The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Raven,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.” This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. Shadow, a Parable was originally proposed for a collection to be called Tales of the Folio Club, which was never published. The story is told by the Greek Oinos in a dark and "gloomy room”. Oinos and his six companions are mourning after the death of young Zoilus. The first page of this two-page story is allocated mainly to creating the mood and setting. Poe depicts a scene of heavy darkness and portrays "a sense of suffocation and, above all, that terrible state of existence which the nervous experience." The second page describes the mourners as "hysterical" with drink, singing and laughter. This ironic and strange twist haunts this reader. As the mourner’s laughter and singing fade, a "vague, and formless, and indefinite" shadow appears and leaves the mourners paralyzed with panic and fear. The breathless shadow speaks in the voice of "familiar accents of many thousands departed friends." Enjoy free online English audiobook “Shadow, a Parable”, a breathtaking novel by Edgar Allan Poe.
