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Edgar Allan Poe biography
Poetry comparison analysis
Two almost similar poems
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The poem that I am analyzing is called “Alone”, written by Edgar Allan Poe. He was born on January 19, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts and passed away on October 7, 1849 in Baltimore, Maryland. He was a poet who works of fiction and horror majorly impacted literature. He is also an American author, editor and literary critic. His death remains a mystery, there are different stories about how he died but no one really knows the truth behind his death. This poem “Alone” is a powerful lyrical poem that has portrayed Edgar Allan Poe’s tough and suffering childhood. The poet is the narrator of this poem. He talks about his strange and tough childhood throughout the poem with a dark tone along with wickedness, which makes it obvious that this poem’s theme is not about living a happy and wonderful life.
He was a poor man, he did not have a stable job and he was also an alcoholic. He drank a whole lot just to try to escape from the demon from his depressed and saddened own world, he expresses his feelings through all the short stories and poems he wrote. His perspective and his own diffe...
The poem “Alone” by Edgar Allan Poe depicts the personal life and challenges Poe faced as a child. For example, the poem begins with Poe explaining how he knew he was different from other children, this is apparent when Poe writes, “From childhood's hour I have not been/ As others were-- I have not seen” (Poe ll. 1-2). Poe further goes on to explain how he felt abandoned and apart from his peers, stating “And all I lov'd-- I lov'd alone” (Poe 8). I believe this explains how Poe felt alone after his parents died, as if no one else understood what he was going through. Further into the poem, Poe explains how he had to face the “evil” in his life while his peers mainly had “good” lives. This is apparent at the end of the poem, when Poe writes, “(When the rest of Heaven was blue)/ Of a demon in my view--” (Poe 21-22). Although the poem is only 22 lines, Poe uses multiple poetic device throughout the whole poem.
The setting of a story lays the foundation for how a story is constructed. It gives a sense of direction to where the climax is headed. The setting also gives the visual feedback that the readers need to picture themselves into the story and comprehend it better. Determining the setting can be a major element towards drawing in the reader and how they relate to a story. A minor change in the plot can drastically alter to perception, interpretation, and direction of the message that is delivered. These descriptive elements can be found within these short stories: “the Cask of Amontillado”, “The Storm”, “The Things They Carried”, “Everyday Use”, and “The Story of an Hour”.
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,” (“The Raven” 1). “The Raven” arguably one of the most famous poems by Edgar Allan Poe, is a narrative about a depressed man longing for his lost love. Confronted by a talking raven, the man slowly loses his sanity. “The Haunted Palace” a ballad by Poe is a brilliant and skillfully crafted metaphor that compares a palace to a human skull and mind. A palace of opulence slowly turns into a dilapidated ruin. This deterioration is symbolic of insanity and death. In true Poe style, both “The Raven” and “The Haunted Palace” are of the gothic/dark romanticism genre. These poems highlight sadness, death, and loss. As to be expected, an analysis of the poems reveals differences and parallels. An example of this is Poe’s use of poetic devices within each poem. Although different in structure, setting, and symbolism these two poems show striking similarities in tone and theme.
Many describe Edgar Allan Poe’s life as a mire tragedy that produced a genius. Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19 of 1809 in Boston Massachusetts. Poe was described as a handsome or an attractive man; “Poe, himself, is a very good looking fellow” (Simms qtd. in The Poe Log). His clothing was described as simple and black; “He dressed always in black, and with faultless taste and simplicity” (Weiss). He had pale color skin with a good complexion. His hair color was as dark black as a raven’s wing. When he was three years old his biological parents, David and Elizabeth Poe past away. David and Elizabeth Poe had three children Henry, Edgar, and Rosalie. When his parents died he was adopted by his step mother and father the Allan’s; they were tobacco exporters of London. Poe lived a luxurious childhood, going to good academic schools, even moving with his family to London, and continued his studies at a boarding school. When he was a teenager they moved back to US, because the Allan’s tobacco company was failing. He continued his high school career at local private academies. There he had a huge crush on a school friend’s mother. The mother die and Poe took it personally. After he was all grown ...
“All we ever see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” This was a quote by Edgar Allan Poe that was included in his poem A Dream Within A Dream. This quote basically means that life is nothing but a dream, a long one perhaps, but it is one that you only awaken from when you died, or about to die. I really like this poem because sometimes I often wonder, what if life was really just a dream, and death is when you awaken and cross into another world; one that is more perfect and jovial than the one that existed in “life.”? Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer in the Poe often wrote about death and fear, for these two things seem to be the main focus points of Poe literary works. Edgar Allan Poe’s writing are often serious, talking about dark things, and they usually seem to reflect his childhood,his love life, and his view of what life basically is.
