Poe is unconcerned with the broad social issues of his time. His protagonists are, by and large, not social figures. Instead, they seem to live cut off from society, detached from the large world around them and either content to, or doomed to, live alone. It may be that the short story form itself, which Poe is most credited with creating in America, is a form that is less suited to dealing with social issues than it is with solitary people. The novel, which is able to place characters within a realistic external world, is more open to the depiction of social issues than the short story, which usually focuses on one or two characters confronting psychological and metaphysical issues.