Edgar Allan Poe Reflection Blog

        Before researching about Poe and his life, I did not know much about him. Before I came to middle school, I didn't know who he was. Then in 6th grade we started to read one of his poems, and we were getting to understand his writing. We read "The Raven", and from that short story we had to memorize the first paragraph I believe. We did not research anything about his life and what he was going through. So really before, I came to 7th grade all I really knew about Poe is one of his poems. I am very glad that I got the chance to learn about Poe's life, and to get to know him a lot better now.

       These are just some general facts that I learned about Poe while I was doing my research. My first fact is that he was born on January 19, 1809 in Boston. A sad thing that I found out was that both his parents died when he was just 3 years old. His family was split after that, and he got adopted by John Allan, and Francis Valentine Allan. With his new family he moved to Richmond, Virginia. He published his first book at age 18 and the book was called "Tamerlane". When his foster parents died, he was broke and left with no will.  At age 27, he married a not yet 13 year old girl named Virginia Clemm. In january 1845, he published "The Raven" and that short story earned him his house name. Edgar Allan Poe died in 1849.

       I think that what I found most intriguing in my research was how no one really knows how Edgar Allan Poe died. They have so many possibilities, but they don't know exactly which one was the cause of his death. For example here are just 5 of why they thought Poe had died, one reason is because of the heart. The rest are murder, Alcohol dehydrogenase, diabetes, and the last because of carbon monoxide poisoning. I one I think could be the more realistic is from the heart, like a heart attack. I believe this because he wasn't young when he died, he was already a bit old. The heart stops functioning right after it is super old, and I thought this could have very possibly happened to him. A lot of old people die from a heart attack or just because the heart stops functioning right.

       I believe that the reason for why Poe's writing is really scary and dark could have been because he lost his parents and his siblings. I believe that loosing your parents at a very young age could have left a scar on him.
He could have been thinking about that when he might have been writing which could have led to bad memories and he might be only thinking about the bad things that happened and he was not focusing on the good things that happened to him. He had been probably mad at the fact that his parents were not living anymore and that he would probably never see his siblings agin because they were separated.  That could have left him to think only about scary stuff because he did not have the best life he wanted. Therefore he got these really dark ideas and maybe some he based it on his actual real life.