easy. Poe’s cause of death has never been satisfactorily established.
This paper explores Edward Poe’s Life. The life of Edward Allan Poe is explored. His character and experiences are examined as his life develops. These attributes of Poe later help in getting a headway with which to investigate the reason of his death. The major hypothesis attempting to explain Edward Poe’s death are explored. They attempt to ascertain whether Poe was murdered or he drank himself to death. The main goal is to try to establish Poe’s reason of death. The paper attempts to examine the possible answer to the question on what happened to Poe. The paper also attempts to establish whether he was psychotic, depressed or mentally impaired and whether this contributed to his death.
About Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer and Poet credited as the first short-story form maker. He was into psychological horror writing, mysterious and macabre tales. He often produced haunting effects with his writings. Edward Poe had an obsession with topics related to death. This is reflected in his poems and stories, for instance in the story ‘The Premature Burial’. Most stories Poe wrote expressed abnormal states of mind constructed from a crazy obsessions. Many acknowledged writers in America and Europe are inspired by his work. The influence of his work can be seen in the writings of authors like Charles Baudelaire and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Born Edgar Poe in Massachusetts in 1809, he was the second child of actress Elizabeth Arnold Poe and actor David Poe. He had an elder brother William Henry and a younger sister, Rosalie Poe. His name may have been picked from Shakespeare’s King’s Lear, a play his parents were performing in 1809. His father, David Poe abandoned their family in 1810 and his mother passed away a year later from consumption. A successful Scottish merchant John Allan took him in. Allan dealt in various goods like tobacco, tombstones, wheat and cloth. Allan and his wife did not have any children. Poe lived with the couple in Richmond Virginia. He got the name Allan from the foster family, even though he was never formally adopted.
Poe was baptized at the Episcopal Church in 1812. He then moved to Britain with the Allan family where he attended grammar school in Irvine, Scotland, John Allan’s birthplace. There, he then studied at a boarding school in Chelsea. He later studied at the John Bransby’s Manor House at Stoke Newington, 6 km North of London. In 1820, he moved back to Virginia with the Allan couple sand served as the lieutenant of the Richmond youth honor. He later registered at the University of Virginia to study languages. At the University, Poe lost touch with his fiancée Royster and became estranged from his foster father over gambling debts at the university. Despite strict rules against gambling at the university, Poe continued to gamble and his debts increased continuously. After a year, he gave up on the University and left for Boston where he took up a job as a clerk. He then enlisted in the Army using a fake name and age, when he was unable to sustain himself. Here he wrote the book ‘Tamerlane and Other Poems’ which did not receive any substantial attention. As a young adult, his alcoholic and gambling tendencies only made matters worse. His constant deterioration and trouble with maintaining good relations with people that loved him like his foster father, his first fiancé among others showed he was a troubled man.
Poe’s work involved topics of mystery. Among the most occurring topics is premature burial. Poe took advantage of the public’s fascination with this topic. It was one of the predominant fears of the western world in the 19th century. In the Premature Burial Book, Poe makes references to occurrences that resulted in the burial of people alive. These include the Lisbon Earthquake, The plague at London, The massacre of St. Bartholomew and the stifling of a hundred and twenty three prisoners in Calcutta, India. (Edward Poe, 1981, p2). Poe also had interests in other fields like physics and Cosmology, cryptography among others. He had several writings in both contributive and critical perspectives to already existing scientific theories on cosmology. Such included his opposition to the Newtonian planetary rotation in ‘Eureka’ which also had contributions on the big bang theory. Evidently, Poe was a smart man who put his mind to paper via pen. He enabled people to imagine and conjure up mental scenarios after consuming his work.
Edward Poe lived a life of fascination with mystery, then later died under mysterious circumstances. The exact reason of his death has never been comprehensively established. His death is still shrouded under a mystery. Some of the common hypothesis that have been floated around to attempt to explain his death still contain loopholes.
Drunk himself to death
Poe’s cause of death has never been comprehensively established. However, two dominant theories exist. The first one being, he drank himself to death. All people who knew Poe knew that he had serious issues with alcoholism. He engaged in series of excessive drinking. This mostly occurred when he was depressed, for instance, during his wife Virginia’s long illness. In a letter to Maria Clemm, Poe’s Mother In law, the doctor who attended to Poe on his death bed assumed that Maria already knew that Poe had drunk himself to death. The doctor’s account stated that, when brought to the hospital, Poe was unconscious. He remained in that condition from the evening he was brought in to early next morning. When he got conscious, his limbs were shaking. He was also talking to imaginary objects on the walls. He was pale and breathed heavily to an extent that the doctors were unable to induce tranquility. This happened until the second day after admission at the hospital. The doctor then attempted to question him when he got conscious. Poe gave incoherent and unsatisfactory answers to the questions. These questions were about his family, place of residence and relatives. He even told the doctor that he had a wife in Richmond, most probably referring to Elmira Shelton. Elmira was Poe’s teenage girlfriend to whom he had gotten engaged before joining Virginia University. They met later in life when Poe’s wife Virginia had passed away and they intended to get married. Later, the doctor realized that this was not the reference Poe was making since he did not even remember when he left Richmond, or even what had happened to his clothing. (McGowan, 2013)
One detail the doctor did not include in his letter was the fact that Poe continuously called out the name ‘Reynolds’. The identity of this ‘Reynolds’ has never been deciphered. Poe was brought to the hospital without his trunk undergarment and he could not remember what happened to it. It was later recovered from a local hotel. The hat he had on did not look like his usual hat. The clothes he had on were badly fitting and soiled. These was not the way he was dressed when he left Richmond. It is a common presumption that while on a drinking spree, Poe may have sold his clothes for more alcohol. He may have also have exchanged clothes with someone else for some reason, or had been robbed of his clothing. (McGowan, 2013)
According to citations by The Baltimore Poe Society, references were also made to Poe’s letter to Maria Clemm that he was so ill, had cholera and unable to work. He was also giving up on life and was letting Clemm know that he was dying. Thus, the Baltimore Poe Society suggests that Poe may have died from complications of some illness. A nurse who attended to Poe’s wife Virginia during her illness said that she believed Poe had some sort of brain or mental ailment on account of her interaction with him. She saw a scar of a wound on Poe’s left shoulder and inquired whether he had been hurt, to which he responded yes. His head, she states, was also hurt. These accounts would later be used by scholars to reinforce the notion that these illnesses may have contributed a huge part in Poe’s death. A physician in 1996 claimed that some of Poe’s recorded symptoms indicated that he had contracted rabies and that this was the cause of his death. He also theorized that a weakened health combined with serious drinking could have easily caused his death.
Murder
Another theory that has been floated around concerning Poe’s demise has been that of murder as a result of an illegal process called ‘cooping’. Cooping was a method used to tilt an election towards a certain candidate. The day after Poe was brought to the hospital was an election day. During election season, gangs of men picked up or carried by force men from the streets. They would transport them into cellars in the slums where they would be watched, threatened, robbed, maltreated and compelled to drin...