Manuscript found in a bottle
Ligia
The Fall of the House of Usher
William Wilson
A person in a crowd
Fall into the whirlpool
Oval portrait
The Masque of the Red Death
pit and plummet
Heart of Betrayal
black cat
The Stolen Letter
Amontillado Cask
Jumping Frogs, or Eight Chained Orangutans

Commentary on the work
Author's chronology

Taboo-crossing incidents caused by madness and deviance,
A self-confessional story exposing the dark and evil conscience of human beings.

The protagonists in Edgar Allan Poe's short stories are often abnormally sensitive, plagued by destructive impulses that eventually lead them to lose control.
Their psychology reveals the irrational, violent, and unscrupulous side of ordinary human beings, hidden beneath their moral and gentle characteristics.
This, which Poe himself called “the psychology of arrival,” is the most fundamental theme that runs through his novels.

"The Black Cat," one of Poe's representative short stories, depicts a horrific story brought about by madness and deviance.
The protagonist of this novel has been a warm and humane person who loves animals since childhood, but as the years go by, he becomes a slave to the devil called alcohol and develops a violent and impulsive personality.
He had a black cat that he raised with great care, but for reasons he couldn't understand, he gradually came to hate the cat and eventually committed the heinous act of gouging out one of its eyes with a knife.
But the evil deeds don't stop there, and they head towards the worst ending.


One morning, I was so cool and calm that I put a noose around his neck and hung him from a tree branch.
When I hung up like that, tears flowed from my eyes without stopping, and my heart was filled with regret and was infinitely sorrowful.
I hung the beast because I knew it loved me terribly, because it had done me no wrong.
- From "Black Cat"

"William Wilson" depicts the psychological turmoil of a man with a mysterious friend who interferes with his every move and will.
He too hates his opponent and ends up killing him, but soon realizes that the opponent was none other than a product of his own conscience.
This passage suggests that evil emotions can destroy oneself not only externally but also internally.


In "The Cask of Amontillado," the narrator devises an elaborate plan to murder a vain friend, and the protagonist of "Heart of Betrayal" also plans to kill the old man who cares for him out of fear of his blue eyes, but fails in his dream of the perfect crime.
The speakers in these works are commonly swayed by impulsive emotions, but their plans to carry them out are extremely rational and meticulous.
The speaker is often obsessive and persistent, rationalizing his extreme actions with only flimsy or arbitrary justifications, but ultimately suffering from a split personality.
These works vividly reveal the complexity of the human mind, which inevitably crosses the boundaries between reason and irrationality.

Rethinking the rational worldview through fantastic and bizarre experiences

Edgar Allan Poe's narrators often experience strange and fantastic events that cannot be explained rationally.
And by vividly describing the experience without mentioning the exact date or background, he makes the reader feel as if it really happened.
These short stories, written with grotesque materials and imagination, earned Poe the reputation of being the "ancestor of fantasy horror literature," and his motifs have served as a source of inspiration for countless writers and artists.


"The Fall of the House of Usher" is one of Edgar Allan Poe's representative works of fantasy literature.
The protagonist, who visits the mansion of his friend Usher, who suffers from mental and physical pain, at his request, begins to realize the connection between the mansion's strange atmosphere and the person who lives there.
Usher's twin sister dies of illness, and Usher, who places her in a coffin and buries her in the basement, suffers from pain and eventually, along with the Usher siblings, the Usher family's mansion collapses.


He (omitted) was obsessed with peculiar, almost superstitious ideas about his own house.
(Omitted) According to him, the simple fact that he had lived in the mansion that had been passed down through generations for a long time had an influence on his mind in terms of its form and content.
- From "The Fall of the House of Usher"

"The Manuscript Found in a Bottle" and "The Fall into the Whirlpool" are each set in a terrifying, stormy sea.
The former tells the story of a man who accidentally boards a ghost ship when it is shipwrecked and leaves his last note in a bottle, while the latter tells the story of a man who narrowly escapes death after being swept up in a terrifying whirlpool.
The two works share a similar character in that their theme is the anxiety of humans who are helpless in the face of unimaginable natural phenomena.
The speaker of "Ligeia" watches his wife, who is lying in bed dying from an illness, go through a state of false death and gradually change into a different appearance, and in "Oval Portrait," the wife gradually loses her vitality to the portrait painted by her husband, a painter, and eventually dies.
"The Pit and the Pendulum," inspired by the Spanish Inquisition, vividly depicts the extreme and inhumane torture scene.
In "The Masque of the Red Death" and "The Jumping Frog, or the Eight Chained Orangutans," both are dramatic tales of a corrupt king and his court, with the wicked king ultimately becoming a victim of revenge.
The narrator of "The Man in the Crowd" discovers a strange old man in a crowd and follows him for several days, but ultimately finds nothing.
Through these short stories, which clearly reveal the chaos of a world that cannot be rationally interpreted, or the labyrinth of another self, Poe raises the question of whether the world we live in can truly be explained solely through 'reason'.

A Romantic interpretation of the dichotomous structure of reason and emotion

Edgar Allan Poe experienced unfortunate events in his personal life, including conflict with his adoptive parents, dropping out of college, a broken engagement, and bereavement. Nevertheless, he was a passionate writer who continuously published poetry, novels, and critiques for 20 years, starting in his 20s when he began writing.
After his death, editor Griswold and others with whom he had a personal grudge spread malicious anecdotes about him, leading to Poe being portrayed as a psychologically unstable writer suffering from alcoholism and drug addiction.
Due to this influence, there has been a tendency to underestimate his work in the United States, but recently there has been an active movement to re-evaluate him as a writer who pioneered a new trend influenced by Romanticism in early American literature, which was previously Puritanical.


His short stories are based on irrational and extreme psychology, but they contain persistent and rational judgments.
Through these works, where reason and emotion overlap like Russian matryoshka dolls, Edgar Allan Poe takes a romantic and integrative look at the Western rational-centered way of thinking and emotional alienation.
His continuing influence in the United States, Europe, and the world is likely due to this solid and unique literary atmosphere.