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PENGUIN READERS Teacher’s notes LEVEL 5 Teacher Support Programme Tales of Mystery and Imagination Edgar Allan Poe namesake who has been following him everywhere since his schooldays. Wherever he goes, he cannot escape his unwanted double: he is always there to foil his plans and snatch success away from him. In the story’s tragic conclusion the main character loses control and reacts in a terrible and violent manner. In The Gold-Bug we follow a man’s obsessive search for buried treasure. After finding a bug of real gold, the man is convinced that it will lead him to the treasure and make his fortune. Despite the scepticism of his friend, the man persists with his search, uncovering clues and breaking a secret code until finally, with the help of his servant and of his friend; he sets off on a journey into the hills that About the author ultimately leads them to an amazing discovery. Edgar Allan Poe was born to a Scots-Irish family in Boston The Fall of the House of Usher tells of some very strange on 19 January 1809. He was the second child of actress happenings. A man goes to visit an old friend who appears Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe and actor David Poe, to be suffering from some strange mental disorder. His Jr. Tragedy struck Edgar Allan Poe very early in life – sister is very ill and he has been very badly affected by his father abandoned the family when he was just one this. He has lost his taste for life and is extremely afraid of year old and his mother died of consumption a year later. the future. He feels strongly that the very walls of his old Poe was raised by John and Frances Allan, a family of crumbling house have gained an influence over him. His Scottish merchants from Richmond, Virginia. Although friend tries to help him by talking to him and painting they never formally adopted him, the Allans did give him with him, but when the man’s sister finally dies, things the name Edgar Allan Poe. go from bad to worse. The man is not convinced that Poe attended school in England from 1815 until 1820. his sister is really dead and worries that he has buried her In 1826 he went to the recently-opened University of alive. The story reaches a dramatic climax when the dead Virginia. sister reappears at the door of the house. In 1835, he started work as an editor for the Southern The Red Death tells the story of how a group privileged Literary Messenger. The following year he married his people, led by their Prince shut themselves away in a cousin, Virginia. For the next ten years, during which time remote castle in an attempt to avoid being infected with a his wife was often ill, Poe worked for various newspapers terrible disease that is killing the population of the country and magazines. He also wrote the stories for which he They live a life of luxury and pleasure until one day the is now famous, though he did not always make a lot of Red Death itself comes to pay a visit and wreak revenge … money from them. Also during this period, he began to The Barrel of Amontillado is another story of terrible drink heavily and for the rest of his life he had problems revenge. A man lures his rival into a deep cellar with the with alcohol. In 1847, Virginia died. Poe planned to promise of tasting an expensive Spanish wine. The victim’s remarry but it was not to be. He died in mysterious pride and his single-minded desire to give his opinion on circumstances after being found wandering around the the wine prevent him from seeing the trap he is walking streets of Baltimore in October, 1849. into. Even at the last moment, as he is being walled into his death cell, he seems unable to fully comprehend the Summary terrible nature of his predicament. The ten tales are stories of the supernatural, of revenge, The Whirlpool describes the very frightening near-death near-death experiences and some of the very first detective experience of an old Norwegian fisherman. As his listener stories. observes the scene from a high point on the rocky In William Wilson a man is haunted in a strange and coastline, the fisherman shows him the power of the disturbing way. He is convinced that he has an identical enormous whirlpool of the Maelström just a few miles c Pearson Education Limited 2008 Tales of Mystery and Imagination - Teacher’s notes 1 of 5 PENGUIN READERS Teacher’s notes LEVEL 5 Teacher Support Programme Tales of Mystery and Imagination off the coast. He tells the story of how he and his brother The story called Metzengerstein recounts the rivalry were once sucked into the whirlpool. The fisherman between two rich families and the descent into madness survived thanks to keen observation of how things were and death of the young heir to the Metzengerstein fortune. being sucked down towards the seabed, but his brother, When his neighbour and head of his hated rival family through his terrible fear, was unwilling to heed his advice dies in a fire, a beautiful but strange red horse comes into and perished. The fisherman survived, but his experience the young man’s possession. The horse appears to have had turned him into a white-haired old man. been branded with the initials of the dead neighbour, In The Pit and the Pendulum a prisoner recounts his but nobody at the household can confirm that the horse experiences at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition. He belonged to the dead man. The young Metzengerstein is thrown into a dark cell and soon realises there is a deep becomes increasingly obsessed with the horse and begins pit in the middle of the room from which there would to spend all his time riding it, avoiding the company of be no escape. Having successfully avoided falling into the people. When a fire breaks out at his property, horse and pit, he awakes to find himself tied to the bed beneath an rider gallop into the flames. enormous swinging pendulum at the end of which there is Background and themes a sharp blade. As the blade slowly descends, coming ever- closer to his chest, he begins to give up hope of survival. Death and its physical signs: Some of Poe’s most But suddenly an idea occurs to him that brings him recurring themes can be found in the stories presented new hope and he manages to avoid being sliced by the here: death and its physical signs, the effects and nature of swinging knife by attracting rats to eat through his bonds. decomposition, concerns of premature burial, the coming All his efforts seem to have been to no avail however when back to life of the dead, and the process of mourning. the walls of the cell begin to close in on him, forcing him Poe’s stories are remarkable for their inventiveness, towards the deep pit in the middle of the room … their fine construction, their vivid descriptions and In The Stolen Letter the Paris police look for a letter that their psychological insight. Since their first publication, holds great power. They know who has taken the letter, Poe’s powerful stories have captured the imagination of but despite two thorough searches of the man’s home, generations of readers. Many of the stories have been they are unable to find it. And yet, the letter must be in made into films or television dramas or they have been the the man’s house. The police cannot find the letter because source of inspiration for countless adaptations. Poe’s fame they are unable to put themselves in the place of the nowadays rests more on his macabre tales of mystery and person who hid it. It turns out that the letter was right in horror than on his poetry or literary essays. But he did not front of their noses the whole time. It is ultimately found invent the horror story. by Monsieur Dupin, a very intelligent and wily Parisian Mystery, horror and violence: In Poe’s youth, one of the private detective, who presents the letter to the chief of most popular types of fiction was the gothic novel and his police in return for a handsome reward. stories owe a lot to the gothic style. These novels typically We find Monsieur Dupin at work again in The Murders in dealt with mystery, horror, violence and the supernatural the Rue Morgue. Two women have been savagely murdered and the stories often took place in dramatic, romantic in their home in an apparently motiveless attack. Although settings such as ruined castles. They were extremely the women had money in the house, nothing was stolen. popular at the end of the eighteenth century and the Witnesses didn’t see anything, but nearly all of them beginning of the nineteenth. Perhaps the most famous say they heard two voices – from inside the women’s example of the genre is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). apartment. One of the voices was that of a Frenchman, Fictional detective: In the gothic elements of his stories, but the witnesses all give a different account of the second Poe was tapping into an existing tradition. However he voice – one says it was a Russian voice, another thinks can be credited with creating the world’s first fictional it was an Italian voice, others say they heard English or detective in the figure of C Auguste Dupin.

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