Manuscript Found in a Bottle - 4/10

- Basically the story is written as if the reader found a bottle in the ocean full of, you guessed it, manuscripts (letters)

- The letters themselves are meant to be written by a guy who decided to journey out to sea and writes about all the strange events that happen while he’s out sailing

- Now this would probably be an interesting story, but Poe stuffed so many technical ship terms like ‘beam-ends’ and ‘ballast’ that I spent more time trying to figure out what he was describing rather than understanding the plot itself

- Because of this, all I really managed to grasp of the story is that there was a strange storm and then all the crew members started acting weird before some weird phenomenon happened in the ocean that killed everyone

- It wasn’t a bad story but I really couldn’t keep up with all the technical lingo (did people back then just casually know these terms?) which reduced my enjoyment a lot, but I liked the concept of the story being a series of letters left behind by someone at sea

Ligeia - 8/10

- Now I actually really liked this one, the story is told through the words of a man who is reminiscing about his deceased wife, Ligeia

- About 1/3 of this story is the narrator describing how absolutely infatuated he was with his wife and how pretty and smart she was, which introduced me to some of my favourite quotes of all time, such as:

‘They became to me twin stars of Leda, and I to them devoutest of astrologers.’ (in relation to describing Ligeia’s eyes)

‘In beauty of face no maiden ever equalled her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream - an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the phantasies which hovered about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos.’

- Yeah I wasn’t kidding when I said this guy was INFATUATED with her. After he finishes gushing about her, he starts to talk about her falling ill and that she recited some cryptic poem about God and death shortly before she died

- After Ligeia’s death, the narrator falls into a form of depression, moves out into a mansion in England and marries a woman named Rowena, who he doesn’t like nearly as much as Ligeia

- He then continues to describe his entire mansion in painful detail (like he describes EVERYTHING about this mansion, good god) and talks about how his new wife, Rowena, also eventually fell ill

- THIS IS WHERE IT GETS INTERESTING, Rowena becomes so severely ill that she eventually dies and gets wrapped up in bandages or something of the sort to preserve her body before her body can be collected to be buried 

- At night, the narrator goes into Rowena’s room and sits by her corpse while smoking opium (poor guy is really going through it at this point). As he sits there, he notices that Rowena’s body starts to breathe and move as if its alive, with some occasional sounds coming from her mouth. When this happens, the narrator is reminded of Ligeia and this whole fiasco continues for a while until eventually, the corpse gains enough life(?) to stand up by itself, at which point the bandages fall from its face and reveals the face of Ligeia *audience gasps*

- Yeah so this story had all the good stuff, beautiful descriptions (if not a bit excessive at times), an engaging storyline, and a nice creepy ending. Genuinely, I read this one very late at night and that whole part with the corpse coming back to life actually left me a bit antsy, in my opinion it was written quite well.

The Man that was Used Up - 6/10

- So uh, this entire story felt like a fever dream. So many sections of this story repeat over and over again that it makes you feel like you’re going mad. I think this was intended to be a mystery but it kind of read a bit more like a comedy because of that. Also Poe uses so many random French words and phrases in this one. I think it was like ‘fashionable’ to use random French in your conversation back then, and this one is written through the point of view of a guy who lives among upper class society (I think).

- Basically, the narrator is talking to his friend who mentions a guy called ‘Brevet Brigadier-General John A. B. C. Smith’ (he was referred using his full title like this throughout the entire story and it drove me up the wall). This John Smith guy apparently was very ‘heroic’ and killed some Native Americans in something called the ‘Bugaboo and Kickapoo Campaign’. Yeah nowadays I think he would be considered scum of the Earth, but seemingly back then this was a thing that people were praised for.

- In any case, the narrator hears of this ‘heroic’ act and thinks nothing too much of it until his friend mentions that there was something very strange about Smith’s appearance. The narrator then grows obsessed with finding out what this secret is and it becomes the entire plot of the story. He goes round to multiple people asking them to describe Smith but they somehow get interrupted every. single. time.

- Eventually, the narrator ends up going directly to Smith’s house to see for himself what the big secret is. He is greeted by Smith’s valet, who takes him to Smith’s room. The narrator hears Smith’s voice coming from a clump of clothes(?) on the floor, and slowly the valet starts to assemble Smith using various prosthetics. The narrator begins to realise what Smith’s secret is: he is the man that was used up.

- Now while the ending is quite cool and the general idea behind the plot is interesting, the entire build-up to this ending was a headache. Having to read the narrator go on a wild goose chase to figure out this secret while every other paragraph was repeated word for word made me feel like I was reading something straight out of Alice in Wonderland. Kind of interesting but a painful process to get to the good part, which only lasts for a paragraph or so once you get to it.

The Tell-Tale Heart - 9/10

- This is personally my favourite short story from Poe’s collection. I first read it in secondary school and have loved it ever since. It’s written in a way that is easier to understand than a lot of Poe’s other stories, and it’s not too descriptive either.

- This story essentially follows the narrator’s descent into madness as he grows obsessed with the idea of killing an elderly man who lives with him. He eventually manages to kill the man and hides the body under the floorboards. However, due to the noise he made, the police are alerted and come over to his house to see what’s going on.

- The narrator, satisfied with the murder he just carried out successfully, gets cocky and invites the policemen into his home. However, as the policemen sit and chat amongst themselves, the narrator grows increasingly more and more paranoid that the policemen actually know that he murdered the man, and that they are just toying with him. Throughout this whole ordeal, the narrator becomes more and more convinced that he can hear the dead man’s heart beating from under the floorboards, and he becomes convinced that the police can hear this too, despite them not showing any signs of doing so.

- Eventually, in a fit of panic and desperation, the narrator flings open the floorboards and reveals to the policemen the corpse of the elderly man, as well as his ‘hideous heart’.