Stephen King’s horror short story The Man in the Black Suit and Edgar Allan Poe’s poem The Raven are prime examples of classic mystical literature. The mystical genre is notable for its complexity in writing since it is necessary to both intrigue the audience and convey the main idea using anxiety and fear. A gloomy environment and unsettling tone are used to strengthen the effect on the reader. With the help of this, the authors manage to hook the audience and make them reflect on what they have read on several occasions. The aim of this paper is to analyze these two works in the context of their theme, symbols, titles, and how alike or dissimilar are the two pieces.
The theme of both pieces has common principles: both characters have lost a close person in the past. In Stephen King’s story, the boy lost his brother, and in The Raven poem, the main character yearns for his deceased beloved woman. Borges stated that “Edgar Poe starts by alleging that phonetic motives indicated to him the use of the melancholic refrain nevermore (Nunca más)” (140). Indeed, the repetition of this word adds a depressing effect not only to the character but also to the reader, emphasizing the despair of the situation. Stephen King also used a theme of a loss of a close person, as well as the manipulation of the Devil with a child’s experiences and fears. In particular, the tall men who appeared near the boy said to Gary that: “Your mother is dead” (King 10). Thus, the Devil affected the boy’s sacramental thing, namely the parents.
In both works, one may notice bright symbols that are connected to the overall themes of the stories. Moreover, there is one common symbol for the two pieces: the symbol of death. In The Raven, this symbol is characterized by a second main character, namely the raven. Thereby, one can often notice ravens in the cemetery, usually, their croaking is used to incite anxiety and mystery. Wood claims, that “Stephen King’s writing is securely rooted in the great American tradition that glorifies spirit-of-place and the abiding power of narrative” (20). Thus, the spirit-of-place concept formulates the author’s realistic style, namely transferring the atmosphere of the place and the situation through the bright description. In The Man in the Black Suit, a foul odor, namely the smelling of sulfur, is the symbol of death, as an epitome of combustion or cadaverous smell. Using the reader’s senses, forcing one to imagine the smell of sulfur unconsciously, Stephen King masterfully places the audience in the atmosphere.
Titles also represent a similar principle in works, namely, a direct indication of the object of attention in the text. Moreover, the appearance of these two objects (the Man in the Suit and the Raven) is unexpected and frightening for the characters. Using The Man in a Black Suit title, and not, for example, the Devil in a Black Suit or the Beast, King emphasizes one of the themes of the work: namely, the incarnation of the Devil in a man. In Edgar Poe’s poem, the title plays the role of a hook, forcing the viewer to think about what is connected with the raven. (Gioia 7). It is stated by the fact that the raven only appears after 38 lines: “Open here I flung the shutter, when with many a flirt and flutter, in there stepped a stately Raven” (Poe 8). Moreover, the author attracts attention to the bird as a source of the main idea using such a title.
It is believed that Edgar Poe wrote his famous poem while visiting the Barkhataysky pond in 1843. Perhaps the main symbol was inspired by the crows that lived in that location. The symbols, theme, and style of the poem are associated with the author’s period when the success of his previous works inspired Edgar Poe. It is constituted by a diligent, meticulous approach to work so that both the general public and critics would appreciate it. Gioia notes that “even today, “The Raven” still remains one of the few poems millions of Americans can quote from memory” (7). Stephen King’s story was written during his admiration by Nathaniel Hawthorne and the short story Young Goodman Brown. Moreover, the story is based on an allegedly real story about an acquaintance who saw a man in a black suit with orange eyes. Each author’s approach to the theme is formulated by using symbols and bright descriptions.
Talking about the mood and tone of the pieces, one can find the main principles of difference. Thus, in The Man in the Black Suit, the prevailing tone and mood was the transmission of the main character’s fear, emotions, and feelings. One may often notice phrases like: “I was more afraid than I could ever write down, more afraid than I want to remember… But I do” (King 11). By vividly portraying the protagonist’s feelings, Stephen King makes the reader experience the same emotions. Kopley identified that “here is the ground situation for the entire poem The Raven: at midnight, a student in his chamber is seeking solace from his books” (378). In other words, Poe focuses more on syntax, expressing an idea in words rather than in detailed description, as Steven King does. This articulates the main difference in tone, mood, and style of the authors.
Further, there are differences in the settings of the works, which are formulated by the place and conditions of events. In the poem, the place of events is the room, and the time is night, in contrast, in The Man in the Black Suit, the events occur in nature during the day. The main difference in the plot is characterized by the fact that in Stephen King’s novel, the main character remembers and tells about what was experienced in the past. Moreover, Stephen King is the major contemporary author who has mastered the craft of horror and intense storytelling (Spignesi 27). It formulates what the critics say about Steven’s theme feature: creating a fearful, realistic, and intense story. In contrast, Edgar Poe focuses more on the deep meaning of the words and how the audience would decipher them.
To conclude, the difference in themes and styles of the authors articulates the difference in the meanings of the stories. Thus, the main meaning of The Raven is to convey the tragedy of the situation, using the repetition of the phrase “nevermore” the author tried to express by it the full fatality. The main meaning of Stephen King’s story is to convey an idea using a detailed and realistic display of the settings and emotions of the characters. Moreover, The Man in the Black Suit used the technique of manipulating the sacred feelings of the character: when the child was told about the death of close persons.
Works Cited
Borges, Jorge. “The Genesis of Poe’s “The Raven”. Poe Studies, vol. 53, 2020. Project Muse, Web.
Gioia, Dana. “An Overview of “The Raven”.Poetry for Students, Gale. Gale Literature Resource Center, Web.
King, Stephen. The Man in the Black Suit. Philtrum Press, 1994.
Kopley, Richard. “New Traces in “The Raven” and the Dedication to The Raven and Other Poems.”The Edgar Allan Poe Review, vol. 22 no. 2, 2021, p. 379-383. Project Muse, Web.
Poe, Edgar. The Raven. S. Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1883.
Spignesi, Stephen. Stephen King, American Master: A Creepy Corpus of Facts about Stephen King & His Work. Permuted Press+ORM, 2018.
Wood, Rocky. Stephen King: A Literary Companion. McFarland, 2017.