Thursday, February 5, 2015
Poe's Tics
Edgar Allen Poe's stories work because he's adept at three primary things: replicating the tics of oral telling in writing, knowing what and what not to tell the reader, and pacing. It's through the manipulation of these factors that Poe draws his readers into the murky world his frequently nameless and faceless narrators tell of, a world of arcane mystery and subtle danger. The aforementioned vagueness of his narrators allows for one to read these stories as Poe himself recounting old horrors or as a participant listening to some anonymous person tell of their strife. This affect is coupled with a masterful deployment of information. Poe knows when to douse the reader in description, but he also knows when to pull back so as to let his reader fill in the gory details for his or herself. It's a tic that's linked to Poe's careful pacing. His stories creep along steadily towards a climax. Before it's reached, there's a palpable quickening in his prose, one that forces the reader to move faster and faster. Yes, it's formulaic, but it's difficult to deny the power of this method as it's used by Poe.
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I think looking at Poe's tics is really intriguing, because the devices he uses seem to be completely plot driven. Unlike Cooper he isn't at all historically driven, and unlike Emerson he isn't writing on a quest; I found that part of Poe's charm was that he was writing for the thrill of his own fiction. He brings us into very clear, creepy, and well crafted worlds where as we follow his anonymous narrator through the stories we are pulled into their outcomes. He definitely uses recurring devices to forward the plots of his stories (not to discount these devices as metaphors or motifs), but most of the tension in the stories is found in the gripping plots.
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