Oh Poe

I have a compilation of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories and poems. I got it out to reread “Annabel Lee” when I think it was Kelsey who said she was doing her explication on that poem. And then I decided to read The Tell-Tale Heart. Even though it’s one of the most famous of Poe’s stories, I had never read it, though of course I knew the gist of the story. I know it’s supposed to be creepy, but I found the man’s attempts to prove his sanity funny, just because every thing that he brought to attention to prove he wasn’t mad just proved how mad he really was. First of all, that he was willing to kill this old man because his eye crept him out, and he thought that was reasonable and acceptable, is not how a mentally stable person thinks. How he describes the clever way he snuck his head into the room only sounds ridiculous, his laughter does not help his case, the precautions he took when hiding the body add to his insanity, and of course hearing the old man’s heart. But not only hearing it once the old man is dead, but hearing it when he was alive, and thinking that every one else could surly hear it as well, proves how paranoid and insane he had become. Though Poe is known for horror, he has these comedic elements that make you laugh, but then disturb you because of how insane this person is. Being Poe, this is of course a creepy story, not only in plot but also in delivery. Just like the madman, the story starts off slowly and steadily, and then gradually gets faster as the man gets madder, until there’s a rush of thoughts and sounds and emotions in the last paragraph as the man goes completely off the edge of sanity with his paranoia. Though the beating of the heart isn’t actually written with words, like “bum-bum-bum”, just the description of its noise level,” it grew louder – louder – louder!” as the man’s thoughts race makes the reader hear the beating heart. It’s the man’s thoughts, and it’s he that is thinking it’s getting louder, so to tell it like that, instead of the actual sound the heart makes, puts you inside the mind of the madman even more, until you start to feel paranoid and hear the sound as well. That is the genius of Poe, using the first person to put you into the mindset of a madman who thinks he is a genius, but is sadly just disturbed. At first, the madman is talking to the reader, so you get to judge him, because that’s basically what he’s saying and asking you to do. But once he has killed the old man and starts hearing the beating heart again, he stops talking to the narrator, stops trying to impress, and becomes truly worried and crazed by the noise. It is then that you start to see inside of him, into what he is thinking and how his mind works. He does not think he is mad at all, and unfortunately it is that fact and his own paranoia that lead to his downfall. He doesn’t consider that the noise is all in his head, he immediately assumes it is real and that everyone else can hear it and therefore knows what he did. The madman was so confident in his plan, yet he almost immediately accepts that the police know of his plan, despite its ingenuity and cleverness, which shows his deep paranoia and insecurity which led him to kill the old man in the first place – because his eye made him feel uncomfortable. 

“I think how the world is still somehow beautiful even when I feel no joy at being alive within it. ”

I finished First They Killed My Father. It was an incredibly powerful book – powerful in storytelling and powerful in meaning.

Though Loung becomes desensitized to the violence and death all around her, the reader does not, and every description of every wound, every dead body, is a shock. It horrifies me, not just the description, but that this little girl saw all this, saw a man get his head bashed in, felt the blood and brains of her friend, smelt the overpowering stench of decaying and burning flesh. To read about it is horrific enough, but to experience it – just thinking about someone else experiencing it is so sickening. At the end of the book there is a small note from the author, where she tells about how she came to write the book. She explains how she knew she had to write it in a little girl’s voice, because that was who she was when it happened. She also forced herself to write in the present tense, because though it was more painful for her, the past tense would have distanced not only herself but the readers as well from the pain, and it is the pain that makes the story so powerful, along with the hope. Loung spent the four years of her young life hating the Khmer Rouge, wanting to kill them all for what they did to her family. But slowly, she comes to realize that hate will not help anything, it won’t change anything. When she watches the execution of one Khmer solider as a child, at first she shares the crowd’s rage and call for revenge, for blood. But as she watches the solider slowly die in pain, she starts to see him as a person. She wonders if that is how her father was killed, by the same type of vindictive bloodthirsty people, and she feels pity for the soldier, realizing he is just a person as well. But she still has not reached the point of letting go of her hate completely, because she reasons that it is “too late” to stop the execution, too late for all the people the Khmer Rouge has hurt. Eventually Loung learns to let go of the anger, but before she can come to terms with the pain, she spends many more years in America trying to block out her past. But she couldn’t move on until she dealt with it, and it was when she began to work with Campaign for a Landmine-Free World that she was able to feel better, knowing she was helping by telling her story and raising awareness. Her hope, which had been crushed time and time again in the four years of Pol Pot’s rule, always came back, and she began to rely again on hope instead of anger to keep her from giving up.

I am also reading 1984 right now, and as they are both sort of about dystopian societies, there are many similarities. One similarity is in the propaganda. In the children’s solider camp where Loung was forced to live, the Met Bong in charge gave nightly speeches of propaganda about the mighty Khmer Rouge and the evil Youns. Where she used to spout out praise for the Angkar, as the leader and source of power, she then changes her speeches, praising Pol Pot in place of the Angkar. It seems like suddenly it is Pol Pot who leads the Khmer Rouge, brought them to power, and rules the country. The children switch from chanting “Angkar! Angkar!” to “Pol Pot! Pol Pot!”. It is Pol Pot who now receives the credit for every accomplishment by the Khmer Rouge, and Pol Pot who is more greatly respected, and feared. This is similar to 1984, when the allies in the war switch, and suddenly every poster and every news bit had to be rewritten to account for the change in allies. And of course, this in turn is similar to Animal Farm, and the sheep that bleat the propaganda blindly, without noticing when drastic changes have been made. That is happened in real life, this propaganda works and is effective in hoodwinking people, that’s a scary thought.

I will probably have to wait a few days to gather my thoughts when I’m not so busy so I can write more about this book, because it really deserves it.