Eleonora

1. Eleonora Edgar Allan Poe

2. What is Normal/Abnormal? • It strikes at the heart of our attitude toward madness today. We speak of what is “normal” and “abnormal,” not considering that what we designate “normal” is not necessarily a desirable state to all. • In The Politics of Experience (1967), psychiatrist R. D. Laing tells us that our “normal” person is simply someone who acts like everyone else and who has been “programmed” to act that way by his society. To act contrary to the “program” is to be labeled “abnormal,” “mad,” “sociopathic,” “psychopathic,” “schizophrenic,” or some other designation connoting our disapproval.

3. The narrator of “Eleonora” knows what “normal” people will think of his fantasy. • They do not regard fantasy as a legitimate mode of experience, “a particular way of relating to the world” that may have “its own validity, its own rationality.” In short, they will think him “mad.” So, facetiously, he capitulates to their judgment: “We will say, then,” he confesses, “that I am mad.” • With this irony the reader is assured that they do not have to credit the narrator’s story as truth.

4. Is the ‘Valley of the Many-coloured Grass’ real or fantasy? How do you know? Is this normal or mad? Why?

5. Having confessed his madness, the narrator tells us that his life has been divided into two main eras — an innocent period when “lucid reason” prevailed; and a period of experience when “shadow and doubt” manifested itself. • The first period covers his years living with Eleonora. • The second is his time in a ‘strange city’ and his marriage to Ermengarde. • Suggesting that it has to do with how the power of love operates during two important stages — namely, during adolescence and adulthood.

6. The age of childhood, in which the sense of shame is unknown, seems a paradise when we look back upon it later. • Do you ever wish you could return to certain points in your life because they seem easier- without stress, commitment or responsibilities? • Does the narrator?

7. Is Eleonora real or is she the narrator’s ‘dream girl’? • If so, how does that change our perception of the relationship between the narrator and Eleonora?

8. Many of Poe’s critics have noted that this story tells more than one story. The first is the basic plot line but the second, is the story of narrator’s development into adulthood where the expectation is that he will fit within definitions of normality. • “Although “fallen” from his savage state of innocence in which shame, fear, and a knowledge of evil were unknown, he has not, however, completely lost himself. Having developed a “schizoid defense,” he plays at being mad to throw those dangerous people, the “normals,” off the track.”

9. Symbolism of nature • Highlight the descriptions of the Valley during the period in which the narrator and Eleonora are falling in love. • Highlight the descriptions of the Valley following Eleonora’s death. • What does the environment represent?

10. Why does he feel no guilt? • Why do you think that the narrator doesn’t feel any guilt when he marries Ermengarde? • Is love a type of madness? • Is love dangerous?