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REASONS FOR OVER INTERPPUTATION
In the Webster's Desk Dictionary sanity is simply stated as soundness of mind or judgment. Now the real question here is what does this mean? To simply say that sanity is soundness of mind means that you have a knowledgeable idea of what a sound mind is suppose to be. Who are we to judge the soundness of another mind, and furthermore are we the insane one because we don't perceive things as an accused insane person. To state that a sound mind is based on judgment leads to the same question all over again. The real question with judgment should of course be what causes you to judge things in certain ways and at certain times?
Now, what this has to do with literature is this; do our definitions and analysis of what makes someone "insane" have a place in literature? Do the methods and ideas of modern psychology automatically enter our thoughts when we read? To understand why we question the notion of sanity we must see where we began to question it.
To understand why modern psychology affects us we must first see where our ideas come from. The most influential person, who really got the ball rolling, is of course Sigmund Freud. To give an idea of Freud's actual popularity in American culture, he was just named #14 on the VH1 top 00 pop culture icons of all time. It was his views on what he calls the "libido" that mostly concern us. Freud believes every human possess a "libido", and it is this energy within humans that is directed towards happiness. What this has to do with the works of Poe is this; "Many of the acts that bring pleasure, however, cause conflict as well". A main point that Freud brings up is revenge. People commit the act of revenge to relieve anger. Later on I will explain and give representations of this in Poe's work. Other ideas that concern Freud's literature are his art of questioning everything. The reason why this method of Freud is imperative to literature is how it negatively affects the way we read. We look for answers beyond what an author gives us. Just like in the movies and television, if it's not given to you then it will not be there. An author gives you all the information you need to know and understand the story.
Now, what does all this have to do with Poe? The fact of the matter is, this has everything to do with how people of this day and age except Poe's writings. People now have a problem with the fact that most of Poe's stories begin after the story has started. The revenge or anger one character has for another is already there. We jump in at a point where a character is already in the midst of there revenge, there pain, and there hatred for another. Poe, a man who was alive before the age of psycho analysis was completely justified for someone to just be "insane". In fact Poe plays with the reader by making you think as though a character is not insane. Maybe a character has a reason for why they do what they do. The tools Poe uses to trick us vary with every story. I will now show some of these tools and how they are represented in Poe's writings.
APPLICATIONS OF POE
The stories of Poe that I will be primarily focusing on are, "The Tell Tale Heart", "The Cask of Amontillado", "The Pit and the Pendulum", and "The Raven". I feel as though since these are arguably his most famous pieces that these would be the ones that are most likely to be analyzed for more then they are.
THE ANTI-HERO
The first of Poe's tools that I will be discussing is his use of the idea of the anti-hero. All of the ideas and interpretations are my own opinions. I will try to give them in the way of examples and possibilities and not as actuality.
In the story "The Tell Tale Heart", we are asked to accept that a gentlemen's sanity as been changed by the grotesque eye of an old man. The reason why this man maybe looked at as an anti-hero depends on interpretations. We the reader cannot except that this is the reason why this man wants to kill the old man. A possible way to look at this is to look at the old man. People will look at this story and come to conclusions that they are not present in the writings. The reader will have the old man become something he is not such as a father figure. Is it the ever watching eye of his father that drives the man insane? Does the man become a "hero" of sorts by getting revenge on a bad parent? Since Poe does not say he cannot be looked at as anything. The idea of the man being a parent comes straight from the ideas of psycho analysis that come later in history. The reader will use there own experiences and put themselves into the shoes of the character as if they were in this situation.
The next story that really, truly gives you the sense of an anti-hero is, "The Cask of Amontillado". Now here we have a story of a man walking another man to his eventual death. Throughout the story the reader is forced by Poe to feel detest for the eventual murderer. I mean all that Poe gives us is a man that for whatever reason has a want to kill Fortunato. The sense of the anti-hero comes from a part of there conversation while walking to Fortunato's eventual death. The conversation comes when Fortunato thinks that Montressors is a mason. The main line of this conversation that gives an impression that Fortunato is throwing it in Montresors face is that he is not a mason, which comes when Fortunato says, "You? Impossible! A Mason?" It's almost as if Montressors is an outcast, someone who is not expected by the regular crowd. Now all we know that in this day and age that people who are not of the "in" crowd will act out with great vengeance against those who they feel have wronged them. Another feeling the reader gets from the anti-hero approach comes from Fortunato's hobby he is a connoisseur of wine. He takes prides in this can also be attributed to his death. Since pride is one of the seven deadly sins it is completely acceptable for a man to be killed because of how proud he is, since it is not a desirable trait in the eyes of God.
