Edger Allen Poe, at the start of his writing career, went to New York City where he had some of his poetry published. He submitted stories to a number of magazines and they were all rejected. Poe had no friends, no job, and he was in financial trouble. In 1835, Poe finally took a job as an editor of a newspaper because of a contest he won with his story, "The Manuscript Found in a Bottle." Then in 1843, he wrote, "The Tell-Tale Heart." and in 1850, "The Oval Portrait." These two stories are short stories. Poe's writing is notable due to his use of visual elements, darkness and light and horrific style.
The narrator makes both stories easily understandable through his use of visual elements. Furthermore, in "The Tell Tale Heart," the narrator thinks it might have been the old man's freaky eye that brought up the idea to kill him. "He had the eye of a vulture – a pale blue eye, with a film over it." Whenever the old man's eye looked at the narrator, the narrator's blood froze. To sum up, he decided that the old man had to die so that the narrator wouldn't have to ever see the eye again. Also, in "The Oval Portrait," Pedro, the valet, brings the injured narrator to a deserted chateau because he didn't want the narrator to sleep outside. They forced an entry and prepared themselves for the night in one of the buildings smallest apartments. The apartment had rich but decaying furnishings, including tapestries, trophies, and paintings. In addition to that, in "The Tell Tale Heart," his room was "as black as pitch" with the imagery of something being so dark that no one could see through. In addition to visual elements, Poe includes darkness and light in the stories he wrote.
To put it another way, the classical canon typically represents two opposing forces of nature, whether good or evil, knowledge or ignorance, love or hate or happiness or despair.
