Is it bad to see yourself in a Poe narrative?

Whenever I’m reading or re-reading Poe’s work, this very familiar, very strange reaction comes over me, before I even see it coming: I find myself becoming the narrator I’m reading from.

Yeah, I know I’m a sick bastard.

And this reaction isn’t so comforting to me, especially when you look at Poe’s material (at least in the initial sense of looking at it) considering every damn plotline not so subtly sidesteps some seriously messed up acts of unprecedented viciousness, things my parents would prefer not to know I even imagined myself doing, like burying my wife alive for example, who also happens to be my cousin (creepy) then aptly ripping all of her teeth out.

But this personal investment I cherished with his texts has only lately started to harsh my mellow. Apparently, based on what I’ve heard from my classmates, I’m kind of on my own in my personal engagement to the texts. The general agreement (at least it was a few weeks ago when we first discussed these stories) was that it was Poe who was envisioned as the protagonist within his own stories. It was Jenn, or somebody else, who invited the proposal that was apparently on the tip of everybody’s tongue, “You know, when I’m reading this I envision Poe as the main character, which, is probably why I think Poe might have actually been out of his mind.”

This sent the class into a hullabaloo of responses that lasted a good ten minutes. Despite the rabble I managed to identify one consistent verdict that reigned true: “yup.” Poe’s a crazy one. Poe’s disturbed. Poe this Poe that.

Hearing all of this swirling around me, I figured it’d probably be best to just keep my big, ginger mouth shut. If I dared to share my own investment in Poe’s material (you know, the actually identifying with the text part, as opposed to being shocked by it) there was no telling where the lecture could have gone.

Yet, part of me thinks that my reaction to Poe’s texts is precisely what he had in mind when he wrote his stories. I mean, the fabric of his work is founded on such a personal landscape and within very personal perspectives of even more personal circumstances. But these personal narrations, that invoke this personal identification from the reader is just a product of the individualistic nature within each tale. In Romances like the novels of Hawthorne, conflicts occur among characters within the context of society and are resolved in accordance with society’s rules. Yet, Poe’s Gothic thrive on just the opposite, tales that present these brief flashes of chaos that flare up within lonely narrators living at the fringes of society. Before you know it, the reader is sucked in, mono y mono with his narration.

This kind of approach feels necessary to illustrate a lot of the themes Poe sought to expose: the notion thatevery mind is vulnerable, the causes and effects of the unreliable narrator, and the darker rside of self-reliance. As Meagan G.’s blog put it, “Poe tried to humanize the insane in order to counter the idea of self-reliance. How do you follow someone, or even yourself, if everyone is potentially insane? What do you trust? Do you trust your superiors? Peers? Self?” Sorry if this isn’t kosher but I just loved that so much Meagan. Essentially, the gist is that Poe’s works are about the dissolve of the human psyche and just how close to insanity we each might be my creating this very personal, isolated reading environment.

Favorite Quotes:
“In their consequences, these consequences have destroyed me. Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me, they have presented little but horror—to many they will seem less terrible than baroques. Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the commonplace.”
-The Black Cat p. 230