The next story of use for the idea of the anti-hero comes in "The Pit and The Pendulum". Now this story does not start off giving the reader the sense that the character can be any kind of hero. In fact you get the idea that this man is being punished for crimes he has committed. The man is constantly referring to his captures as "Judges", he even states, "The condemned to death, I knew, usually perished at the auto-da-fe, and once had been held on the very night of the day of my trial". Now with all that said where does the idea of the anti-hero come into play? The answer is at the very end of the story when the man is rescued out of his dark hell. We find that this man is a soldier being held by his enemies, in the Taledo dungeon. Throughout the story the man randomly brings up Taledo but up until this point he is not exactly sure where he is. The reason why this helps in his being anti-hero is because he is a soldier, a soldier that is being held for his crimes against the other army. As bad as we are brought to feel for this man the idea that he is completely innocent is never brought up. His actions may have made him a hero to some of the people of the other army. Look at the acts of murder and torture to the people that have lost loved ones.
Now we find the anti-hero in "The Raven", it really takes some looking. This of course being Poe's most famous poem, and possibly his most famous writing. This poem is of a man who has suffered the loss of his precious Lenore. We never find out how he has lost her be it through death of her leaving him but, it's also not really important. What is important is how the man is dealing with his pain. He seems to imprison himself within his studies, to drown out his pain and despair. Now where does the anti-hero come into play? Well I believe the answer is the raven itself. Here you have a man that only wants to cry of his loss, and then comes this raven who seems to tell him there is no point in all this despair. The raven does this by simply stating "nevermore". It's as if the raven was sent to rub it in that Lenore is "nevermore". Since ravens are considered by some to be demon birds it is very easy to interpret the raven as a bringer of bad news. The anti-hero ness of the raven is the fact that the man is trying to hold onto his lost Lenore but, the raven won't let him.
These are of course just a few examples of possible anti-heroism in Poe's work. Since the reason for the characters anger, revenge, pain, despair, or what ever there problems are not addressed by Poe. The idea of the anti-hero can not exist. Yes, it is a possibility that a character is an anti-hero; but since the reasons for a character acting a particular way are not normally given in Poe's work it is the reader who creates this persona. The anti-hero is of course just one of Poe's possible tools he uses in his writings.
SYMBOLISM
The second important tool of Poe's that I am covering, is a tool used by all writers at some point in there works. It is the important tool of symbolism. Poe uses quite often throughout his stories. The following are examples of some symbols used in Poe's work.
The first symbol might be his famous; it is the "eye" in "the Tell Tale Heart". When the story begins we read the obsession that the narrator had with the eye. The eye seems to take on a life of its own throughout the beginning of the story. The description that most interested me the most is when the narrator said, "He had the eye of a vulture". Now when we think of the eye as being a vulture eye the eye starts to mean new things. It does not have to mean anything in literature. When we think of a vulture eye we think of an eye that can find death and comes to pick at it. This might be where the idea of the old man being a parent figure comes from. Also earlier in the story the man seems to change the characteristics of the eye. He changes it from a vulture eye to an evil eye. In society today the idea of an evil eye can mean many things. Usually it references to superstitions that people have an evil eye, in this story the evil eye tares into the soul of the narrator. It gets so bad that he must kill the old man. The interesting thought of this and what really makes the eye seem like a character is its own facts that if the eye is closed the narrator can not kill the old man. The symbolism of the eye is never really answered. Poe seems to tell us that whatever the eye means to the narrator is not imperative, what is imperative is that it is a trigger. It symbolizes whatever the narrator needs it to in order to become insane.
The next symbol is an obvious one that is given to the reader. It is the Montressors coat of arms. It is described as "A huge human foot d or, in a field azure the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel". This is pretty much a summary of the whole story. Montressors is of course the snake, and Fortunato is the foot. The reader does not know why Fortunato is the foot, or how he has stepped on Montressors, who takes on the form of the snake. From the little information we get from Fortunato we begin to jump to conclusions as to why Montressor wants to kill him. In this description of the shield we try to give Montressor the benefit of the doubt that he has been wrong. In actuality it is just Poe drawing a picture of the story and seems to use it more to symbolize Montressor, rather then accuse Fortunato.
