Happy Halloween!

The Raven - Edgar Allen Poe

The poem, The Raven, tells the bleak tale of a man's decent into a deep depression. The raven, which I think is either a metaphor and/or a delusion, seems to be a manifestation of sorrow. The man in the poem has lost his true love, Lenore, and although he tries to occupy his mind with his books, the raven incessantly croaks the word "Nevermore" as a constant reminder of his loss. His subconscious is forever returning to thoughts of his heartbreak. The raven, an expression of his inner thoughts, taunts him to a point of woebegone madness. This contradicts Transcendentalism because the Transcendentalists thought that your inner voice was the voice of God. Something makes me doubt that God would be feeding you the cheerless word "Nevermore" repeatedly until you were too grief-stricken to go on. "'Other friends have flown before-- On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before' Then the bird said 'Nevermore'"
When the raven enters into the chamber, he immediately perches on a bust of Athena, "Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door - Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door" Athena/Pallas is the goddess of wisdom. Wisdom was a virtue greatly admired by the Transcendentalists, and I think that Poe was using Athena/Pallas as the bust that the raven sat on with a purpose. Since the Transcendentalists put wisdom and thought on such a high pedestal, Poe puts his miserable raven on top of Pallas, as if to squash wisdom out. The man in the poem becomes so consumed with his grief that he lashes out at a bird that might not even exist; "'Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked upstarting - 'Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!' Quoth the raven, 'Nevermore.'" The man's wisdom is replaced with anguish as logical though gives way to the persistant agony of his broken heart. "And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor, Shall be lifted - nevermore!"

The Black Cat by Edgar Allen Poe

I liked this story, even though is was sort of twisted; it was interesting. The narrator starts out as a well-tempered nice young man with a kind heart, and by the end of the story he's a conniving murderer who has all but completely lost his mind. Sure, you could blame one or both of the two cats for the poor mans demise, or you could blame the alcohol, but the fact is that the man was consumed with rage. He says, "The fury of a demon instantly possessed me." This goes against what the Transcendentalists believed. They thought that people were pure of heart, so where do murderous actions come from? Transcendentalists thought that society could skew a persons perspective and quiet their inner God/conscience, but no one was telling the narrator to kill his cat or his wife. The urge to kill came from within himself, and he didn't seem to feel much remorse for the awful things he did. No, rather than feeling remorse, he just wanted to make sure he covered his tracks and didn't get caught. He actually seemed to feel worse about killing the first cat than he did his own wife. The narrator was worried about his immortal soul, he feels he is "even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God." A Transcendentalist would not have thought anyone could ever be so removed from God, because God was supposed to be a part of the individual - you can't be apart from something that is intangible and inside of you.
Poe uses a bit of irony in The Black Cat. After the main character buried an axe in the brain of his beloved wife, decided to mortar her body up in a false chimney in the basement of their house. After his task is finished he takes great pride in his job well done, "I looked around triumphantly, and said to myself -- 'Here at least, then, my labor has not been in vain'". This is almost a direct hit on what Emerson says in Self Reliance, "A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work." Poe took one of the Transcendental ideals and twisted it into something sick and horrifying. He kind of throws it in their faces that their beliefs are too idealistic.

Maybe this is why my parents call me "Nega-Tori".

I think that I'm definitely closer to being a Dark Romanticist than a Transcendentalist. I agree with the Dark Romanticist's belief that there is a major flaw in Transcendentalist thought - sometimes people do things that are just plain bad, so how is that possible if we're all a part of God? God is not supposed to be evil; God doesn't murder, or steal, or go insane. God may be pure, but people are most certainly not, and therefore separate from God. People do go insane, bad things do happen, and within everyone there is the possibility of evil. This all sounds very dark and brooding, but it's just sort of a reality. I'm not saying that there isn't good in the world too, I'd like to think that there is more good in the world than bad, but the bad does exist.