Edgar Allen Poe

Edgar Allen Poe Complete Tales and Poems was very fascinating. I know for a fact that I have read some of his works before, however when going through the book, only “The Masque of the Red Death” was recognizable for me. For this 20 page assignment I decided to read one story and a bunch of different poems. The one story I read was “ The Oval Portrait” which I actually really liked. With the stories and the poems in this text, I think that this book would be a great thing to have and use in the classroom. Edgar Allen Poe is a fantastic tool to use for the practice of analyzing.

This text could be used in all grade levels. I remember reading a poem by Edgar Allen Poe in elementary school and trying to figure out what it was about and then I just read “The Masque of the Red Death” in college just last quarter. I think that reading this in the high school and middle school grade level would be a great way to work on coming up with different interpretations. Honestly, I could not really come up with any challenges that may arise with using this text in the classroom when it comes to parents, administrators, or even students. Perhaps some parents may think that reading such dark and dreary texts could be problematic for some people, but that is pushing it a bit. I just cannot think of any other reason why this would be a challenge to have in the classroom. Poe has great pieces of work that are just great for analyzing and writing papers on.

I really did find this book to be intriguing. Even the poem section, which typically I hate reading poems but I know that poems are what he is mostly known for so I thought I’d focus on them and see why. One that I really liked was “Annabel Lee.” Although I do not remember ever reading it, it just sounded so familiar. I think that for students it would be a great poem to come up with different interpretations. As I was reading it I had a few just from the title. Overall, this text was quite enjoyable.