Terror, death, fear, joy, happiness and humor can all affect how a person writes. Death and terror have affected the writing style of the father of short stories and terror, Edgar Allen Poe. His experiences and relationships have always in one way or another dealt with death and terror. Those relationships and experiences affected the way he wrote his extremely famous short stories and poems.
Poe’s experiences have shaped his work. One of his experiences was his four years of school in England. The headmaster if the school, which was a church, used the graveyard in all the lessons. Botany was taught using the weeds, math was taught by using the day of birth and death on the headstones and subtracting them to get the person’s age of death, and for gym they would help dig graves. This helped shape the idea of terror in his head. Although this shaped the idea of terror, his mother’s shaped the idea of death. When Poe was ages one to three, his mother preformed as an actress in the play Romeo and Juliet. Poe would see every show and every time, he would see his mother in a crypt, stabbing a knife through her heart and die. This happened eight times a week, every week for three years. While Poe’s mother’s job inspired the idea of death, the real idea for “The Raven” is from Charles Dickens. Edgar had gotten the chance to have lunch with Charles, but when he arrived it look liked Charles was about to cry. Poe asked what was wrong, and Dickens said his pet had just died from drinking paint. Poe asked what kind of pet it was, and Dickens replied saying it was a raven. Poe became intrigued with this, and thus “The Raven” was created. The experiences Edgar had shaped his writing style greatly.
The relationships Poe had also shaped his work on stories and poems. His first relation was with his mother. His mother was one of the most beautiful people in that time period. She moved from England when she was eight to be an actress. She first married when she was thirteen, bur her husband died. She remarried to David Poe, who left her when Edgar was born. While Edgar was young, she performed in Romeo and Juliet, but contracted consumption (present day tuberculosis). Just before she died, she went from looking pale and sickly to her beautiful self. After Poe’s mother was Francis Allan. After Poe’s mother died, Francis took him in and took care of him. Although he didn’t get her last name, Francis’ husband said she could let their last name be his middle name. Francis put Edgar through school, but too died of consumption while Edgar was in college. The woman who inspired his writing the most though was his wife Virginia. Virginia was Edgar’s first cousin and was ten-and-a-half when he fell in love with her. They married when she became thirteen. Poe’s career eventually took off, but Virginia contracted consumption and died at nineteen. In his grief, he wrote a poem about her. Although since Virginia wasn’t a very poetic name, the poem was called “Annabel Lee”. These relationships Poe had created the poems and short stories he wrote.
Poe’s relationships and experiences shaped his work. His relationship with Virginia created the poem “Annabel Lee”. His experience meeting Charles Dickens and learning about his pet inspired the idea for “The Raven” When someone is exposed to so much of a subject for a long time, they begin to think, and in Poe’s case write, about that subject.