Isolation and Community in Poe
Comparison and Contrast Between Edgar Allan Poe and John Donne
Donne and Poe both deal with man in isolation. The end is the same but the outlook is different.
It has been suggested that there is a connection between John Donne’s Meditation XVII, in which he writes the immortal lines “never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee” and Edgar Allan Poe’s poem The Bells. It has also been suggested that the Bible and Shakespeare’s The Tempest inspired Poe’s short story The Masque of the Red Death.
Poe knew the Bible well as the many references to Biblical Scripture and imagery in his works make clear. However, there is not enough Biblical continuity in the story to make that his most obvious influence.
Many writers use the Bible as a touchstone in their work as it is something that a large portion of their readers will be able to understand and identify, in which case most writer’s are influenced by the Bible. However, it is safe to suggest that Poe was influenced by two men who were contemporary to each other, William Shakespeare and John Donne. To read more about the parallels between Poe and Donne’s perspective on time and the tolling of the bells read For Whom Does Poe's Bell Ring?
Isolation in Poe
Much of Poe’s work is about isolated individuals, misfits who do not fit well in their social setting. Often these people commit atrocious crimes against those around them. They are isolated physically, emotionally, and morally from the world around them.
Shakespeare, Poe, and Donne on Community
As pointed out by others, Shakespeare’s Prospero lived on an island. By using the name Prospero, Poe clearly links himself to Shakespeare and clarifies the position of his character’s isolation when he shuts himself up in the abbey. But the idea of man attempting to isolate himself is not an idea unique to Shakespeare. Donne, a contemporary of Shakespeare wrote the timeless phrase “no man is an island” in his Meditation XVII.
The fact that the worldly Prospero shuts himself into an abbey provides an example for the lines near the opening of Donne’s meditation “The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all.”
Contrast between Poe and Donne’s idea of Community vs. the Individual
Prospero’s actions reflect this idea of catholicity both inside and out. Inside his retreat, his companions mimic his wild revels and attitudes. His actions belong to all. Outside his retreat, people die. While he has attempted to shut himself away from their suffering, the catholicity of humanity as a community confronts him in the form of the Red Death who lays claim to Prospero and his part in the church universal. We are bound together. To separate oneself from ones community doesn’t deny the fact that we all come to the same end.
Donne writes that “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less.” Prospero is a clod who attempts to remove himself from the community for which he is responsible. But he fails. As Donne so eloquently writes “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
According to Poe when Death’s work is complete, the clock quits and Death holds “illimitable dominion over all.” Here is where the divergence of ideas is the most clear. Donne ends on a jubilant note by saying that he makes “recourse to my God, who is our only security.” Where Poe ends and where Donne ends highlight the difference between the island and the community. On the island when one dies, death is complete and holds complete dominion. In the community, when death occurs, “one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language” (Donne).
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