The Ballads Of Edgar Allan Poe's Annabel Lee

In 1826, Poe attended the University of Virginia for less then a year. He dropped out due to lack of funding from his foster father as well as his every growing debt. (Edgar Allan Poe.” LitFinder. 2007). Poe turned to gambling in order to stretch his allowance, but in eight months he has lost over $2,000. Allan refused to help Poe, which lead to a total

The narrator in “Annabel Lee” is going through the stages of grief that makes him unreliable on what his emotion on what's going on. The narrator states “Nor the demons down under the sea can ever dissever my soul from the soul of the beautiful Annabel Lee”(31). Here the narrator is showing grief by saying that Annabel will always be his love, and that not even death can keep them apart. This just proves he is in the sad state that he will never forget her and they will always be together. Later the narrator states, “That the wind came out of the cloud by night/chilling and killing my Annabel Lee”(25-26). Here is where the narrator shows that he is in the angered stage of dealing with the death of Annabel. THis quote show that the narrator is unreliable because he is dealing with grief in many different ways. This is another way Poe used unreliable narrators in his

Poe was raised by his God parents after his parents died at the age of three. He was involved in Gambling and he also drank a lot. According

Poe’s troubled childhood contributed to many difficult relationships with others. He did not get along with his foster father John Allan, as their strong personalities conflicted often, leading to general distrust between the two. Allan described Poe as lazy, ungrateful, “miserable, sulky, & ill-tempered” (Allan, John. Received by Henry Poe, 1 Nov. 1824.). Allan could not provide enough money to support Edgar at university, so Poe resorted to gambling, and ended up in debt. This enraged his foster father, and he refused to help Poe financially. Later on, Poe’s foster mother, Frances Allan, died, separating a connection between the two men. Poe’s gambling and drinking that led to his deliberate expulsion from West Point also angered his father. Later, Poe became engaged in more family issues and eventually his foster father disowned him. However, the breaking point of their relationship occured when Poe wrote to Sergeant Samuel Graves, stating that “Mr. A[llan] is not very often sober” (Poe, Edgar Allan. Received by Sergeant Samuel Graves, Richmond, 3 May 1830, Richmond.). Allan learned of this and sent an undocumented letter to Poe, who replied accusing his father of abuse:  “I wrote to you for some more money, and for books — You replied in terms of the utmost abuse — if I had been the vilest wretch on earth you could not have been more abusive than you were” (Poe, Edgar Allan. Received by John Allan, West Point Military Academy, 3 Jan. 1831, West Point Military Academy).

According to the author of The Critical Survey of Mystery & Detective Fiction, Revised Edition, Charles E. May, Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 19, 1809. Poe's parents died when he was only two years old. He was taken in by John Allan, a wealthy tobacco exporter (1-5). In 1826, Poe attended the University of Virginia. After less than a year he could no longer attend due to debts Allan refused to pay. In 1827, he entered West Point after serving in the army. Once again Poe struggled to pay his tuition and purposely got himself discharged. In 1831, he moved to Baltimore where he lived with his aunt, Maria Clemm, and her daughter, Virginia. Soon he began his professional career as an editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in

Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most well-known authors in the world. He has wrote many poems,and short stories from: Annabel Lee, The Black Cat, and The Raven.Sadly, with all of his successful stories, Edgar Allan Poe was an alcoholic.Most of the money he made, which was only three hundred dollars his whole life,was spent on alcohol. His life was rough starting out due to tuberculosis that killed: his mom, his brother, adoptive mother, and his first wife Virginia. Since mostly everyone he ever loved was now dead because of a disease he lived a lonely life. He chased women and faced multiple heartbreaks yet, the most heartbreaking part of his life was the way he would die. Poe had disappeared for six days without a trace, he later turned up drunk

In order to have a better understanding of what we will discuss we need to first shortly summarize these two poems. In “The Raven” the writer is lamenting on his lover who has past. He sits in his lonesome and then comes a raven as if it is the answer to all his pondering thoughts of loneliness and sorrow. In “Annabel Lee” the writer discloses his love to his dear lady Annabel Lee. He diligently describes his feelings and is left in sorrow when she is taken by death. Even after

Edgar Allen Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 19, 1809. Poe, a son of an actor, never knew his parents very well because his father left early on, and his mother died early in his childhood. He went to live with the Allens, he made a bond that influenced him and his writing with Frances, the wife of John Allen. Poe went to the University of Virginia in 1826, but didn't receive enough funds from John Allen to continue, he then turned to gambling but only ended up in more debt.

It’s what we go through in life that make us who we are, that shapes our mind. We become who we become because of what we go through. Poe did have a rough life, and he didn’t have what normal kids had or normal teenagers had, but he did have writing, he did have talent. At one point in life we all feel alone, or we all feel depressed and for Poe these were everyday feelings. They were his default feelings.

When studying Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven and Annabel Lee, the reader is struck by many similarities and differences. Both focus on the sorrow and loss of losing a loved one. Both deal with the heartache and grief associated with the search for understanding why the loss occurred. Both have an almost gothic, sad, unearthly feel to them. However, while the theme of The Raven and Annabel Lee is very similar, Poe uses a very different tone in the two poems to portray his feelings. The difference in tone produces a very different mood when one reads the two poems.

Then, Poe got into a gambling addiction. When the college campus found out about Poe’s addiction they kicked him out of the school. When Poe came back from college he had found out that his neighbor and fiance Sarah Elmira Royster had become engaged to someone else. He quickly moved to Boston because he was so angry and frustrated (Edgar Allen

Nevertheless, Poe went on to attend the University of Virginia

Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” uses a wide variety of imagery, symbolism, metaphors, personification, rhymes, rhythm, refrains, and alliterations. This poem explores the theme of eternal love. The persona, who fell in love with Annabel Lee when they were young, has a love for her so strong that even angels are envious. This envy for their happiness was the reason the seraphs attempted to kill this love by sending a chilling wind that kills the beautiful Annabel Lee. However, their attempt did not succeed because even though they have been separated by death, the love between the persona and Annabel Lee remained alive and eternal because the souls of the lovers remained united.

Before discussing the topic proper, the reader must understand the writing style of Edgar Allan Poe. His father abandons the family leaving his mother to raise 3 children on her own. Both of the parents die leaving the children, at very young ages, homeless. A man named John Allan takes in Poe and raises him. However, after Allan’s firm fails he refuses to financially support Poe. Edgar Allan Poe begins to drink and fall into deep debt. His resolution is to gamble, but he ends up losing even more money. He loses around “$2000, around $30,000 in current value” (Baym 629). Being forced to drop out of his first year in college, he

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet and critic. Poe is famous for his tales and poems of horror and mystery. During his lifetime he had multiple relatives that died from Tuberculosis. “Tuberculosis (TB) is a disease caused by bacteria that are spread through the air from person to person. If not treated properly, TB disease can be fatal” (CDC 1). During his childhood, his biological father left his mother and the year after that his mother died from TB. When he was orphaned he got “adopted” by John and Frances Allan in Virginia. Thanks to John he attended the University of Virginia where he had his first meetings with drinking and gambling. Poe was “forced to withdraw from the University of Virginia after only one year because of gambling debts” (Railton 1); Afterwards, because he was unable to support himself, he joined the United States Army, however the “court-martialed and dismissed from West Point for dereliction of duty”