Poetic Qualities as Signs of Loss in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee”Edgar Allan Poe's classic poem, "Annabel Lee," is a very deep and emotional poem,clearly trying to convey a lot of universal emotion to his reader. During his lifetime, Poe had lost his young wife, his mother, and his stepmother, so in other words, many of the women that Poe had so loved in his life had died, and this was something that had deeply troubled Poe, leading him to an eventual state of depression. In the poem "Annabel Lee," many of these feelings of love and loss that Poe felt towards his wife and other women is all transmitted to the reader.Through the use of various forms of poetic qualities, tone, and imagery, Poe speaks about a universal theme of love and loss, inspired by his own experiences with the women he loved.Throughout the poem Annabel Lee, Poe seems to be utilizing a very dark, menacing,even vengeful sort of tone, and he does this through various means. One of the way he does this is by his word choice. He uses harsh words and phrases like "killing (line 26)," "shut her up,”(line 19) and "dissever my soul" (line 32) to accomplish this. Even though Poe is speaking about his love, he is nevertheless speaking in a very menacing sort of way. The hurt that he feels from her loss has impacted him deeply, he is all consumed by the darkness of her untimely death, as the reader also learns that she was young when she was taken away. This loss has driven the speaker to the point of anger and
The poem, “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe, has a dark and eerie tone. This poem is so sullen and creepy because the narrator’s wife, Annabel Lee, was killed by the heinous, chilling winds that were dispatched by the angels. Her husband, who became a widower, wrote the poem beside Annabel Lee, who was dead in her tomb. This has a very dark and glum toon, which causes the reader to jump into a somber mood. The text states in a dreadful and shocking tone “that the wind came out of the cloud by night/chilling and killing my Annabel Lee” (Poe 25-26). The poem “i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)” by E E Cummings, is a very powerful poem about love. It is mainly about a man who knows that his life is complete because he has his love by his side. Cummings uses passionate and warm hearted words to make the reader incorporate and feel an emotional mood towards the poem. In a spiritual and loving tone it states that “i want, no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)” (Cummings 6-7). Each one of the poems are unique in their own way, but both have completely divergent feelings and tones to them. “Annabel Lee” has a dark, gloomy, and cold tone that makes the reader feel a sense of loneliness. Poe sets a sorrowful and mournful
One of the most influential authors of all time, Edgar Allan Poe, uses dark imagery and complex syntax to make his short stories and poems dark and mysterious. Poe’s dark, tragic backstory contributes to his dark writing style. His father left him when he was young, and his mother died when he was only three. He then went on writing poems, and after he finished his school, he found his fiance cheating on him, so he moved to Boston to get away from everything he knew. He then married his cousin when she was only 13, but she died 11 years after. Annabel Lee was likely based off of his wife's death, having wrote it shortly after her death. Overall, Poe used his dark imagery and complex syntax to write his gothic short stories and poems such as Annabel Lee and Fall of the House of Usher.
Usually, fairy tales are in connection to big and illustrious happy endings. But in Edgar Allan Poe’s case, it is evident that they do not exist, for his stories more often than not bear a grotesque demeanor. His life was surrounded by death. All of the women in his life died young, including his mother, sister, and wife. By the age of three, he had experienced what most would not experience until nearly the middle or end of their lives. Living in such an atmosphere allowed Poe to reach deep into his emotions when writing. Edgar Allan Poe was known for his macabre metaphors. These metaphors challenged the reader to endeavor themselves into his simple words; coming to find the gothic elements portrayed. He most commonly portrayed love and death in his poems. Poe is even credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. Edgar Allan Poe utilizes symbolism and portrays an envious love tale, ending in tragedy to expose the speaker’s emotional state in the poem “Annabel Lee.”
In “Annabel Lee”, Edgar Allan Poe, like in many of his stories, describes the death of a beautiful woman. He describes for the reader that the love of him and Annabel Lee was so strong, that the angels in Heaven envied them and this was the cause of her death. It is disputed that the woman named Annabel Lee in this poem, is in real life, Edgar Allen Poe’s wife, Virginia. “Annabel Lee” is a perfect example of how Edgar Allen Poe used romance to illustrate the essence of death. He describes how the love that he had for her was so strong and it ended up causing envy in the angels and they in return took her away from him. The poem illustrates the misery that can be
“Annabel Lee,” is a poem composed by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe’s tragic love story begins in a kingdom by the sea. It describes a powerful love that was stopped too soon. The death of a beautiful woman, Annabel Lee, has left her lover mourning her death. Edgar Allan Poe uses archetypes to create a tone of anguish.
