In human nature there exists a morbid desire to explore the darker realms of life Essay Example For Students

In human nature there exists a morbid desire to explore the darker realms of life Essay In human nature there exists a morbid desire to explore the darker realms of life. As sensitive beings we make every effort to deny our curiosity in the things that frighten us, and will calmly reassure our children that there arent any creatures under their beds each night, but deep down we secretly thrive on that cool rush of fear. Despite our efforts to maintain a balance of respectable emotions, we are a society of people who slow down to look at traffic accidents and find excitement in the macabre. We turn off the lights when watching scary movies, and when its time to go to bed, we secretly make sure the closet doors are shut. Fear keeps our hearts pumping and endorphins rushing, for it is an emotion that reminds us of our mortality. How ironic it is to experience more life in our fascination with death. Two legendary writers have ruled the universe of death and horror with remarkable success, both gifted with the talent of introducing each reader to his or her own subconscious fears. Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King are the masters of their craft, blessed- or perhaps cursed- with imaginations that set higher standards in the field of writing. Both authors broke new ground in fiction that has had a significant impact on the world of literature. Similar in quite a few ways, though contrasting in many others, this paper will explore the lives and styles of these two remarkable men, paying close attention to the differences that exist in their approaches to writing. A look into Poes childhood might shed some light on where this divergence stems from. Edgar Allan Poe was born in 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts to drifting actor parents. Denying his parental responsibilities, his father abandoned his wife and three children, leaving her to support the family as best she could. She traveled through various cities acting in stage engagements as she could get them, but the struggle eventually took a toll on her health. Towards the end of 1811 while in Richmond, Virginia, she became ill and died. Her children were promptly farmed into homes, Edgar being placed into the residence of a well-off, yet unsupportive merchant named John Allan. Allan was emotionally detached from Poe, refusing to even legally adopt the boy. This move would begin a chain of events, eventually triggering a drinking problem that would induce the majority of Poes psychological troubles later in life. He was raised in an affluent home, but lacked the emotional support needed to build fortitude and confidence in himself. In Poes youth he didnt pursue a life toward writing, probably due to his assumption that he would eventually inherit his foster fathers estate. He would attend the finest boarding schools in training to be a proper gentleman, but when it came time to go to the University of Virginia in 1826, his foster father gave him a meager allowance that would barely sustain him. John Allan had always been a harsh disciplinarian, and sometimes even cruel to the orphaned boy, but this was the first time he denied Poe the means to survive outside of his home. Adding insult to injury, he also forbids Poe study of what his heart so desired: poetry. Going against Allans orders was not an option; what little money he was given to live off of would have been taken away. In an effort to make his money stretch out while in college, Poe turned to gambling, but like so many other gamblers he lost the money while developing a terrible compulsion. In short, his first term in college was not a success. When the semester was over Allan removed him from the University and forced him into a military academy. In 1947 Stephen King was also born into a nomadic life style. His mother single-handedly raised both him and his brother while moving about the country in pursuit of their absentee father. Instead of dying under the pressure, though, Kings mother survived and proceeded to motivate her son to write as much as possible. Contrasting the Allan/Poe home, the Kings were financially deprived, though rich in family support. King lived to write, and even created his own literary paper called The Rag when he was still in grade school. He submitted hundreds of stories to magazines, mostly in the genres of horror or science fiction, and proudly displayed the rejection slips on a large nail over his typewriter. In Kings book On Writing, he recalls, By the time I was fourteenà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing 41. Rejection was simply a motivation for King to write better than before. King received his college education at the University of Main in Orono. He lacked a financial backer to cover his expenses, so he worked full time in order to pay his tuition. He had published several short stories by the time he reached college and was becoming a serious writer. Contrasting Poes lack of parental support, Kings mother gave him full encouragement to pursue his craft, leaving him with no doubt that this would be his undertaking in life. Because he was so well grounded in his goals, he remained focused in college and blossomed as a writer in the experience. Alice Walker Biography EssayCoincidently, these were written during the time of Kings alcohol and drug addictions. In most of Kings later writing, though, there is a recurrent theme of a struggle and survival that is absent in many of Poes works. In The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon King has a young girl not only survive in the woods without food or shelter, but he also has her defeat the terrifying beast stalking her throughout the story. Poes The Masque of the Red Death is very similar to Kings The Stand, where both center on the demise of an entire population by means of illness. However, Kings characters come together to build a better world and overcome the evil guy trying to do them in. Poes characters simply lock themselves behind the gates of a mansion and die painful deaths. Another way that Poe and King differ is in their style of writing. In his book On Writing King states, One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for the long words because youre maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones On Writing 117. Poe, on the other hand, seems to delight in the use of all the language that he can possibly fit into one sentence. Perhaps a look at comparative sentences would help to illustrate this. In Poes The Fall of the House of Usher, the narrator states, He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin- to the severe and long continued illness- in-deed to the evidently approaching dissolution- of a tenderly beloved sister- his sole companion for long years- his last and only relative on earth Van Doren Stern 252. It took Poe all of 59 words to say that his friend was upset because his sister was dying. It is very descriptive and eventually gets his point across, but it can also be difficult for the modern reader to digest. In contrast, King is known for his less is more approach to writing. In this excerpt taken from his story Needful Things, King creates a description that draws his reader into the tale: When Nettie saw Pollys white, puffy face and haggard eyes, her own fears, which had gnawed at her like sharp weasels teeth as she walked over, were forgotten 233. The opening picture of these two women is vividly created. Though some refer to his style as shock value writing, it is easier to digest for most readers in our day and age. He is careful not to shock the reader back out of the story with stilted language. The reader becomes one with the story, whether they approve of the tale or not. One of the most common praises for Kings work is that à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦he is able to piece together a large number of characters and tell a story from a variety of angles. The story is complex, but not difficult to understand. The characters are well developed and not one of them is superficial Trotter. However, all things being equal, Kings writing would not have been well received in the nineteenth century when Poe was writing. The context of their work reflects their own period in time. Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King where brought up in two very different worlds, yet somehow both of their imaginations slithered off into the murky depths of horror and death. One came from an affluent yet unsupportive home, and the other from a struggling family trying to make ends meet, nevertheless full of support and love for each other. Both battled addiction, although only one was successful in getting sober before it took control of him. They both eventually conquered the field of writing with admirable success, and even if Poes use of language may be difficult to understand in this day and age, his subject matter is just as timely as Kings is. They have followed the norms in style of their respective cultures and times, even though their themes dont exactly adhere to societys morality. They are different and stand out because of it. We may never know if any of this affected either writers ideas or successes, or if they simply were destined to write the way they have. What we do know is that as readers we will never be the same. The things that have secretly scared us since childhood are forever entrenched in the stories by these two great writers, and the subject of fear will never grow cold.