By: Theodore Ansink Edgar Allen Poe, born on January 19, 1809, is one of the greatest American writers of all time. “The story of Edgar Allen Poe’s life remains one of the most disputed and slandered in the pages of American biography, despite conscious attempts to revise the story and rehabilitate the life. Decadence and immorality, in the form of alcoholism, opium addiction, and his relationships with women, and prolific production, as a journalist, editor, poet, reviewer, critic, and fiction writer, have been emphasized as characterizing his brief life” (Lent 3). Poe’s many writings were greatly affected by his problems in life and his experiences. One such short story is “