Edgar Allan Poe Annotated

The theme of the poem is hard to find, yet a common theme in literature. In “Alone” Edgar Allan Poe shows that not everyone is the same. He shows this in his fist 8 lines, as he explains how as a child he knew he never fit in. He also shows that everyone lives different lives because on line 8 Poe writes about having to love alone, after the loss of his parents. Poe also shows that everyone is different in their outlook on life. This is clear from line 9 until the end of the poem. Such as when he writes, “(When the rest of Heaven was blue/ Of a demon in my view--” (Poe 21-22). This shows that Poe saw the evil in life, whereas others saw the good, thus further proving how not everyone is the same. Thanks to Poe's use of elements and the theme, I was easily able to evaluate the poem.

Poe’s short story has a lot of symbolism and it all leads to the theme that no one can escape death. Poe uses a lot of symbolism in this story. The author uses different rooms and colors to represent the stages of life. “That at the eastern extremity was hung for example in blue-and vividly blue were its window.

The heartache is palpable from the protagonist as he longs for his lost lover Lenore. Poe utilizes repetition and colours in this piece as well. The raven, vast darkness of the door opened, the purple curtains rustling uncertainly. These are all symbolic of emotions felt by the protagonist and transmitted onto the reader. The purple excited the longing man showing youthfullness and liveliness. He was sadly greeted with empty darkness when he opened the door; this darkness was amplified by the ivory raven appearing and repeating

Poe uses imagery and diction to portray the narrator’s state of mind. Poe’s descriptive language demonstrates the narrator’s sorrowful life without Lenore, and Poe’s choice of words reveal his fear towards the sinister raven. For the sorrowful and fearful narrator, the whole world seems to be bleak and terrifying. Everything, even darkness, reminds him of his lost love,

He was not always convinced that simplicity was a desirable aesthetic and did not believe that you could find elegance in it. He still liked reading simple writings and appreciated all styles from the viewpoint of a writer. The death of Poe’s wife put resentment in Poe’s heart. In “Annabel Lee,” he writes of a love so deep that even “the angels not half as happy in heaven went envying her and me.” (Pollin 288) The only way he knew how to ease his pain was to put it into words. Annabel Lee became the expression of his very soul. Poe wrote that everything in the natural world reminded him of his beloved wife. The final stanza shows the true feelings of Edgar Allen Poe. He pours his entire soul into this single stanza.

Allusion is one of the many craft elements Poe uses to create his dark and scary mood. “Is on the Night's Plutonian shore!” (“Raven”). This is an allusion to the Roman god of the underworld. The adjective "Plutonian" is meant to make us think of all the scary things that one associates with the underworld: darkness, death, the afterlife etc. This example shows his use of allusion impacting the text’s mood. “Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door” (“Raven”). In line 41 Poe references Pallas Athena by saying that the raven perches on a bust of Pallas that he has hanging above his door. Pallas Athena is the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom. This is another allusion that helps build the mood of a dark and wise setting. All of the allusions provide a string and dark mood by helping build it. Allusions can also cause imagery when referencing to other real life things helps you

From the first look at Alone from Edgar Allan Poe, the character felt abandoned, alone and need love. From the beginning, he would sound like a kid whom been isolated by everyone else. No one respect his unique and singularity and no one love him. The truth is, it wasn’t, and he isn’t being deserted. The whole poem about this own ideal of ignoring others, made up his own world of grief and isolation by thinking no one can understand his unique singularity and nothing he can related to, therefore he tried to bring suffer to himself made him think he is alone.

Poe uses the extended metaphor to show all the contrasting emotions around him, but he remains neutral. Then, “in the dawn Of a most stormy life-”, “stormy” or the aspect of a storm is used as a metaphor to show his emotions. The metaphor is also used many times in the entire poem which shows him remaining neutral even when there are so many different emotions around him. The contradictions represent the contrasting emotions in the extended metaphor. In the end, the metaphor “Of a demon in my view” is used to show the results of isolating himself from everyone else because of his neutrality.

