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Imagery And Symbols In Edgar Allen Poe's Annabel Lee

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“We loved with a love that was more than love, I and my Annabel Lee.”(Poe 11-13) The speaker’s devotion to Annabel Lee was unlike many others definition of love. Nothing could come between them, not even death itself. In Edgar Allen Poe’s “Annabel Lee”, he conveys the speaker’s everlasting affection toward Annabel Lee through the use of imagery and symbols. There are many instances in the text where the word or phrase is an example of imagery and symbolism. Like many of Poe’s works, “Annabel Lee” focuses heavily on the use of imagery to paint a vivid image in the readers mind. The phrase “Kingdom by the sea” is repeated many times throughout the poem and gives the reader a distinct illustration of the setting of the poem. The word kingdom gives the impression that the story takes place in a faraway land, long ago. Poe does not ever specifically describe the setting as to leave some of it up to the reader’s imagination. The next example, the angels, changes names many times in the poem. They go from being called …show more content…

“A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling my beautiful Annabel Lee” (Poe 15-16). The wind and the angels are both symbols of death. Angel are often thought in many religions to be the ones to usher you to heaven. In most cases they are seen as helpful guides but in this text they are viewed more as thieves. The speaker blames them for the death of his love. The sepulcher is a symbol of death as well, it is the physical thing that is keeping him from Annabel Lee. It stands for his inability to reach her; she is dead now and he can no longer be with her. The sea in the story is a symbol of his loneliness. In the beginning it seemed as though it were just him and Annabel Lee “In this Kingdom by the Sea” but once she is taken from him he is just left with the sea (Poe 9). The ocean is seen by many as a vast, empty, and unending space and that I show the speaker feels without his

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