im to a sublime universe, past whose borders his faculties could not go in their ordinary wide-awake operations. Not all of his creative insights came to him in this way, but it is to his experiences as a sleep-walker that we owe his vision of ethereal beauty—the vision that produced such poems as ‘The Sleeper,’ ‘Israfel,’ and ‘Lenore’” (Buranelli 27).Poe also drew upon the ideas of romanticism and a German idealism called Naturphilosphie. Poe used these two ideals to “smash imaginatively the work day world and then rebuild it just as imaginatively according to his own specifications.” Poe then took these ideals and formulated them into the words and philosophies which became “Eureka.” “Eureka” traces the evolution of the cosmos, describes its structure, and anticipates its fate at the end of time (Buranelli 28).Dreams, however, were not the only factor contributing to Poe’s writings. Poe drew mainly on his own personal experiences. As mentioned above, Poe’s foster father, Mr. Allan, was a harsh dictator. Other men used to laugh and make fun of him. Poe never got over his paternal father abandoning him as a small child. He always resented and hated the man for putting his mother through so much pain. Poe hated his foster father in much the same way. Most of the men in Poe’s life abandoned him at one time or another, which eventually led to a growing hatred. Poe tried not to be like other men; he tried to be loving and caring. He tried not to be like other men because he hated them so much. In his writings, Poe tries to make men look bad. The reader can see in his writings that men are usually doing something to an object or someone else. Two examples include, the cat in “Black Cat” is being treated unjustly by the man in the story, and Usher’s attempted murder of his sister in “The Fall of the Hou...