Edgar Allan Poe is known for writing famous tales of horror and mystery. I knew “The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether” was going to be story that was going to be mysterious and was going to be written sort of like a puzzle in which we would get an answer in the end of the story. As I was reading, it gave a spooky feeling because the narrator companion was only offering him to help him with the asylum doctor. In the beginning it seemed normal because it was an asylum so the stories everyone was sharing seemed weird, but normal in that context. It was also said they used the soothing system yet one time they rebelled suddenly against their doctors, tying them up and imprisoning them in the very cells that had once held these patients. I am surprised the narrator wasn’t scared or freaked out, knowing how close these patients were. Monsieur Maillard seemed the most sane, yet at the end we find out the writings of “Doctor Tarr” or “Professor Fether, was just fictional characters created by Monsieur Maillard. It seemed this asylum was filled with people who aren’t sane, but it seems even Monsieur Maillard wasn’t completely sane.
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I agree with you that the surprise answer is given at end of the story, but they did use foreshadowing to give us hints of what was going to happen. For example, the first signs were when the guest at the dinner started to say that they were animals and also the way that they were dressed. Their actions and clothing seemed way to exaggerated to be consider normal.
This story definitely had a good and suspenseful plot twist like you point out. It’s such a mysterious way the Poe decided to title the short story “The system of Doctor Tarr and professor Fether” because before reading the text we were probably expecting characters named Dr.Tarr and professor Fether but turns out that those were just methods of torture in that asylum. This was the “new” system that probably was the real replacement of the soothing system; and a lot information was unsaid but we can make many insinuations about what really happened in that crazy house.
-Briana E
I completely agree with you in the concept of the story. The author’s intention was going was based on something out of the normal. From the very beginning of the story it states, that the setting will be inside of a “private mad-house,” and you expect to read many descriptions about how an asylum or a “mad-house” typically refers to. But not entirely in this story, every character seems to be intelligent in a way, they might seem sane, but psychologically they are not.