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Common Fears In Edgar Allen Poe's Stories

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Poe uses psychology within his stories to evoke all emotions, but he is particularly good at causing fear. There are many examples of him doing this and I am going to share a few of them with you. I have chosen three stories to point out how he uses our most common fears to make us tick. These are, The Tell Tale Heart, The Pit and the Pendulum, and The Masque of Red Death.

In the Tell Tale Heart Poe there were many points where fear took over your mind as a reader because you could imagine what the characters felt. When the Old Man in the story hears a sound at night. He doesn’t know what it is so he is left to try and calm himself. As the narrator says in the story “His fears had ever since been growing upon him. He had tried to fancy …show more content…

This story is absolutely terrifying because it includes the fear of being helpless. This is a common fears. When the man is strapped underneath the giant pendulum that slowly lowers. He can do nothing but face his fate to be cut multiple times by the swinging razor until he is dead. Another fear that this story represented was the fear of the dark. The soldier is trapped in a dark dungeon where he can’t see. He thinks he is blind but really there is just know light. He can’t see what is around him, and must rely on his other senses. Most people had a fear of the dark when they were little or even now. This story brings you back to some of your earliest fears and makes them even scarier.

The final story I have chosen is the Masque of Red Death. Not only does this obviously bring forward the fear of disease, but it also talks about the fear of being trapped. All of the guests are having a wonderful time safe from the outside world, but the red death still finds his way in. This is even worse now that they have locked themselves into the castle. They are now trapped with a highly contagious disease that is deadly and can not be destroyed. They thought they were invincible in their castle and that their wealth would protect them but they soon learned that disease knows no

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