Poe Openings

Chief among Edgar Allan Poe's talents as a writer is his ability to seize hold of the reader's attention right from the start of a piece.  The openings lines of Poe's stories instantly establish a Gothic atmosphere, or the mental instability of the narrator; they create curiosity by hinting at extraordinary events to be related.  Here's a sampling (no, I won't say "Poe-pourri") of some of the author's best beginnings:


We had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag.  For some minutes the old man seemed too much exhausted to speak.

"Not long ago," said he at length, "and I could have guided you on this route as well as the youngest of my sons; but, about three years past, there happened to me an event such as never happened before to mortal man--or at least such as no man ever survived to tell of--and the six hours of deadly terror which I then endured have broken me up body and soul.  You suppose me a very old man--but I am not.  It took less than a single day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and to unstring my nerves, so that I tremble at the least exertion, and am frightened at a shadow.  Do you know I can scarcely look over this cliff without getting giddy?"

--"A Descent into the Maelstrom"



Of course I shall not pretend to consider it any matter for wonder, that the extraordinary case of M. Valdemar has excited discussion.  It would have been a miracle had it not--especially under the circumstances.  Through the desire of all parties concerned, to keep the affair from the public, at least for the present, or until we had further opportunities for investigation--through our endeavors to effect this--a garbled or exaggerated account made its way into society, and became the source of many unpleasant misrepre-sentations; and, very naturally, of a great deal of disbelief.

It is now rendered necessary that I give the facts--as far as I comprehend them myself.

--"The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar"



During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.  I know not how it was--but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.

--"The Fall of the House of Usher"



True!--nervous--very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?  The disease had sharpened my senses--not destroyed--not dulled them.  Above all was the sense of hearing acute.  I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth.  I heard many things in hell.  How, then, am I mad?  Hearken! and observe how healthily--how calmly I can tell you the whole story.

--"The Tell-Tale Heart"



For the most wild yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief.  Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence.
Yet, mad I am not--and very surely I do not dream.  But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburden my soul.

--"The Black Cat"



The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as best I could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.  You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat.  At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitively settled--but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk.  I must not only punish, but punish with impunity.  A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser.  It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.

--"The Cask of Amontillado"



The chateau into which my valet had ventured to make forcible entrance, rather than permit me, in my desperately wounded condition, to pass a night in the open air, was one of those piles of commingled gloom and grandeur which have so long frowned among the Appennines, not less in fact than in the fancy of Mrs. Radcliffe.  To all appearance it had been temporarily and very lately abandoned.

--"The Oval Portrait"



The "Red Death" had long devastated the country.  No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous.  Blood was its Avatar and its seal--the redness and horror of blood.

--"The Masque of the Red Death"



Ye who read are still among the living; but I who write shall have long since gone my way into the region of shadows.  For indeed strange things shall happen, and secret things be known, and many centuries shall pass away, ere these memorials be seen of men.  And, when seen, there will be some to disbelieve, and some to doubt, and yet a few who will find much to ponder in the characters here graven with a stylus of iron.

--"Shadow: A Parable"



Let me call myself, for the present, William Wilson.  The fair page lying before me need not be sullied with my real appellation.  This has been already too much an object for the scorn--for the horror--for the detestation of my race.  To the uttermost regions of the globe have not the indignant winds bruited its unparalleled infamy?  Oh, outcast of all outcasts most abandoned!--to the earth art thou not for ever dead? to its honors, to its flowers, to its golden aspirations?--and a cloud, dense, dismal, and limitless, does it not hang eternally between thy hopes and heaven?

--"William Wilson"