A great poem shocks us into another order of perception. It points beyond language to something still more essential. It ushers us into an experience so moving and true that we feel at ease. In bad or indifferent poetry, words are all there is. Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” is a great poem, not because it is popular or it is classic, but because of its underlining message. “Annabel Lee” is a poem of death, love, and beauty. It captures the narrator’s interpretation of these three ideas through his feelings and thoughts for one woman. The narrator, Edgar Allan Poe, becomes infatuated at a young age with the character in the poem, Annabel Lee. Even after she passes away, his love for her only increases and only becomes
The poem “The Raven” was published in 1845, after his mother had died and around the time his wife was dying. The poem “Annabel Lee” was published in 1849, after Poe’s wife had already passed on. It believed that “The Raven” is about Poe’s late mother ( or late foster mom ) or Poe’s dying wife. It is also believed that “Annabel Lee” is about Poe’s late wife Virginia. In “Annabel Lee” in lines 38/39 the speaker says “And so all the night-tide I lie down by the side of my darling - my darling - my life and bride”, which leads readers to believe that Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” is about his deceased wife virginia. In “The Raven” in lines 93/96 it says “Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, it shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore”, in these lines the speaker id asking him he will be reunited with a departed loved one. This leads me to think that Poe wrote this poem for either his mother or his wife. The themes of these poems tie together with the reasons they were written. The theme of “Annabel Lee” is love and loss, this is because the speaker is talking about how he has lost his beloved wife. In line 9 of “Annabel Lee” it says “But we loved with a love that was more than love” and in lines 25/26 it says “The the wind came out of the cloud by night chilling and killing my Annabel Lee”, in these lines the speaker is talking about how he loved Annabel Lee and that she had been struck with a chill and it killed her. “The Raven” has two themes. The themes of “The Raven” are love and loss as well as sanity versus madness. In “The Raven” the speaker has lost a loved one by the name of Lenore, this contributes to the love and loss theme. Also in “The Raven” the speaker repeatedly asks a raven questions and the raven
Poe takes a quite different approach in expressing the same theme, the loss of a loved one, in Annabel Lee. While the tone is dark and somber in The Raven, the tone in Annabel Lee is loving at first, then as it
By repeating the phrase "of the beautiful Annabel Lee," Poe creates an obsessive persona of the speaker that can only focus on the beauty of his love and how his soul will never be torn from her. His torment and grief is so severe that spending his nights in the tomb of his love can only relieve his aching heart. His nighttime visits become ritualistic in nature, finding comfort in a corpse, an object that is most certainly not beautiful. Poe makes the speaker find comfort in the death of his love, because true beauty
In life, as in death, Edgar Allan Poe evoked a feeling of sympathy from his
An exceptional poem can move the reader to a new consciousness. It becomes more than words pieced together to make a rhyme, and evokes true emotion that is palpable. One of the most influential authors that contributed to this experience was Edgar Allan Poe. His work is almost immediately recognizable due to his common motif that is both melancholy and mysterious. Much of his writing concerns love and loss, such as in his poem “Annabel Lee.” The essence of this work is endless love and the death of a beautiful young girl. It is thought by many that most of his literature mirrors his actual life, which was riddled with heartbreak and sorrow. It is evident from the mood and setting of his writing that he dealt with a lot of
The death of Edgar Allen Poe’s young bride prompted a wealth of bitter resentment in the writer. While this is evidenced in many of his works, nowhere is his antipathy more explicit than in the poem, “Annabel Lee”.
Another poem that shows the unfortunate heart break that Poe may have experienced, is Annabel Lee. Initially, the first stanza is jolly and almost makes the writer envious of the love the two characters’ share. It shows their love for each other and how everything in their relationship was idealistic. It reads, “And this maiden she lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me. She was a child and
Poe’s use of intense imagery conveys a heartfelt hunger for his main character. There is also equal desolation from her death. After the death of “Annabel” the narrator has a strong opinion that it wasn’t a natural death. He is clearly distraught when he exclaims, “A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee” (Poe 609). Her death could necessarily have been from a virus or pneumonia however, the narrator blames the angels for her demise. Poe uses visual imagery to divert the audience’s attention away from the fact that her death could have been from natural causes. He wants us to feel the pain and shock of losing a loved one. “This pivotal line describes the death of Annabel
The meaning of the poem “Annabel Lee” written by Edgar Allan Poe was to express his love life with Virginia and the sickness that took her from him. With that in mind, the theme can easily settle to the idea that love surpasses all. Love never gives up even when people do, it never runs out even when memories fade, and it will withstand whatever is thrown at it. The passion in this poem leaves you with goosebumps. First off, love can simply be indescribable but Poe knew exactly what to say, “But we loved with a love that was more than love--” (9) Their affection for each other was beyond what we could imagine although they were still children. He was a good husband to her and she was a good wife to him. But “A wind blew out of a cloud by night