The final symbol of importance is something that has already been discussed. It is the raven from Poe's most famous piece of poetry. It is modern day meanings of the raven that seem to make it just as important a character as the man, in the poem. The raven takes on this image of a demon bird. This is a very acceptable notion in today's society. Yes, the bird only seems to bring despair to the man, but its intentions are never mentioned. As stated earlier the bird can also be an anti-hero, bringing despair but, also bringing closure. Just like everything else through Poe gives no reason for the bird at all. Its true meaning is obviously not important to the poem.
Throughout all of literature symbolism is probably the most used analytical tool. What's interesting about Poe's use of symbolism in his stories is how it leads us to our own conclusions. We use our ideas and methods of psychology that we have learned to over analyze what we think certain symbols mean. We associate these symbols with our own experiences and try to apply them to the situations presented in various stories. Poe's symbolism seems to be a way for him to try and summarize a character or circumstance through clever metaphors, and to bring some color to his dark work.
USE OF THE SENSES
The third tool of Poe's that is important to how we understand his characters is his use of the senses. This is imperative because the perception of the various characters helps us in deciding if a character is sane or not. We can misread senses because of our own experiences and ideas of what certain senses have to do with certain situations.
In "The Tell Tale Heart", we are informed of the characters senses immediately. The narrator says this right away, "The disease had sharpened my senses not destroyed, not dulled them". The sense that is important to the reader for the story is his sense of hearing. It is this sense that in the long run finally gives us the impression that the man is actually insane the whole time. It is also what gets him caught by the police. This is important because up until the end when he hears the dead old mans heart beating, Poe does not make the man appear insane. It is the reader who uses there ideas pf sanity to judge the man up until the point Poe makes it obvious.
The other story that really exploits the senses for added feelings of despair is "The Pit and the Pendulum". Throughout the beginning of this story Poe takes away the mans sense of site and automatically we feel as though he is imprisoned and as humans we feel like no man should be kept in utter darkness. This already makes the man seem innocent, even though we do not know why he's there. My favorite lines that the man says are "the tumultuous motion of my heart and in my ears the sound of its beating". Then again sound, motion, and touch-a-tingling sensation pervaded my frame". To me these lines bring the characters pain onto the reader and we begin to feel bad and use this as a reason for his innocence. We associate despair with pain and then we use that to judge the character.
Poe's use of the senses in his stories and poems are amazing. He takes you and makes you feel the pain, despair, or torment of his characters. It is this that makes us read more into his stories then what is really there. We use these graphic descriptions of the senses to throw ourselves into the characters shoes. When this happens our experiences take over and we begin to view things in an altered state.
USE OF THE SOUL
The final tool of Poe's many tools that I will be covering is his use of the soul in his stories. This will be a general overview of his use of the soul since it is used but not harped upon throughout the story. It is mentioned in almost all his stories and that is what makes it important.
In Poe's stories the soul seems to take on a life of its own. In "The Tell Tale Heart", the narrators soul is being tormented by the old mans eye. In "The Pit and The Pendulum", the man speaks as if he loses his soul. He speaks of how motion and sound come back to his soul giving it some life again. In "The Raven", the man's soul is in the greatest despair possible because of his lost of Lenore.
In Poe's works the soul seems to be the equivalent to life. When the soul is felt to be attacked, the characters act as they see fit to repair it. We think of our interpretations of the soul and imaging how we would feel if our soul is tormented. It is almost an excuse for some of Poe's characters.
CONCLUSION
As a person involved with Television and Film I understand the importance of reading what is there. In society today it is hard not to apply all things you know to any topic especially when you have a topic as broad as psychology. It seems as though the best thing Poe had going for him was when he wrote the formal psychoanalysis did not exist.
Since Freud we assume that things mean more then what is in front of us. We see throughout time that madness is only what is in front of us and not that of the majority. I believe Emily Dickinson puts it best in her poem numbered 44 when she writes
"Much sense the Starkest Madness
‘Tis the Majority
In this, as All prevail"
As much as I hate Dickinson she has a good point. We apply what general society does and assume anything different is insane.
In this paper I feel I have given good representations of Poe's tools. The tools help to show how peoples views of psychology about certain subjects can affect the way we read. It makes us forget that only what's on the page is what's really there.
Bibliography
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THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE
PLATT AND MUNK PUBLISHING;
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THE GREAT WRITERS COLLECTION EDGAR ALLAN POE
THE HARCOURT PRESS; J.KAGAN & M.SEGAL
FORT WORTH, TEXAS;15
PSYCHOLOGY AN INTRODUCTION
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NY, NEW YORK;18
WEBSTER'S DESK DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
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