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Edgar Allan Poe: The Twilight Connection 3322 Views

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Sure, Edgar Allan Poe was dark and moody and filled with teenage angst, but what else does he have in common with the Twilight series?

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Transcript

00:04
Edgar Allen Poe: The Twilight Connection, a la Shmoop.
00:10
Edgar Allan Poe liked killing people.
00:12
Not literally, of course, because then he would've ended up in an orange prison jumpsuit
00:16
for the rest of his life, and orange was not his color.
00:19
No, Poe liked to kill off the characters in his stories.

00:24
Or have them go nuts. That worked, too. Poe is one of the best-known authors of the
00:29
Gothic genre.
00:31
Besides all the death and crazy in his stories, you can also count on creeptastic settings…
00:36
…like houses that crumble for no apparent reason...
00:39
...and lots of supernatural occurrences.
00:42
Death pops in every once in a while to say “hola”…
00:44
…as do reanimated corpses and random thumping noises from under the floor.
00:51
While reading Poe, you should feel terrified...
00:53
…but don't bother worrying about any of the characters because, chances are, they're
00:59
toast. Gothic literature has been around for better
01:01
than two centuries.
01:03
Besides Poe's works, a couple of stand-outs in the genre are Frankenstein and Dracula...
01:08
and if you haven't read those yet, no worries.
01:11
That's what college lit is for.
01:13
Today's authors still rely on the spooky and the supernatural for inspiration, which may
01:18
leave you wondering: Is Twilight a Gothic novel?
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Ah, Twilight: a book that many love, and many love to hate.
01:27
Stephanie Meyer did include some Gothic elements in Twilight, including the story's unsettling
01:32
setting of Forks, Washington...
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...and some vampires. Those vampires may sparkle but, by golly, they're still supernatural
01:39
creatures. Where Twilight falls down as a Gothic novel
01:43
is on the thematic front. There's no madness or death in Twilight...
01:48
...well, okay, Edward's dead, he's a vampire.
01:52
However, he is the living dead, which means he'll stay topside, watching football and
01:56
paying his mortgage and staring moodily into the sunset, for eternity.
02:01
Once Bella gets her fangs, she'll be right there with him, forever.
02:06
That's what Twilight's about: eternal life. And eternal life isn't generally considered
02:11
scary or panic-inducing...
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...although we'd be frightened by the prospect of spending centuries with Bella, but maybe
02:17
that's just us. Poe's stories should leave you cowering under
02:21
your sheets at night, wishing you'd never even heard of
02:24
The Tell-Tale Heart.
02:27
Finishing Twilight either makes you want to take a trip to the bookstore as soon as possible
02:31
so you can buy New Moon...
02:32
...or convinces you that there is no hope left for humanity.
02:37
And that, friends, is the difference between Grade A Gothic literature and… sorta-Gothic
02:45
literature.
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