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Edgar Allan Poe Alone Essay

Decent Essays

“From childhood’s hour I have not been As others were-” is a quote from “Alone” by Edgar Allen Poe. This poem has a copious amount of metaphors and contradicting statements. Edgar uses those literary devices to show his struggles with isolation and depression. In the beginning, he said as a child he was different from everyone else because he didn’t have the same intensity of emotions as others “I could not bring My passions from a common spring- From the same source I have not taken My sorrow-”. He talks about his incapability to feel a full scale of emotions and isolation. Poe’s cease to have a range of emotions makes him to remain neutral or detached. He isolated himself from others because of his differences and later on the solitude would …show more content…

The poem has an abundance of metaphors and contradictions. Nature is an extended metaphor throughout “Alone” and that is where multiple of the contradictions are located. Poe has made many of the word have double meanings, for example the word “torrent”. “From the torrent, or the fountain-” torrent could either mean fast moving waters, which would contradict with a fountain's water, or it could mean a sudden and violent outburst of words or feelings, which could fit it with the theme of him not have such extreme emotions. The word “torrent” also fits in with the extended nature metaphor. Poe uses the extended metaphor to show all the contrasting emotions around him, but he remains neutral. Then, “in the dawn Of a most stormy life-”, “stormy” or the aspect of a storm is used as a metaphor to show his emotions. The metaphor is also used many times in the entire poem which shows him remaining neutral even when there are so many different emotions around him. The contradictions represent the contrasting emotions in the extended metaphor. In the end, the metaphor “Of a demon in my view” is used to show the results of isolating himself from everyone else because of his neutrality. The demon represents his depression from solitude. All the metaphors are used to create the theme of being alone and

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