The Afterlife and the Elegy through the eyes of “Anabel Lee” The narrator becomes increasingly agitated and despairing as he begins to believe the fiction of death and questions the afterlife. Poe sets the poem "Annabel Lee" as a hopeful poem that love conquers all. It is a narrative poem; that also possesses qualities of Gothic poetry. The first four lines of the six-line first stanza are written in the traditional ballad stanza form. The language, too, is conventional for a ballad. The poem specifically mentions the youth of the unnamed narrator and especially of “Annabel Lee”, and it celebrates child-like emotions in a way consistent with the ideals of the Romantic era. Poe reflects Romanticism by using The theme is eternal love, …show more content…
In “Annabel Lee”, the narrator describes a love that he and the young maiden “Annabel Lee” have for each other as so great the angels in heaven blow a cold wind out of a cloud that makes “Annabel Lee” sick and eventually kills her. It is said that love conquers all but in reality death ultimately conquers all. The speaker in this poem is distraught and obsessed about how and why his precious maiden died. He wants to know who he can blame and will willing blame anyone. The poem forces its reader to question; does death have the power to kill love? The two main characters loved each other, in a childish manor. They loved before they even knew the world because of how young their love was. Young love is often just lust or infatuation XXX young people who aren't even sure who they are and don't know what real love is may confuse their strong feelings of attraction for love. Young love is dramatic, feverish, passionate, impetuous, impatient, and irrational. A "crush" can be so intense that it feels like love but it's a fantasy not based on …show more content…
While there is no definite way to know if Poe really believed in an afterlife we can take a closer look into a select number of his stories and some works of other scholars as well, and we can come to a strongly supported theory that comes pretty close. Poe is a very dark writer, we also see this in “The Raven” the difference (major) between the two poems is that “The Raven” clearly is stating that his love is forever gone and they can never be reunited. Whereas in “Annabel Lee” the speaker is convinced that even though his love lies in her tomb they will be reunited one day. They will have to defeat demons and even though the poem does not have a happy ending there is a smidge of hope that the two will be together once again, someday. This is love is so strong and powerful that angels are envious of it and even with death he still retains his love and always
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
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
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
Edgar Allan Poe uses figurative language, and precision of language to explain how he lost the love of his life, Annabel Lee. One example of figurative language in the poem “Annabel Lee” is when Poe wrote, “And neither the angels in Heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea can ever dissever my soul from the soul of the beautiful Annabel Lee.” His point in saying this is that his love for her is so great, that he feels other-worldly powers such as angels or demons could not diminish or corrode his love for her. A second example of Poe’s figurative language in the poem Annabel Lee, is when poe wrote, “I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea, But we loved with a love that was more than love-
“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.
In life, as in death, Edgar Allan Poe evoked a feeling of sympathy from his
Annabel Lee’s presence is kept alive in his mind through his dreams at night. “For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams of the beautiful Annabel Lee” (Poe 34-35). Her eyes are seen by his eyes, every night; her love is seen by his love, as without that, night never comes. “And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes of the beautiful Annabel Lee” (Poe 36-37). For the narrator, nature revolves around this grand feeling that the two lovers share. This goes to show that even nature cannot affect their romance; nothing could, not even death could keep them apart. The romance was not lost at sea and forgotten in the darkness of
The poem “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe is a tragic poem in which the narrator’s love for a woman changes him for the rest of his life. In this poem the narrator still mourns the loss of his beloved Annabel Lee, and is willing to do anything to be with her. The narrator himself tells us that after her death, she had to be forcefully taken away from him by members of her family. Annabel Lee was then buried in a sepulcher.
In the last lines of the first stanza Poe states that Annabel Lee has no other thought "than to love and be loved by me" which continues to show the similarities of the classic fairy tale love story.
“We loved with a love that was more than love” (Poe). Poe’s Annabel Lee portrays a protagonist who is in grievance about the death of his love, Annabel Lee. The poem focuses on an ideal love, one that extended further than physical boundaries. Although the story seems to be told years after loss of the maiden, the tone in the speaker’s voice has a grim emphasis of Annabel’s death, which suggests that it truly does oppress him. Poe does not describe the
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
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
Furthermore, Poe shows that he longs for the reader to be with Annabel, because she was adored and loved by all. This diction gives the poem a romantic feel, which is outside of its gloomy morbid tone, showing his true love for his deceased. This shows that Poe wants the reader to feel a different side of the poem, most of the tone of the poem is dark and extremely morbid, but by saying this he adds a bit of relief to the readers, showing them that it’s not all bad. The most dramatic illustration of this poem is when Poe uses the lines in the poem that suggest imagery such as “For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams of the beautiful Annabel Lee” “and the starts never rise, but I feel the bright eyes” This imagery shows the reader what Annabel Lee was like, it glamorizes her showing the reader that she was an incredibly amazing and beautiful person. The diction in Annabel Lee cannot be any more applauding; by doing this he sets the tone for the whole poem, which makes the poem so wonderful in the first place.
Poe is one of the early American poets of Romantic literature. In the poem Annabel Lee he uses idealism in Romance language to describe a relationship with a woman in first person. A description of the adult lovers as children most likely represent innocence or naïvety. The Romanticism comes in by comparing the couple to elements of nature. The love that the two share is free from societal norms or influence. The joy of just being together and sharing themselves with one another is so great that even angels were envious of them.
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