Edgar Allan Poe is known for creating dark, chilling, twisted tales that deal with morality, insanity, and love. Annabel Lee is no exception to this criteria. To be published only a few days after his death, Annabel Lee remains the last of Poe’s works for the public to read. Many interrupt Annabel Lee as beautiful tragic love story, that slowly turns into a lover’s obsession of his dead beloved. However, others view it as the death of Poe’s boyhood. Poe had a tragic beginning and ending to his life. A year after Poe’s birth, his father left the family. At the age of two Poe’s mother Elizabeth died. Poe and his siblings were separated and sent to live at different fosters homes. When Poe moved into the Allans they renamed him and raised him
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
Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809 as Edgar Poe. He was the second son to Elizabeth Arnold Poe and David Poe. Both parents were actors, and shortly after Poe’s birth, his father deserted his family around 1810. Edgar became an orphan before the age of three years, when his mother died on December 8, 1811 in Richmond, Virginia at the age of twenty-four years. His father died at the age of twenty-seven years old. After his mother’s death, the childless couple, John and Frances Allan, took in Poe; his paternal grandparents took in brother William Henry; and foster parents cared for sister Rosalie. Allan was a strict and unemotional tobacco merchant and his wife was
Edgar Allan Poe was a skilled writer; he wrote many books that involved horror and mystery. Poe started his writing career editing newspapers and writing short stories. One may assume that Poe wrote these panicked stories to tell others about his own life. Influenced by his tragic childhood, Edgar Allan Poe started writing horror and mysterious stories.
"In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed." This quote by Edgar Allan Poe describes his obscure works which have been discussed and criticized in great detail for many years to come. Some readers believe that his works are too dark and eccentric maybe even deathly. Others believe his works to be masterpieces. However, one thing that is not up for debate is the fact that Edgar Allan Poe is a literary genius. Edgar Allan Poe, the creator of the ratiocinative story and the amateur sleuth and leading contributor to the gothic genre, is the greatest author of the mid-nineteenth century.
Poe was born to traveling actors: Elizabeth Poe and David Poe Jr. in Boston on January 19, 1809, but within three years both of his parents had died from Tuberculosis. He was then taken in by John and Frances Allan, a well-to-do Richmond, Virginia couple unable to have children of their own. John Allan was a wealthy tobacco merchant who provided Poe with a
Young, beautiful, and doomed; In several, if not all, works of Edgar Allan Poe, there is a not so subtle theme that is found. One of the death and beauty. How is the death of a young woman romanticized within selected works of Edgar Allan Poe? In such works as “Lenore”, “Ulalume”, popular “Annabel Lee”, “The Raven”, and short story “The Oval Painter” ,the “death of a beautiful woman” theme is prevalent and strongly noted within context, word choice, and imagery. In the eyes of Edgar Allan poe, death, especially that of a woman, to be lamented and mourned by a “bereaved lover”, is the most valued tool to have and utilize when writing. In his own life, Poe was able to relate to the subject matter, as many of his heroins are believed to be based upon his wife Virginia, who had died at a young age. Unraveling the methods to how Poe romanticized death of young women in his literature might give insight to not only Poe’s life, but humanity in general..
Poe and his foster mother, Frances Allan, grew closer and developed a strong bond, but by 1829 she died of Tuberculosis. His grief caused him to leave his military post to visit her funeral. Two years later, Poe’s older brother also died of Tuberculosis. Years later in his life Poe gets secretly married to his cousin named Virginia.
Many students wonder what the reason is behind analyzing literature. Analyzing literature can be complicated and seem like a puzzle that cannot be solved. There is an underlying type of art when one finally learns and understands the meaning of short stories or poems. “Annabel Lee” and “The Raven” are two different poems written by Edgar Allen Poe. Now, one might ask why it should be important to know how to read and analyze literature. If one can learn how to read and analyze literature than they can learn how poets like Edgar Allen Poe have an underlying argument or meaning to the art of their writing. The next question one might have is, well why or how can that meaning be applied to my everyday life? Edgar Allen Poe’s writing is so cleverly crafted that his underlying meaning has an impact on human life itself in regards to values and morality. In this literature analysis paper we will discuss how two completely different poems have similarities in the literary element of theme.
As a result from the death of Poe’s mother caused by tuberculosis (called consumption then), it caused him to be orphaned before the age of three. According to an article, “5 Things You Didn’t Know About Edgar Allan Poe”, he gives an interesting fact stating, “[. . .] his class-act father responded to her death by abandoning Poe and his two siblings” (Trex, WEB). This major loss during
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
Edgar Allen Poe is known as “the saddest and the strangest” figure in American Literary History. Many, if not all, of his works are surrounded by death, grief, and insanity. Battling with alcoholism throughout his life and suffered from incredibly losses in his lifetime, one can understand why his poems mainly focused around demise, sorrow, and psychosis so much. All the unfortunate events in his life served as the framework for many of his famous pieces, including “Annabel Lee.” With his life impacting his work tremendously, it’s obvious that the parallels between Poe's life and the major themes: death, grief, and insanity surround "Annabel Lee."
The poem Annabel Lee has become one of Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous works. This not only was one of Poe’s more popular poems but it was also the very last complete poem he ever wrote. According to Jeannine Johnson, “Annabel Lee appeared October 9, 1849, In the New York Tribune, two days after the author’s death”. This poem represents multiple things Poe was going through in his life. Including the tragic death of his dearest wife Virginia. Throughout the poem, Poe talks about how immense the love he had for Annabel Lee was, even after she dies. Though life is temporary in this world, and death is unavoidable, love will conquer sub sequential to death, if the love is definite and true.
Edgar Allan Poe, the tragic but brilliant American poet, short story writer, and critic. Not only was he a legend for his horror stories, but he also invented the modern detective story. Poe suffered a very unfortunate life from the approximate age of one until he died at the age of forty. It is still unknown how Poe died and it will more than likely always remain a mystery. Stories are still being told about him to this day, he is a man who will go down in history for the rest of time.
Edgar Allan Poe’s writing had certainly been impacted by his life. Poe was born to his mother, Eliza Poe, in 1809. However, his alcoholic father, David Poe Jr., had left him. His mother later died of Tuberculosis when he was still young. Although he had joined the Allan Family, this absence of his parents brought him to be lonely. His foster father, John Allan, raised Poe as if he was his own, but Poe and his
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”.