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Analysis Of The Poem ' Annabel Lee ' By Edgar Allan Poe

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“Annabel Lee” is a poem written by Edgar Allan Poe about a man’s painful memory of his long-dead love, Annabel Lee. The narrator explains that he an Annabel had a love so intense it made the angels in heaven envious. Out of jealously the angels sent a cold wind that eventually killed Annabel. However, even death could not separate them because their souls are entwined with one another’s. He continues to tell the reader that he still loves her all these years later. In fact he loves her so much he sleeps next to her in her tomb every night. The speaker is simply a grieving husband who misses his wife dearly or is he? Maybe he is not even Annabel’s husband. Perhaps he is a fanatical stalker with a serious obsession that lingers even after Annabel’s death. To fully understand the poem the reader must read it twice. Poe reveals stanza by stanza that there is something off about the speaker. As the reader reads further along in the poem it becomes obvious that the narrator is explaining his distorted perception of reality and not the truth. The final lines of the poem causes the reader to stop and think about what the narrator has said and it becomes blatantly clear that this is the fantasy of a madman. The words the speaker used to describe Annabel, the description he gave of her funeral, and his actions at the end of the poem all are subtle hints dropped by Poe. The narrator begins his tale by saying “In a kingdom by the sea that a maiden there lived whom you may know by

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