Literary devices

Edgar Allan Poe was a literary genius due to his effective use of literary elements in his many Gothic short stories and poems. Firstly, what is a literary element? A literary element or device is a characteristic used by an author to enhance his writing. There are many examples of these, however I will only address the main ones I will be using while interpreting Poe's works.

First off, there is the alliteration. This is when the author repeats the same letters, sounds or words in the same sentence. For example, in The Bells, "To the swinging and the ringing of the bells, bells, bells, of the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells", where the word bells is repeated allowing the reader to almost hear the bells themselves.  Next up is the simile. This is used when the author is trying to compare two things and in order to do so he uses the word like or as in between them. An example of a simile would be in The Fall of the House of Usher when the narrator says the house had, "...vacant eye-like window..." Here Poe compares the windows of the house to vacant eyes with the use of the word like.

A similar literary element often confused with the simile is the metaphor. This also consists of a comparison however it must be a comparison without the words like or as. In The Black Cat, Poe writes, "The fury of a demon instantly possessed me." This would be an example of a metaphor comparing the man's anger to that of a demons. A personification is when the author gives a human attribute to an inanimate object. This would be like in The Tell-Tale Heart, "...for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye." Here Poe is calling the eye evil but an eye cannot be evil. The personification is used very often in Poe's works because this is one of his favourite ways to bring the story and the things in his story to life.

Another literary device used by Poe is foreshadowing. He will sometimes put emphasis on a certain part of a story so one can infer what might happen in the end. For example, in The Masque of the Red Death, there is a lot of emphasis put on the red chamber and how nobody wants to go into it. This could foreshadow that they will eventually be forced into it. He also uses irony very effectively in his works to lighten up the mood a bit or to teach a lesson or moral. For example, in The Cask of Amontillado, the main character leads his friend Fortunato to find some Amontillado in a vault underground. Fortunato, unlike his name, is unfortunate and is murdered by his friend. The main literary element that makes Edgar Allan Poe such a successful Gothic literature author is his use of imagery. Imagery is the description of the five senses in any given situation. Poe effectively describes these senses in all his works allowing the reader to smell, taste, hear, touch, and see what the characters do, therefore attaching the readers to their characters.

Other literary devices less frequently used in Poe's stories and poems are the hyperbole, the onomatopoeia and the flashback. The hyperbole is an exaggeration for example in The Narrative of A. Gordan Pym, it is said "I felt, I am sure, more than ten thousand times the agonies of death itself." This is an exaggeration of the pain the narrator felt. Onomatopoeia is a sound that imitates the word like in The Pit and the Pendulum: "It was appended to a weighty rod of brass, and the whole hissed as it swung through the air." Here one can hear the hissing sound of the pendulum as it swings to and fro. Finally the flashback is when a character is thinking back on a past event, and describes what happens to give the reader further intelligence as to why certain things happen the way they do in the present day. For example, in The Raven: "Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December..." the author is thinking back on when the event occurred. Due to the use of these many literary elements in Edgar Allan Poe's stories and poems, he can effectively make the reader feel any way he wants them to feel.