Edgar Allan Poe

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I was first introduced to Edgar Allan Poe in the sixth grade with “The Raven”, “The Cask of Amontillado”, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, and their respective renditions by The Alan Parsons Project. Since then I have come across Poe and his texts in some capacity in my secondary English classes as well as my college level literature classes. Poe is just one of those classic authors in the literary canon who will always find his way into secondary English classrooms. Poe is exciting, suspenseful, dark, gloomy, [insert any other Gothic or dark adjective you can think of here]. Poe is one of the first author’s who comes to mind when I think of Gothic literature, and he serves as a wonderful resource for poems and short stories that are incredibly written, are full of literary devices or themes that can be discussed in the classroom, and are interesting and engaging to students.

One of my favorite short stories by Poe is “The Tell-Tale Heart.” I love how this story in particular takes a subject like murder, which is heavy and dark, and makes it seem light in comparison to other pieces by Poe that deal with the subject of murder. I also love how this story portrays the narrator's descent into madness, all while he believes and insists to the audience that he is a completely sane man.

I would ideally teach “The Tell-Tale Heart” in a larger Poe unit that deals with looking at different themes/literary devices that Poe uses in various pieces of his writing, and I believe that I would teach this in an honors sophomore class or a regular junior class. In this unit, “The Tell-Tale Heart” would be great to look at for different types of irony, as well as how irony propels a story forward. Adding on to the idea of this larger Poe unit, there are several sources, like the Edgar Allan Poe album from The Alan Parsons Project or various Poe graphic novels, that can be incorporated into any Poe unit or lesson plan to help get students engaged with what they are being taught.

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