Poe

When I look at the pictures of Edgar Allan Poe, he has the same mustache, never smiles, but I can see pain, tiredness, and sadness in his eyes. But it is reasonable for it to be so since he has, from the time of his childhood to his death he barely experienced happiness, but most of the time he felt sadness. It can be said that Edgar Allan Poe lived in an underworld of darkness, but in rare chances, he could escape the dark world temporary and live upon in the world of happiness, but would soon fall back into the underworld of darkness.

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1809. His parents were both actors and in the year that he was born in, his parents were actors for a play called, "King Lear" by William Shakespeare, and the name of Edgar Allan Poe came from one of the name of the characters in the play. Interesting right? Edgar Allan Poe was the second child of his parents, Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe and David Poe, Jr., his elder brother's was named, William Henry Leonard Poe. But wait, he had a little sister named, Rosalie Poe. At the age of one, Edgar Allan Poe's father left his mother, elder brother and younger sister. At the age of two, Poe's mother died from tuberculosis, from here, he was put into the orphanage with his siblings, but they all separated later on. Poe was taken in by a successful Scottish merchant in Richmond, Virginia in the name of John Allan. Poe's middle name, "Allan" came from the Allan family. The Allan family didn't technically adopt Poe but was only fostering him and giving him an education. In 1815, Poe was sent to Irvine, Scotland  to attend grammar school, then in 1816, he met up with his family in London and attended boarding school in Chelsea; he stayed until the summer of 1817, which after, he attended Reverend John Bransby's Manor House School at Stoke Newington. In 1820, Poe returned back to Richmond, Virginia with his family, the Allan's Family.On February 1826, before registering for University of Virginia, Poe was engaged with a woman named, Sarah Elmira Royster. This relationship faded as the time passed when Poe was attending the university of Virginia and his relationship with his foster father John Allan became estranged. His relationship with his foster father, John Allan was estranged because during his time at the University of Virginia, Poe gambled a lot and ended up in debt and used the money from his foster father, John Allan to pay for his debts. Ask yourself, would you really want to see the person that you just borrowed a large sum of money from and you know that you can't return it? This was the feeling that Poe had when he was to meet with his foster father. In a year, Poe dropped out of the university and felt not welcomed in Richmond. To worsen his pain, Sarah had married with a man named Alexander Shelton and he knows about it. In April 1827, Poe travels to Boston and accepts random jobs like newspaper writer, clerk. On May 27, 1827, Poe joins the military to support himself. During his time in the military, he released his first book that was a 40 page collection of poems called, "Tamerlane and other Poems" which didn't receive any attention from the public. One thing that Poe did accomplish during his time in the military or in his life so far was obtaining the highest rank a non-commissioned officer can achieve, Sergeant Major of Artillery. Poe wanted to discharge early but couldn't, until he reconciled with John Allan. Poe sent numerous letter to John, but he dismissed them. On February 28, 1829, Poe's foster mother dies, and the day after, Poe visited her burial. John decides to help Poe discharges and on April 15, 1829 Poe was discharged. In October 1830, John Allan married Lousia Patterson. Poe quarreled with John Allan on the marriage on that the children born to John were from affairs. These types of quarrels lead to the disowning of Poe. After a couple of years traveling around trying to sell his third volume of poem, Poe returns to Baltimore to his aunt, cousin, and elder brother who died on August 1, 1831 because of tuberculosis. Before marrying Virginia, his cousin, Poe was gaining fame from his works. After his marriage with Virginia, he gained more fame from working with magazine company's. Virginia was suffering through tuberculosis and died on January 30, 1847.
Never really did expect the biography on Poe to be this long, but to quicken this up, in summary, the biography on Poe written up above had the major points of the times he suffered through stress, sadness, and pain. The only ways that he knew how to cope through the pain he endured was either by drinking or gambling. Since even now gambling and drinking are one way to cope with pain, but it is temporary. Soon Poe learned how express his pain through the use of words and it was one way to cope with his pain. Like the Raven, it has a theme of dark, anger, and sadness. These themes expressed in the poem were the pain he felt when writing or stored within him. Or maybe like the Cask of Amontillado, the book revolved around anger and revenge. The anger can come from any major points in his life where someone died and he could be blaming it on God, (since he was baptized, so therefore he was forced or voluntarily chose to become Christian) and to release his anger and the feelings for revenge on the God for taking a loved one away could have stirred him to write the Cask of Amontillado. Most of the time when Poe was feeling emotional he would drink and in the Cask of Amontillado, the main character Montresor drunks Fortunato and makes him suffer by getting chained against a wall die slowly. I guess that Poe felt like he was Fortunato, he didn't die yet, but was going through a slow painful death series like Fortunato and Montresor was God, he was putting Poe to death but having Poe unknown on it.        

What is an American?

First of all, I'm pretty confused on what I have to write for this blog post, but I'm guessing that I will soon understand when I start typing out whatever appears in mind when I think of the question, "What is an American?". So let's begin on a journey of confusion. To start off, the dictation of "American" is actually not what people think it is. Most people think that the dictation of "American" is people that inhabits the United States, but not to say that they're wrong, the technical definition of "American" is a native or inhabitant of the Western Hemisphere. So therefore, anyone that inhabits North America and South America is to be considered Americans, since the technical definition does say that an American is anyone that lives on the Western Hemisphere. But people don't consider inhabitants of South America to be Americans or Canada in North America to be Americans, but people only consider anyone that inhabits within the United States to be an American. Which I think can be explained as to why people think that people that inhabit United States are only to be considered Americans and not any other other country's inhabitants in the Western Hemisphere to be considered Americans.
     From what I've been taught in school and learned personally, people that immigrated to the United States during 20th century and after, and people that sailed to the Americas during the 1600s, had a common purpose, and that purpose was what defined every other human being inhabiting the Western Hemisphere to not be considered Americans except for the inhabitants of the United States. That purpose was the pursuing of the dream life that everyone wishes for. The immigrants from the 20th century and the 21st century came to America because they wanted to have a better life, a life of better opportunities, the life of living rich, providing their children or future generation a better education, immigrants wanted to start back at square one of their life, making sure that they will not commit the same mistake that they did when they were back at their homeland. This wasn't as similar as the 1600s people, but they did purse their dream life like the 20th and 21st century immigrants did. The 1600s people wanted to escape their homeland because of many different reasons like maybe the government banishing the practice of all other religions, but only allowing one type of religion to be able to be practiced in the country, or the escape of warfare in the country, maybe even to escape the country's economic downfall. There are so many reasons as to why people migrate over to the United States, but they all came over because they wanted to pursue their dream life and believed that the Americas or the United States is the only place that can make their dream life come true. Even if that dream life that never came true, the people that migrated over to the United States or the Americas at least tried to make it happen, and really, all that matters is trying and taking risks. This is want makes an American an American, taking risks to make a dream come true, even when the odds are against you.