Edgar Allen Poe

Poe's life is full of bad events that could only end in personal disgust for life and especially the idea transcendentalist tried to pull off in a not so perfect world. One of his first bad experiences was the loss his father, who abandoned his family a year or so after he was born, and the death of his mother a year after that from consumption. Attending the University of Virginia he got involved in gambling and eventually gained debt that he had to ask his foster father to pay off claiming he had not given him enough money to survive while in school. He decided to drop out of the University, not feeling welcome in Richmond after learning his sweetheart Royster had married someone else. Eventually trying to survive on just writing alone, life proved a very tough task to survive furthering him into hardships. He married his cousin, who died two years after they had been together, bringing another tragic event.
Along with alcholism, I would say a number of events like these could make you kind of loopy and hateful towards society. For him, his intuition is something he feels he must fear rather than embrace therefore denying the philosphies of the transcendentalists.