Loss And Devastation In Annabel Lee By Edgar Allen Poe

The life of Edgar Allan Poe is not a tale of ease. Poe’s life was full of personal and fiscal disaster. These disasters help to mold some of the most ominous and intellectually challenging poetry ever written. For the short duration of Poe’s life, he was seen as a literary critic rather than an author. To the modern generation his unbeknown status seems bafflingly inconceivable, considering his now acclaimed publications. Edgar Allan Poe’s writing was very much dictated by his life. The mournful tone of Edgar Allan Poe’s life created his literature; death and all his friends narrated Poe’s life. Edgar Allan Poe shows his life’s constant despair through his poetry and short story writings.

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

In the short story “Annabel Lee,” Poe uses an unreliable narrator in the form of a lover mad with grief. He does some weird stuff concerning his love for Annabel. He even stated, “I lie down by the side of my darling...in her tomb by the sea.”(Annabel Lee 2:36-39) Most sane people do not sleep by their dead lovers. He is unreliable because his mind seems to be unreliable. The narrator talks about the death of Annabel, but he doesn’t say how which is leaving out a large detail to the story. Instead he blames the death on strange creatures that we do not see. “The Angels...went envying her and me.” He doesn’t say the true cause of death; Instead, he states, “That the wind came out...chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.”(Annabel Lee 1:19-20) He makes it seem as though the Angels are jealous so they killed her. It doesn’t make sense as humans are not angels or with angels. Her beauty does not make her an angel. The narrator mixes grief with supernatural things to make sense to him, which makes him unreliable.

Sadness, guilt, and fear are some of the most negative emotions that humanity can experience, however they are also the strongest. Edgar Allan Poe, a nineteenth century author and poet, is known primarily for his use of these emotions, as well as the results that may come from these emotions, such as substance abuse, depression, and death. However, the ability to write such elegant, sophisticated works that delve into the very dark recesses of the human mind reflects greatly upon the author himself. Repetitive themes found both in Poe’s stories and in his life deliver insight on the inspiration for this author’s stories. Poe uses themes of death, illness, and depression in order to reflect his own experiences within his writing.

Edgar Allan Poe was a popular American author during the Romantic Era. During this era, authors wrote with emphasis on emotion and imagination, and Poe fits this stereotype perfectly. John Chua describes his reasons for writing by saying, “Poe’s writing aims at a concentrated affection or emotional response from the reader.” In many of his poems, Poe uses characters and plots that touch both the reader’s heart and imagination. These characters were often modeled after actual people in his life, such as his mother and many lovers. His poetry became even more famous after his death because of the “evil” persona that was adopted to his name (Meyers 263). In fact, two of Poe’s most famous poems, “Annabel Lee” and “The Bells,” were published after his death in 1849 (Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe). He achieved this reaction by using many different literary devices. Edgar Allan Poe’s biographical background contributed to the theme of death, role of women, and the use of doppelgänger to produce an emotional response from the reader.

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 gothic nature of “The Raven” gives the poem a much darker and negative tone, compared to “Annabel Lee,” which expresses the sorrow the narrator feels after his loss. Poe uses words in “The Raven” that makes the narrator appear weak, helpless, and desperate to know if he will see his wife, Lenore, again in the afterlife. In the early stanzas of the poem, the narrator hears a tapping at his bedroom door; he then reveals who he believes is trying to come into his room when he states, “And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?” \ This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!” - \ Merely this and nothing more” (Poe, 28-30). This quote is an example of how Poe sets the tone of the poem when the speaker whispers into the darkness, calling for his wife who he knows is deceased. This reveals to the audience that the man is not yet at peace with the reality that his wife is no longer with him. On the other hand, in “Annabel Lee,” Poe sets a more hopeful tone by exhibiting how the narrator feels about his deceased wife. Near the conclusion of the poem, the narrator

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.

The way that Poe wrote the literary prose is very rhythmic much like the movement of waves in the ocean. This imagery ebbs and flows as one reads the lines. The poem also has a dreamlike quality to appearing surreal or supernatural. In the world of Poe and Annabel the angels can determine the fate of humans. Annabel Lee dies from a chilling wind from heaven. The news of her death flows into the life of Poe and then just as softly ebbs the life out of him. However as Poe describes Annabel Lee as living in the stars of heaven, he realizes that death cannot separate them. The love they share is stronger than life itself. The eternity of heaven, earth, wind, ocean, and stars is somehow breached by an eternal love this husband and wife shared. Within that love they can again be together. In the closing, Poe goes to the sepulcher where Annabel Lee lays and joins her

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..

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.

In Edgar Allen Poe’s final poem Annabel Lee, the narrator tells a story of his love for a maiden named Annabel Lee. The two live happily together in a kingdom by the sea until the angels become jealous of their love and send a cold chill that kills Annabel Lee and devastates the narrator. Throughout the first half of the poem, the narrator’s tone is jovial when reflecting on the love he shared with Annabel Lee but becomes more somber and dark when describing the present. Through the use of imagery and symbolism, Poe effectively illustrates powerful themes of love and tragedy present in the relationship between the narrator and Annabel Lee.

In the first stanza of the poem Poe writes, “In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom they may know By the name of Annabel Lee; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me”. The mood is uncharacteristically optimistic and happy for Poe. But, by the fourth stanza we see the mood change from happy to quite creepy. “That the wind came out a cloud at night, Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee”. The mood stays the same for a couple more stanzas, but, at the final stanza, it goes from creepy to downright dark and disturbing. “And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling-my darling- my life and my bride In her sepulchre there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding sea”. The mood goes from happy to dark, similarly to what happens to the narrator. The mood symbolizes the narrator’s grief over Annabel Lee and what it does to him because he can’t move on. He lets it take over his life and he slowly goes

Poe and Sylvia had one thing in common, and it influenced the overall messages their works carried. Both writers grew up having struggles that were beyond their control, and had to deal with the difficulties and death that enveloped them at an early age. While both writers went through suffering and dejection in their early years, it turned into a way for them to express themselves through words and rhythm. By bringing these melancholy emotions to the surface and putting them on paper, they were able to turn their painful life into works of art that a myriad of people relate their own experiences to. For Poe, the death of his foster mother and the following death of his lover, Virginia, drove him into a deep sadness that only became worse as he became older. He makes evident his misery of his loved one’s deaths through his short story “Eleonora”, which consists of the death of a lady Eleonora who he dearly misses. This story was believed to be based off the death of one of Poe’s first true loves Virginia, who died of tuberculosis as he stood by her side and watched her battle end. In the story, Poe expresses his deep sorrow as he loses Eleonora, stating “But the void within my heart refused, even thus, to be filled. I longed for the love which had before filled it to overflowing. At length the valley pained me through its memories of Eleonora, and I left it for ever for the vanities and the turbulent triumphs of the world” (Poe). Through these words, Poe shows how he