The Effect of Life Experience's on the Works of Edgar Allan Poe.
Experiences during a lifetime can affect a person in numerous ways, such as did Edgar Allan Poe. Poe took his experiences, and transformed them into the stories and poems that we have today. Throughout this paper, you will see how events in Poe's life not only influenced the style of Poe's writing, but also the subject matter and the characters.
Saying that Poe had a bad childhood would be a tremendous understatement. Around the time that Poe was born, his father left them. Two years later, his mother died. Poe then went to live with a family member, but because of the financial situation they would not have been able to take care of him and his brother. He was then adopted by the family of Fanny and John Allan.
Living in the Allan household gave Poe opportunities that he could never have obtained if he had lived with his parents. Poe was sent to teachers at age five, and even had private schooling in England for the short stint that he lived there. He was very gifted in the languages, some of his early works were written in both French and Latin (Poe: A Reflection.). At the age of fifteen he had enough poems to publish a book, but John talked him out of doing so.
Not only was Poe a tremendous scholar, but he was also a suburb athlete. He was known to swim six miles in the James River against a strong current (Edgar's teens.). Poe was also the Lieutenant of the Junior Morgan Riflemen at age fifteen; his military aptitude came from his grandfather, General Poe.
Just before going to the University of Virginia, Poe met his first love, Elmira Richmond. Before heading off to the university, he had met her in Richmond and continued to write her letters while at school. Her father did not approve of him due to the age difference, one year, so she never got the letters he sent (Edgar's teens.). At the University of Virginia Poe had aspirations of being a translator (Poe: A Reflection.