Outline For Edgar Allan Poe Essay

Usually, fairy tales are in connection to big and illustrious happy endings. But in Edgar Allan Poe’s case, it is evident that they do not exist, for his stories more often than not bear a grotesque demeanor. His life was surrounded by death. All of the women in his life died young, including his mother, sister, and wife. By the age of three, he had experienced what most would not experience until nearly the middle or end of their lives. Living in such an atmosphere allowed Poe to reach deep into his emotions when writing. Edgar Allan Poe was known for his macabre metaphors. These metaphors challenged the reader to endeavor themselves into his simple words; coming to find the gothic elements portrayed. He most commonly portrayed love and death in his poems. Poe is even credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. Edgar Allan Poe utilizes symbolism and portrays an envious love tale, ending in tragedy to expose the speaker’s emotional state in the poem “Annabel Lee.”

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.

“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.

The second stanza embellishes the fact that Annabel Lee is a young woman by stating "She is a child." Poe also clarifies his age by saying "and I was a child", which continues with the classic fairy tale story of a love between two young children. Although they were children Poe states that they "loved with a love that was more than love" which shows that they had very deep feelings/love for each other. Love so deep that it "winged the seraphs of heaven coveted" them.

     Edgar Allan Poe, the first master of the short story, had written many short stories from mysteries to morbidity. Edgar was born on January 19,1809 in Boston, Massachussettes. Edgars Parents, David and Eliza, were both in the acting business. Poe also had a sister, who is rarely spoken of. When Edgar was young his father fleed from the family, leaving Edgar, his mother, and sister alone. At the age of two Edgar's mother died of tuberculosis. Edgar was then placed in a foster home with John and Fanny Allan.

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

He was not always convinced that simplicity was a desirable aesthetic and did not believe that you could find elegance in it. He still liked reading simple writings and appreciated all styles from the viewpoint of a writer. The death of Poe’s wife put resentment in Poe’s heart. In “Annabel Lee,” he writes of a love so deep that even “the angels not half as happy in heaven went envying her and me.” (Pollin 288) The only way he knew how to ease his pain was to put it into words. Annabel Lee became the expression of his very soul. Poe wrote that everything in the natural world reminded him of his beloved wife. The final stanza shows the true feelings of Edgar Allen Poe. He pours his entire soul into this single stanza.

It could be that their love was similar to a fairy tale, this show especially in the line: “In this kingdom by the sea, but we loved with a love that was more than love-I and my Annabel Lee,” (Poe 2).

The relationship with Edgar Allan Poe and the woman in his life – his mother, adoptive mother, and wife, Virginia Clemm – were disastrous (DiLorenzo). Yet, they provided the inspiration for some of the best gothic pieces to date. Poe often combines the romantic, long lasting love in fairy tales and the hard truth of real life. Such elements are portrayed within “Annabel Lee” and “Ulalume”. His poems refrain from creating a false paradise, and instead represent an allegory of his tribulations – the death of young, beautiful women.

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

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.

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

Who is “Annabel Lee”? Even though the poem is all about her, we never get a true introduction. Other than she was beautiful and youthful, we have no idea what she looks like. She is so beautiful, in fact, that angels want to destroy her. Poe uses the technique of imagery to let the reader visualize what their version of the perfect woman is. “Annabel” is a symbol of fantasy. Poe uses vivid imagery to define her without actually giving her a face. The protagonist imagines his love everywhere and every time he closes his eyes he sees her face and the image of her “bright eyes”. It is with this sensual imagery that the reader understands how deep his love is. So deep that even when the angels kill her, he can’t bear to be separated from her. Poe proves that the narrator isn’t going to let a little thing like death keep them apart.

When looking at a piece of literature through a psychological approach it is easy to apply Sigmund Freud’s theories of the id, ego, and superego, which focus on conscious and unconscious behavior. When analyzing many of Poe’s works, critics tend to look through a psychological lens. Specifically in Poe’s The Black Cat. Some critics believe that Poe’s alcoholism is reflected in the piece, but many, such as James W. Gargano “advised the tales readers to avoid the biographical pitfall of seeing Poe and the first-person narrator of The Black Cat as ‘identical literary twins’” (Piacentino 1). It is due to his childhood that Poe’s narrator in The Black Cat subconsciously places animals before humans, thus leading to him to murder his wife.

Edgar Allan Poe was a fictional writer that astonished readers with his many mysterious poems and his tales of horror such as “The Raven”, “Annabelle Lee”, and “The Fall of the house of Usher”.