Short stories, one of the major genres of writing, is a work of fiction about imagined event and characters. They are made up of five crucial elements: character, setting, conflict, plot, and theme. A character is a person or animal who is active in the story. The setting is the time and place during which the actions take place. The plot is a series of events and the actions the character takes. Last, but not least, the conflict is the struggle occurring in the story. There are five types of struggles: the main character may struggle against another important character, the forces of nature, society, or him or herself (“5 Important Elements of a Short Story”). One American poet who exhibits great skill in combining these elements is Edgar Allan Poe.
Poe, after he was dismissed from the army, moved to New York City in 1831 where he struggled as a writer. It wasn’t until 1835 that he finally attained a job as an editor of the Southern Literary Messenger due to a contest he won for his story, “The Manuscript Found in a Bottle.” Despite successfully increasing its circulation from 500 to 3500 copies, Poe left the paper within two years, complaining that the salary was inadequate. He later moved to Philadelphia where his first volume of short stories, “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque,” was published around 1839. However, he attained no money. One year later, Poe joined George Graham as an editor for Graham’s Magazine. During the two years he worked there, Poe published his first detective story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and challenged readers to send in cryptograms, which he always solved. He left around 1842 because he wanted to start his own magazine, The Stylus. He sold some booklets containing his short stories, but it was not enough money to support his family. Poe moved back to New York in 1844 and became an editor at The Broadway Journal. A year later, however, the journal ran out of money and he was out of a job again. Soon after, his wife...