美國短篇小說鬼才愛倫坡擅長於創作驚悚恐怖的故事，而其中最頻繁的主題便是死亡。愛倫坡寫死亡，手法細膩，從不同的角度來看死亡帶給人的痛苦與莫名的快感；對於他而言，死是人類所懼怕但也渴求的經驗。

愛倫坡的人生觀，如一條軸線貫穿了他所有的作品。他認為，宇宙的進化過程是不斷的出生與死亡。宇宙分子不斷地擴張自己，為了與其他分子結合，回歸母體。如同人類，從出生時，便不斷追尋最終的死亡。坡的死亡故事在在佛洛伊德生與死的驅力相互呼應。其作品中的人物，再懼怕死亡的同時，潛意識確強烈地追尋毀滅。在兩種趨力的交互作用下，強烈的生的驅力，排擠死亡的驅力，使得故事中的主人公把毀滅的慾望投射至他人。因此，波作品中的腳色若非自我傷害便是具有虐待傾向。

愛倫坡的故事之所以的到讀者極大的共鳴，是由於他到出了人性中矛盾黑暗的一面。大部分的人皆能感受自身對死亡的恐懼，間或察覺自己乖戾的天性。因此，自十九世紀以來，他的作品在讀者間得到熱烈迴響。而愛倫坡對於藝術創作的影響，迄今仍不能忽視。二時一世紀的現在，人仍不斷探討生死的問題。在當代的藝術作品中，不乏以死亡、變態心理作為主題的作品。

雖然在十九世紀，愛倫坡被批評為異端，而他超越時代的論點卻影響到兩個世紀後的今天。

Among topics of horror, Edgar Allan Poe is particularly obsessed with "death." While the motifs of death can be found throughout Poe's poems and short stories, his attitude toward death is rather ambiguous. Instead of being absolutely dark and despairing, Poe's writing about "death" also shows the hope for another existence. Therefore, most of Poe's works present both fear and desire of death. The fear of death is a natural instinct of all human beings because we do not know what death is and where death will lead us. Being afflicted with traumatic experiences, Poe writes about death to relieve his sadness. He envisions a realm of death where there is no pain and sorrow. He writes about near-death experiences and details the extreme fear when one faces approaching death. His protagonists either experience the horrible dying process or witness others dying. The former is treated in stories of "premature burial" and the latter in those of "dying beautiful women." All these provide Poe chances to preview the feelings of death.
Nevertheless, the fear of death is always accompanied by the desire for it. Poe indicates in Eureka that all beings in this Universe long for their destruction so as to reunify with the "Divine One," which is the preparation for rebirth. Thus human beings seek for self destruction unconsciously despite the fear of death. The destructive impulse, in Poe's terminology, is "the imp of the perversity." Poe's protagonists, under the influence of the perverse impulse, tend to vex themselves and even terminate themselves. They either blindly provoke self destruction or manage to destroy their double figures who bear the same traits as they do. The former are like the madman in "The Tell-Tale Heart," and the latter like William Wilson and Montresor. In whichever kind of story, the main characters cannot help bring torments to themselves eventually.
Poe's horror stories send a message: the fear and desire of death coexist in human life. As Freud later points out, there are respectively life instinct and death instinct. Although Poe was wrongly received by his American contemporaries and considered morbid and indecent, his literary innovation leaves great influence upon modern art, leading to the recognition of human weakness, the dark side of the unconscious and the pessimistic attitudes toward human life.

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