Into the Mind of Edgar Allan Poe: Annabel Lee, Romance
Poe is an american writer and is best known for his poetry and short stories. All of his poems are related to death or gloom. He is known as a morbid, mysterious character because the mood he sets in his stories. His most famous poem is “The Raven” and it is divided into 18 stanzas with six lines in each stanza. It starts with an unnamed person sitting at home alone at night feeling lonely and sad. This starts a main theme of depression or grief. The person is reading trying to forget about the lost Lenore and is disturbed by a talking raven that only knows the word ¨nevermore¨. The poem is written in first person in the perspective of an unknown man which could be referring to Edgar Allan Poe himself. Another theme in this poem could be self torture because he is weighing himself down with grief because the loss of his Lenore. Another famous poem is “A Dream Within A Dream’. Throughout the piece he is emphasizing the twisting of his perception of a daydream and reality into one. He is possibly confusing them, and hiding the line between what has actually happened as he is reliving the past. In the second stanza he says “Oh, God! Can I not grasp them with a tighter clasp?” referring to saving the grains of sand from the waves (line 20). He is referring to him holding onto his lover, saying that when we hold onto something too much it goes away faster. He is asking himself the same question, that if everything is just a dream within a dream, if all he knows is a fake thought of reality.
His poem “Alone” seems like a autobiographical poem, expressing Poe’s feeling of isolation and inner torment. He has a difficult childhood, his father is abusive to him. He is alone at a young age and his mother dies shortly after his father left them. Even Though he has a good relationship with his new parents, the poem seems like a review of his childhood. In the first stanza he says “ My passions from a common spring”, which explains why he is different from others. Spring refers to a source. Our passions spring up or originate from our experiences as a kid. Since his childhood is different from other people, his passions are also different. He concludes with “of a demon in my view”. This “demon” is considered an allusion of his abusive father. It tells us that in spite of his attempts to see good in everything, he ends up seeing a demon, which is only bad.
In the poem “Romance”, he uses birds as a metaphor to reflect back on the excitement of youth and hardships of getting older. Romance in this poem does not mean love, it is inferring it as excitement and adventure. Poe describes childhood as “painted paroquet”. A paroquet is a colorful and beautiful bird, which is associated with happiness. In the poem he grows up and his life gets busy. He characterizes adulthood as the “eternal Condor years”. Condors are black, vulture like birds and they represent bad, like growing up is. There are so many ways to take this poem, it has romance, pain, and darkness. The start seems to be more of a happy romance and how it makes people feel. Then, it turns darker and reflects more on losing your first love. It is not the kind of romance everyone assumes it to be. Poe is not the average man and does in fact have a different spin on everything, including what love and romance are.
“Annabel Lee” is a poem of the representation of love. Poe very artistically, draws the picture of his eternal love. Him and Annabel live happily in a kingdom and have loved one another ever since they were young. Their love is so intense that the angels in Heaven became envious and kill Annabel Lee with cold winds. He is sad of the loss of his love, but he never will stop loving her. Every night he sleeps near her tomb and dreams of her. What enchants the reader is the idea that true love resides in souls and never dies. Love and death are major themes in the poem. To Poe, love is the greatest force present in the world and nothing can destroy it. Although his lover leaves the mortal world, he feels her presence everyday and night.
Poe’s “Spirits Of The Dead”, he shows the reader life and death. This poem is full of sorrow, death, and forgiveness, it shows what Poe really feels behind his words. The speaker of the poem shows grief and a deep sense of loss. The first stanza is about mourning over a lost one and seeing their spirit as they are alone in the cemetery. The way he uses personification in the first two lines shows how alone he really feels. He uses his soul as the object. The main idea of the poem is the description of the spiritual state of the soul after death and its contact with nature and other souls. Poe is addressing someone and that is obvious because his use of second person pronouns. He talks about afterlife and shows great confidence when talking about it. He does not know what he is talking about and to know about the afterlife means the speaker has to be dead. The first part shows with the future of certainty of our death. The second acts as a surprising part for the reader, who embraces the possibility of being surrounded by those who have passed away. In the third part he focuses on the relationship between souls of the dead with nature, which shows despair. The fourth part comes back to the soul to remind the reader of its immortality. The last section shows a relationship with God, which ends up in the admiration of the inability to explain the cycle of life.
