ABSTRACT
Poe appears to have homes and prisons in mind as Monos recalls the “rectangular obscenities” littering the “Art-scarred surface of the Earth”. In this chapter, the author want to argue that one site in particular, Eastern State Penitentiary, the massive prison completed just outside Philadelphia in 1832, shaped Poe’s understanding of cities, homes, and the “widest ruin” evidenced in these sites. The image of the crowd figures prominently in texts describing the origins of solitary confinement. Poe underscores the self-defining quality of the gaze when the narrator finally stares the old man in the face. Poe structures the text to indicate how the “tomb” imagery of American prisons operates vis-a-vis urban narratives that inspire speculation on confinement. The question of “where” circles back from the narrator’s spiritual despair to this tale’s conceptions of “genius,” each of them bound up to uses and interpretations of specific places.
