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Examples Of Tragedy In Annabel Lee

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Love and Tragedy: Annabel Lee In Edgar Allen Poe’s final poem Annabel Lee, the narrator tells a story of his love for a maiden named Annabel Lee. The two live happily together in a kingdom by the sea until the angels become jealous of their love and send a cold chill that kills Annabel Lee and devastates the narrator. Throughout the first half of the poem, the narrator’s tone is jovial when reflecting on the love he shared with Annabel Lee but becomes more somber and dark when describing the present. Through the use of imagery and symbolism, Poe effectively illustrates powerful themes of love and tragedy present in the relationship between the narrator and Annabel Lee. Throughout Annabel Lee, Poe uses various types of imagery to express …show more content…

The most noteworthy example of this is the character Annabel Lee herself. Aside from Poe detailing how young and beautiful she is, little else is know about her. Since she does not speak and no description of her is provided in the poem, the image of Annabel Lee is left entirely up to the reader. Since she is the reason for the poem and the only thing the narrator thinks and talks about, the character of Annabel Lee also acts as symbol of pure, unimaginable beauty and love. With how high the narrator regards her and how far he is willing to go stay with her, she is almost elevated to a symbol of beauty and love that is unattainable and too good to be true. Another notable symbol found throughout the poem is the sea. In Annabel Lee, the sea is presented as being vast and cold, serving as an accurate reflection of the emptiness and despair felt by the narrator after losing Annabel. Starting from line 31 onward, the image of the sea progressively becomes more intense and ominous. In this line, the sea is flowing with demons that threaten to sever the relationship between the narrator and Annabel Lee— a stark shift from the mythical, storybook image of the sea with the kingdom presented in the second line of the

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