turin
turin’s teacher
American Literature
4/24/2012
The Timeless Work of Poe and The Darkness in Us All
	Poe’s stories portray violent events of all different types. The one thing they all have in common is the underlying message they all convey: The darkness in the world and in humanity is what is truly frightening. Poe shows the reader horrific violence inflicted by a human, and makes the reader wonder what force is driving these acts.
	On page fifteen ninety-four Poe writes, “One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him; when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body…” This is the exact darkness that inhabits us all. His ‘soul’ leaves his body and something else possesses him to commit this evil and violent act against the animal, which the reader witnesses in the next few lines.  He is no longer himself, earlier in the book he speaks of loving animals and his wife. He paints a picture where no reader could imagine him perpetrating these evils acts he is soon to commit. Poe continues to tell the reader, “; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fiber of my frame. I took from my waistcoat-pocket a penknife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket!” At first we the reader would like to blame this violence on the alcohol, which is unfair; no person asked or commanded him to take the drink. He took it of his own free will. With his free will he also sliced the cat’s eye from it’s socket. He is saying that all humans, even though they have free will, also have darkness in them, darkness that compels them to commit atrocious acts that shock and terrify humanity, even though humanity is where the darkness stemmed.
	Poe’s gothic fiction is timeless and will forever scare audiences. The violence is not what is terrifying. Modern readers will scoff at the violence portrayed in his writings. They can and probably have seen much worse on cable television. Violence might have been what shocked reader’s in Poe’s day, but now that is not the case. What is truly scares audiences now and will forever more is the thought of a human being capable of such acts, not the actual act. Darkness looms in humans to commit genocide, murders, and rapes, that is what will frighten readers to come. This will never grow old either, for that is one realization that every human has to come to in their life time.
	In conclusion, Poe’s works talk about the supernatural darkness in humans. It is not the violence that humans commit that is scary, it is the fact that they can and do have something driving them to commit this darkness, and that will forever be horrifying.