by Blair Bordelon

Created on: October 04, 2008   Last Updated: April 20, 2010

Edgar Allan Poe was a nineteenth century non-conformist who saw evil in beauty and beauty in darkness. But Poe's darkly artistic view of the world did not make him any less of a poet. In fact, even in his day, Poe was highly regarded for his unique and often mysterious messages and his habit of forcing readers to think abstractly. Poe's "The Raven" and "The Purloined Letter" are perfect examples of the enigmatic and abstract qualities his works possessed.

"The Raven" is so full of secret symbols and meanings that some believe Poe himself was not aware of them all. The Raven itself is mostly understood to represent all that is evil, for the narrator commands the bird to return to the "Plutonian shore," known in Greek mythology as the underworld. The element of evil is furthered by the poem taking place at midnight in a dreary December. Yet, this setting may also be seen as having an element of hope, since the end of night and the end of the year are usually used to represent change. This slight possibility of change is what helps to make the ending of the poem so incredibly mysterious. While the raven's incessant quoting of "Nevermore" may seem to steal away all essence of hope, and while the narrator claims his soul shall never rise again, to me there is still a nagging doubt in the back of my mind that wonders, "But what about tomorrow?"

Poe's character Dupin explains the idea of "The Purloined Letter" in a rather brilliantly simple manner. Imagine a boy playing a game in which he must guess whether the amount of marbles another boy has in his hands is even or odd. When asked the first time, the boy simply guesses and in effect, loses the game. When asked again, the boy weighs his previous answer against the intelligence of his opponent. An opponent of simple intelligence will change the amount of marbles to the opposite of the boy's first choice in order to confuse him. Thus, if the boy answered "even" originally, he would then change his answer to "odd".

However, if the boy's opponent is of a slightly higher intelligence, he may in fact guess that the boy would change his answer to odd, so the opponent would decide to keep the amount of marbles even. The boy, having judged his opponents level of intelligence correctly, will have foreseen this, and thus will answer again with "even." "The Purloined Letter" is all about the application of this sort of abstract thinking and the idea that too many people are stuck on simple-minded reasoning only because that is how the majority thinks. Dupin, the story's detective, makes his distaste for logical thinking known and has very persuasive evidence as to the validity of his arguments. In this story, the Parisian police represent the idea of logical thinking, and though they appear to be in every way competent and thorough in their jobs, it is Dupin who manages to find the purloined letter via the abstract concept of estimating your opponent's intelligence.

All of Poe's writings have a way of making one look at things from a different perspective, whether it is intensely gothic or abstractly logical. Poe offers a view on life that is immensely different from that of his contemporaries, but there is a certain truth mixed in with the terror and sadness that cannot be overlooked. The world is a beautiful place no matter how ugly it can seem, and I believe there are few who understand that as certainly as did Edgar Allan Poe.

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