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The first time I was introduced to reading was when my eye caught the cover of a black-bound book. It was lying on a table at an ungodly boring middle school book fair. Its cover stuck out among the cheesy Captain Underpants books, donning a silver-speckled raven, and the author's name Edgar Allan Poe. Being a weird kid who always loved the more cryptic things in life, I bought the book with no second thought. After school, I cracked open the heavy book which was filled with short stories. The first one I remember reading was ‘The Black Cat’. The page with the story had a drawing of a large black cat missing an eye. I was immediately interested in figuring out what happened. A story about a mysterious, supernatural, black cat who comes back to haunt the man who killed it. I fell for these simple stories that left me with existential dread. Delving into something different, I found something even darker and more chilling in his works. Much of his stories are not about supernatural horror but about psychology. It’s about the dread that comes with life and the way it can haunt someone. In ‘The Black Cat’, a cat is haunting a once sane human being who spirals into alcoholism and violence. In this story, the narrator is not bothered by the fact he murdered his wife, but by the cat who reminds him of his sins. I am fascinated by witnessing the perspective of the deranged narrator.
Poe often explored the dark depths of complex human behaviors and realities of the mentally unwell. Such as ‘The Raven’, my favorite short story. A man in despair wastes away, haunted by the death of the woman he once loved. He discovers a bird has welcomed himself into his home. Humoring his new guest, he asked the raven questions about his love, and the bird only replies “Nevermore”. The mourning man acknowledges that the bird can only say one word. And yet he asks it questions about his lost love, knowing that the bird will respond with the same damning answer. This was my first dive into the ideas of death and the sadness that comes with being a living person. I believe I read this book nearly a hundred times at best, even trying to redraw the illustrations in the book as well. As a lonely kid, I soon spent a lot of time reading scary tales, which possibly scared people away. Stories like these that have things like mortality, loss, terror, and bravery were simply too good to put down. In ‘The Raven’, the bird isn’t tormenting the narrator, like death, it is just there like a continuous reminder of the end. The raven does not need to torment him, the narrator chooses to torment himself. ‘The Raven’ was my stepping stone for both my love of reading and horror.
Stories like ‘The Black Cat’, ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’, and ‘The Raven’ are the reasons Edgar Allan Poe was my first literary love.
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