Edgar Allan Poe and the American Mind Essay -- Edgar Allan Poe

Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, America gazed at itself in a mirror and sawthat it was good. As a beacon for democracy, the United States appeared to shine bright as the fire up of the world, demonstrating through the 1828 election of President Andrew Jackson thateven a common man from the countryside had the potential to rise to the top of the politicalhierarchy. On another level, down the stairs the growing success and influence of the IndustrialRevolution, the American people seemed to evaluate widely to the belief that nature could beconquered by man, that no riskiness posed by the natural world was beyond the salvation offeredby human technology. And then there was the overarching vision of manifest destiny, thenations blessed calling to expand its territory from ocean to ocean and thereby fulfill its purposeas a paradigm of virtue amid the barbarity of the New World. Beneath the surface of eachfavorable reflection, however, lay shadows of imposition th at casted silent judgment upon theseshining images of prosperity the fact that democracy authorise the people, but only if theywere white males the reality that with industrial progress came equalitarian regress and the truththat manifest destiny served as but an imperialist justification, a sort of divine mandate, for theremoval and massacre of countless autochthonic Americans.This tension between negative undertone and positive faade, between dour realities andtheir euphemized reflections, created a critical dissonance in the 19th century Americanconscience, such that the nation appeared ostensibly promising on the surface, and yet remained ravaged by storms of contradiction underneath. Perhaps inspired by this internal agitatebetween delusion... ...nly reality within the mind of the person.Works CitedFisher, Benjamin F. The Cambridge macrocosm to Edgar Allan Poe. Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 2008. Print.Gargano, James W. The Black Cat Perverseness Reconsidered. T wentieth Century Interpretations of Poes Tales. Ed. William L. Howarth. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice Hall, 1971. 87-94. Print.Hammond, J.R. Edgar Allan Poe Companion The Short Stories. London MacMillan Press, 1981. Print.Jones, Paul Christian. thralldom and Abolition. Edgar Allan Poe in Context. Ed. Kevin A. Hayes. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013. 138-147. Print.Quinn, Arthur H. Edgar Allan Poe A Critical Biography. 1941. Print.Robinson, E. Arthur. Poes The Tell-Tale Heart. Critics on Poe. Ed. David B. Kesterson. Coral Gables, FL University of Miami Press, 1973. 107-115. Print.