Blog Post #13: Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe is an absolute essential in the middle school or high school classroom. Not only are his short stories simply fantastic to read in any classroom, but they also can be utilized to achieve different content standards and learning objectives. If I remember correctly, I was first introduced to Poe’s  “The Tell-Tale Heart” when I was in middle school, maybe even younger. My teacher played a reading of the short story done in the most terrifying and horrific voice. It was amazing. At the time, I was a massive fan of the Goosebumps series (who wasn’t, am I right?) and “The Tell-Tale Heart” absolutely blew the series out of the water for me. I was hooked.

“The Tell-Tale” is excellent to use in the classroom for many reasons. First and foremost, it’s one of Poe’s shortest stories, which makes it accessible to younger students or struggling readers. I would specifically use this to demonstrate to students how an author, such as Poe, can strip excess detail throughout a story to heighten suspense. In this short story, the absence of excess detail is used to heighten the murder’s obsession with specific and basic objects such as the old man’s pale blue eye, the heartbeat, and his own claim to sanity. This demonstrates to students how every choice an author makes when writing, such as style, language, form, or content, needs to contribute to the overall desired outcome.

I was first introduced to Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” in Lindholdt’s Introduction to Fiction course at Eastern. This short story is not only my favorite Edgar Allan Poe short story, but also one of my favorite short stories of all-time. When I think about how I will teach my students the elements of gothic literature I instantly think of Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Poe was a master of gothic literature and he incorporates gothic elements in his short stories in various ways. For example, in “The Raven” Poe occasionally incorporates gothic elements in an almost satirical manner. However in “The Fall of the House of Usher” the gothic elements are utilized in a more serious manner. This short story possesses the quintessential features of the Gothic tale— a barren landscape, a haunted house, mysterious illness, a doppelgänger, ancestral curse, tombs, claustrophobia, and the unreliable narrator. The list could go on and on.