In the final stanza Poe writes that everything in this natural world reminds him of his beloved and that his heart still longs for his beloved wife. "and so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride, in her sepulcher there by the sea- in her tomb by the sea". In this stanza the true feelings of Edgar Allen Poe are clearly evident. He pours his entire soul into this single stanza. He cries out to the world that his one true love is really gone; but he is only truly crying out to those who are able to view the tragedy of life and death through his eyes. Poe’s belief that fate somehow holds a grudge against him for finding love and happiness with a 13 year old girl is begging to be justified.

There is also an extremely strong use of metaphor in this poem. In lines 3 and 4 he writes, “I could not bring my passions from a common spring.” Here he uses “common spring” as a metaphor for emotion and emotional sources. By describing how when he experienced this emotional source he had a very different reaction he emphasizes how entirely different his own perception was. In the second half Poe illustrates how he saw and felt this demon in everything that he experienced.

He is concerned for Irene, asking her if she is afraid of being in this place. He wonders why she is dreaming in this place, and of what. The speaker says that she must be from a far away land, because even the trees are left to wonder about her. He comments on the peculiarity of how white her skin is, how strangely she is dressed, as well as the length of her hair is off setting to him. He is addressing her as if she will respond to him, which is another use of apostrophe. He is seemingly disoriented by her lack of courteousness; she will not answer his questions. The introduction to Irene being placed in the second stanza is important because it allows for a mood to be created, for the poem to establish an emotional investment for the speaker; we must first get a vivid image of the external surroundings. Poe constructs a mystical setting for his poem which conveys the music in the speaker’s soul. He does this by using alliteration in the first stanza, “And, Softly, dripping, drop by drop. The sensuality of these descriptions conveys how he feels about Irene. Once we are introduced to the slumbering beauty we can see he is concerned for her soul. His probing questions with an expectation of an answer haunt us into the realization that his love transcends through the confines of death. Poe uses iambic tetrameter in this poem, which allows the flow of the poem to captivate the reader into this fantastic setting. The rhyme scheme of

In “Alone,” Poe chooses words with well used symbolic connotations to succinctly reference larger ideas without having to explicitly express them. Spring, dawn, stormy and others are used not to say that Poe’s passions actually emerged from a spring, but by using this terminology, he invokes the larger ideas that go with them. Springs are connote a source or purity, therefore “I could not bring My passions from a common spring” (Poe 4) means that he did not find happiness nor fulfillment from the sources others did. Similarly “dawn” (9) does not mean the sun’s rise in the morning, but rather ideas of beginnings. “Stormy” (10) refers to his troubled, unusual life. By relying on the connotation of these and other words, Poe keeps his diction

Storms often depict sadness, which goes along with the tone. Finally, Poe clarifies the tone as brooding when he uses the closing lines as “When the rest of Heaven was blue- Of a demon in my view” (Poe 21-22), using the word demon in emphasis in the final closing line. Demons are stereotyped with dark colors, horns, and pointed tails; a symbol for evil and is presented as a glooming figure in heaven, since they were once angels. The way they are symbolized helps the word create the darkness in the tone. By the tone, in this poem, leaves the reader with a feeling of emptiness and isolation, which is assisted by another literary device:

Furthermore, Poe shows that he longs for the reader to be with Annabel, because she was adored and loved by all. This diction gives the poem a romantic feel, which is outside of its gloomy morbid tone, showing his true love for his deceased. This shows that Poe wants the reader to feel a different side of the poem, most of the tone of the poem is dark and extremely morbid, but by saying this he adds a bit of relief to the readers, showing them that it’s not all bad. The most dramatic illustration of this poem is when Poe uses the lines in the poem that suggest imagery such as “For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams of the beautiful Annabel Lee” “and the starts never rise, but I feel the bright eyes” This imagery shows the reader what Annabel Lee was like, it glamorizes her showing the reader that she was an incredibly amazing and beautiful person. The diction in Annabel Lee cannot be any more applauding; by doing this he sets the tone for the whole poem, which makes the poem so wonderful in the first place.

Edgar Allan Poe most likely wrote this poem for the public, so they might understand what it's like, living the childhood he did, and perhaps partly for himself, finding poetry a way to express his emotions in a way that would make sense. The end-rhyme pattern probably isn't as much importance, for when younger children think of poems, they think of rhyme. Perhaps Poe thought that this poem could be used to think that there are some unfortunate people out there, or he wrote this poem just to express himself. Either way, it has been read for years, and will probably be read for more years to come, just like all of his other