Edgar Allan Poe Trivia

1. Most of Poe's stories deal with the supernatural and imagination. Nevertheless, the narrator has a peculiar strategy to introduce us to some of the stories. Which strategy does he use?

From Quiz The Works of Edgar Allan Poe

Answer: The narrator tries to shows us facts instead of narrating the supernatural elements of the story

As an attempt to make readers believe in the narrator, Poe uses this strategy in a peculiar way. The majority of his stories deal with the supernatural, the imagination, mystery, doubt and madness. As the narrator tries to show us the facts, we are induced to believe in his words more easily. We can see this, for example, in "The Facts in The Case of M.Valdemar", "The Black Cat", "The Premature Burial" or "The Mesmeric Revelation".

From Quiz The Black Cat

Answer: First Person

The narrator is an "unreliable narrator" because of his questionable sanity. Clues that a point of view of a story or book is in first person include the repeated use of "I" and "we".

From Quiz Poe's Poems Pwn Posers

Answer: The Raven

In "The Raven", an unnamed lover who, while pondering many a work of yore and lamenting the death of his beloved Lenore, is taunted by a talking raven, who after rapping, tapping at his chamber door, will leave him nevermore. As Poe was writing "The Raven", his wife Virginia lay dying of tuberculosis, and so the work conveys loss that Poe knew all too well as his mother, brother, and foster mother had all died of TB, and his wife would be next. Poe borrowed the idea of a talking raven from a the Dickens novel 'Barnaby Rudge' (1840), and the meter from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem "Lady Geraldine's Courtship" (1844). (Poe dedicated his volume 'The Raven and Other Poems' (1845) to Browning, whom he admired greatly.) After publication in 'The New York Mirror', "The Raven" was a smash, quickly copied and parodied, and it made Poe a celebrity, but he remained poor as a churchmouse, all the more. Paul Gaugin painted "Nevermore" in reference to the poem. From "The Raven": "Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting- "Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken!--quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!" Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

From Quiz Edgar Allan Poe Stories Quiz

Answer: The Tell-Tale Heart

This is one of his more popular stories. The man does end up murdering the old man. He suffocates him under a mattress, cuts up the body, and hides it under the floorboards. Police come, since someone reported hearing a scream. The man tells them the old man is gone, and it was himself that screamed. Then he freaks out because he thinks he hears the dead man's heart beating under the floor, causing him to tell the police he killed him and buried him under the floorboards.

From Quiz Quote the Raven, Nevermore!

Answer: The Raven

The whole poem is 18 sections long and has six lines per section. It tells the story of a man who is visited by a ghost in raven form.

From Quiz The Gold-Bug

Answer: Sullivan's Island, South Carolina

Sullivan's Island is just outside Charleston. While stationed at Fort Moultrie in his short stint in the Army, the Boston-born Poe heard of the island and its legends of buried pirate treasure. In the story, Legrand, a New Orleans native, has retreated there after suffering bankruptcy.

From Quiz Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" Part 1

Answer: Sad and tired

The opening line of the poem reads: "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary." Poe wastes no time setting the tone of the poem, which is all expressed through the memory of the narrator. It was a dark sad night; and, the narrator remembers having pondered while being very tired. Poe is also able to cleverly rhyme the two words "dreary" and "weary" in the opening line of "The Raven."

From Quiz The Tales and Poems of Poe

Answer: insulted him

One of Poe's most well known tales of revenge, "The Cask of Amontillado" was first published in "Godey's Lady's Book" in November 1846.

From Quiz The Haunted Palace

Answer: good angels

"In the greenest of our valleys By good angels tenanted" Unfortunately, this didn't last for long. Prince Prospero and Trippetta are from various Poe short stories.

From Quiz The Murders in the Rue Morgue

Answer: Chess is a mechanical game which relies mostly on concentration and memory. Card games involve a lot of intangibles and rely on deductive reasoning.

Poe points out that card players can gain a distinct advantage over their opponents by observing their mannerisms, temperaments and tendencies in different situations. He states that chess is a "frivolous" game and that the intellect of chess players is overrated.

From Quiz "Hop-Frog" by Edgar Allan Poe

Answer: Jokes and joking.

"To tell a good story of the joke kind, and to tell it well were the surest road to his favor." A queen or a prince were not mentioned.

From Quiz A Descent into the Maelstrom

Answer: Norway

He told it from the peak of "the loftiest crag."

From Quiz "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe

Answer: The cat bit his hand.

After the narrator came home, much intoxicated, he wanted the cat to avoid him at all costs. The narrator then seized the cat and in his fright, the cat bit his hand, causing the narrator to become furious and hurt the cat.

From Quiz The Purloined Letter

Answer: 1844

'The Purloined Letter' was first published in 'The Gift: A Christmas and New Year's Present' for 1844.

From Quiz Edgar Allan Poe Realty

Answer: The Tell-Tale Heart

This short story is a classic about pure evil.

From Quiz The Works of Edgar Allan Poe

Answer: Vulture

The old man's eye was pale blue with a film over it, and the narrator described it as a vulture's eye.

From Quiz S.S. Poe

Answer: Awaiting his execution

"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 am I not--and very surely do I not dream. But tomorrow I die, and today I would unburden my soul."

From Quiz Edgar Allan Poe: Tales and Poems

Answer: Dream

The last line of this poem is also the title of the poem.

From Quiz The Pit and the Pendulum

Answer: I was sick-sick unto death with that long agony...

The prisoner at the beginning of "The Pit and the Pendulum" is bound and taken to a prison where he later receives "the sentence-the dread sentence of death."

From Quiz Edgar Allan Poe and his short stories

Answer: Lady Madeline

Lady Madeline, believed to be dead by her brother, is put into a tomb inside the House of Usher. Unfortunately, she is still alive, and makes her way out of the tomb to her brother. Because of her sickness and his fear, both brother and sister die.

From Quiz "The Cask of Amontillado" by E.A. Poe

Answer: a thousand

"A thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as best I could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge." This wasn't meant to be a trick question, honest! ;-) This is the first line of the story, and it is from here on that we learn exactly what Fortunato has done to insult the narrator and how he plans his revenge.

From Quiz "The Tell-Tale Heart"

Answer: sharpened them

"The madness had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute..."

From Quiz The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

Answer: Alone

This has always been one of my favorite poems. For a while, I was able to relate to it quite well.

From Quiz Poe's "Annabel Lee"

Answer: by the sea

"It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea, that a maiden there lived whom you may know by the name of Annabel Lee."

From Quiz Poe's "Ulalume"

Answer: October

"It was night in the lonesome October of my most immemorial year..." The gloomy poem is set in the month of October, which is appropriate for its imagery of skies that are "ashen and sober" and leaves that are "withering and sere". The narrator mentions the "night of all nights in the year", which may be a reference to Hallows' Eve, or Halloween, the night of all souls.

From Quiz Quote the Raven... 'Nevermore'

Answer: Once upon a midnight dreary

The first line of 'The Raven' begins with 'Once upon a midnight dreary...'. This sets the stage for the chilling poem to come.

From Quiz The Stories of Edgar Allan Poe

Answer: The Pit and the Pendulum

This wonderful story really gives you a feeling of what the Spanish Inquisition must have been like.

From Quiz More of Poe's First Lines

Answer: The City In The Sea

'The City In The Sea' was first published in 'The Raven and Other Poems' in 1845.

From Quiz Edgar Allan Poe's First Lines

Answer: The Bridal Ballad

'The Bridal Ballad' was first published in 'The Raven and Other Poems' (1845).

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Last Updated Jul 05 2025 5:47 AM

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