Edgar Allan Poe’s stature as a successful figure in world literature is mainly due to his profound and ingenious poems, critical theories and short stories. His stories share a familiar theme of being of a gothic nature. The gothic theme usually entails an emphasis on the desolate, the grotesque, the mysterious, the ghostly, the horrible and the horrible fear that they may arouse in the viewer or the reader. The author of any gothic horror story aims to create a setting that will bring about eerie sensations in the reader, which keep him or her on the edge. This includes having effects such as menacing shadows, smelly, foul or smelly underground passages and of course, characters that match the setting. Edgar Allan Poe achieves his gothic theme in his short stories by using characters …show more content…
The heroes have to exemplify these phenomena. It is why heroes such as Roderick Usher are driven to self-destruction by their deviant character traits. Egaeus is also a character who becomes obsessed with the teeth of his dead lover. The characters in the short stories have an accumulation of abnormalities that enable the reader to come to terms with the disturbing nature of the mind of the person going through the phenomena that Poe is concerned with in the stories. Edgar Allan Poe uses deviant and odd behavior with astounding realism to ensure that the reader understands the nature of the disorders affecting his characters. His description of the mental disorders facing his characters is so competent that it almost seems as if it is told from the point of view of someone who has had the same difficulties. Edgar Poe had a drinking problem and had faced his own disturbances, which means his choice of his literary style may not be by chance (Broda, 7). He may have wanted a platform to express the struggles of people with mental disorders and does so by giving his characters disturbed psyches that are so