Why I Chose Poe?

Why I Chose Poe?

I chose to create by blog around the unstable mind of Edgar Allan Poe for a few different reasons. Ever since I was 12 years old in middle school, Poe's works such as "The Raven" and "A Tell-Tale Heart" had always interested me. All of his famous short stories and poems always had a dark, twisted sort of theme linked behind them which captivated me at a young age. Prior to learning about Poe's life, I had always been curious as to what must have been going on in Poe's mind considering all of his works had that similar, dark theme throughout them. For this blog, I wanted to explore all of the works that I felt Poe had the largest connections to mental illness in, as well as works from other gothic writers who seemed to follow a similar theme. In doing so, I have learned that many other gothic writers have also written about characters who had some sorts of mental illnesses. Mental illness was not a very socially acceptable  topic prior to the twenty-first century which shows in many of these writers works. It is interesting how an abundance of gothic writers chose to center their short stories and poems around such a controversial topic. Overall, I was interested in examining Poe's obsession with mental illness in his writing and attempting to discover whether or not he too struggled with mental illness.