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Deep into Darkness Peering Essay

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Edgar Allan Poe is considered to be one of America’s most prominent poets. While his reputation precedes him, there is little that is actually known about the famous author. His life can only be accurately summed up by a few historical accounts and a series of letters written in his own hand. These, of course, do not even come close to describing the man behind the pen, as it were. One critic writes, “monomania can easily be developed over the motely tragedy of the personal life of Poe, so deeply buried under a shifting mass of conflicting rumours, echoes of rumours, and downright lies” (Bradsher 241). He was, socially, a private man, but he gave the world something more interesting and powerful that can be told in letters and …show more content…

Robert Law writes of Poe’s use of eloquent language and structural intentions to associate each stanza with a certain emotion (343). This allows Poe to expand on certain ideas while the reader can focus on the words and feel the emotions he intended at the same time. By studying this extraordinary piece of literature, we can understand Poe’s intention with the piece, which leads me to believe that he viewed death as a part of life. It was just another chapter, in which he was reunited with his lost love. This knowledge gave Poe a semblance of hope in death that he conveyed with this poem. Not only is that sense of peace obvious by looking at the words poem, you can almost feel the calmness that emanates from its structure. The stanzas, sounds, and rhyme scheme make it almost melodious. Werner writes that the “arrangement of [sounds] has much to do with the musical qualities of verse” (159). The Raven is a more sinister poem that Poe creates where the opposite of the perspective of death in Annabel Lee is true. By using semi-repetitive lines with the same negative emotional connotation, such as “quoth the raven, ‘nevermore’,” (Selections 27) he sketches out a dark picture with fear and discontented longing over the death of his beloved. Vainly I had sought to borrow

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