The life of Edgar Allan Poe, was stuffed with tragedies that all affected his art. From the very start of his writing career, he adored writing poems for the ladies in his life. When he reached adulthood and came to the realization of how harsh life could be, his writing grew to be darker and more disturbing, possibly as a result of his intense experimenting with opium and alcohol. His stories continue to be some of the most frightening stories ever composed, because of this, some have considered this to be the reason behind these themes. Many historians and literature enthusiasts have presumed his volatile love life as the source while others have credited it to his substance abuse. The influence of his one-of-a-kind writing is more than likely a combination of both theories; but the main factor is the death of many of his loved ones and the abuse which he endured. This, not surprisingly, darkened his perspective considerably.
?The Cask of Amontillado? by Edgar Allan Poe is a story about two men at a carnival, the narrator Montresor, who is being eaten by jealousy, and Fortunato, a rich drunk man that has a weakness for wine. It is through deception that Montresor achieves his revenge against Fortunato. He did not believe that killing Fortunato is wrong because of the insults and injures Fortunato brought against him. ?The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne.? (Poe, 75) says Montresor. Montresor brought Fortunato down into the catacomb. This was his chance for revenge.
Edgar Allan Poe's deplorable life was filled with unfortunate calamity, endless tragedies, and pathetic misery, which inevitably led to his pessimistic view on life and obsession with death. His personal mind frame is automatically conveyed in his essays, which for him was a primary form of expression. Thus, a strong emphasis on somber despondency has proven to be a thematic element of his literary career.
The poem consists of an undeniable narrative structure. Told from the third person, Poe also uses symbolism to create a strong melancholy tone. For instance, both midnight and December symbolize an end of something and the hope of something new to happen. Another example is the chamber in which the narrator is placed, this is used to show the loneliness of the man.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 19, 1809, Edgar Allan Poe faced many hardships in his life beginning at nine months old, when his alcoholic father abandoned his mother and other two siblings. Once Poe had lost his wife Virginia to illnesses, his poems were noticeably growing darker and more gruesome, and her death “haunted Poe until the end of his life” (Erica). These are only a few hardships Poe faced throughout his life, and each one led him to become a more dramatic and disturbing person. Every suffering he faced was used as a prompt for his writings, and throughout his work he places his hurt and depression into each piece based off his own life. His famous poems are the results of his insanity based off his unfortunate life. Even though Poe lived a challenging and stressful life, his poems ...
Edgar Allen Poe was and still is one of the most well know poets of all time, he has taken many a reader on a grotesque literary journey through his twisted perception on the world in titles like “Tell-Tail Hearts” and “The Raven”. One of his most personally significant poems is a 22-line piece known as “Alone”, originally published by E. L. Didier in Scribner’s Monthly September, 1875. So why was a poem written by a man that died on October 7, 1849 at the age of forty not published until 26 years after his death? The answer is simple, Poe originally wrote the poem in the autograph album of Lucy Holmes Balderston whose family would later sell the poem to Scribner’s Monthly. This poem is one of his most important, as it gives the reader an in-depth look into the sad life and soul of a twenty year old Edgar Allen Poe.
During the American literary movement known as Transcendentalism, many Americans began to looking deeper into positive side of religion and philosophy in their writing. However, one group of people, known as the Dark Romantics, strayed away from the positive beliefs of Transcendentalism and emphasized their writings on guilt and sin. The most well-known of these writers is Edgar Allan Poe. Poe was a dark romantic writer during this era, renown for his short stories and poems concerning misery and macabre. His most famous poem is “The Raven”, which follows a man who is grieving over his lost love, Lenore. In this poem, through the usage of tonal shift and progression of the narrator’s state of mind, Poe explores the idea that those who grieve will fall.
Edgar Allan Poe is a well-known writer for his suspenseful and dramatic poems and pieces of fiction. Examples of his short stories include “The Cask of Amontillado”, “The Raven”, and “The Pit and the Pendulum”. Born in the city of Boston and raised in Richmond, Virginia; Poe explored the darker side of himself. As he grew older, he experienced great depression, which led to alcoholism. He eventually died at the age of 40. With his past in mind, Poe’s pieces of writings allow the readers to leave their own world and explore a whole new world filled with darkness and gloominess. Eventually, his pieces of work leave the audience with an abrupt feeling of awkwardness. “Alone”, written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1829, is a poem that expresses Poe’s opinion of how he feels like an outsider. He cannot fit into society, and because of this, he senses great sorrow.
"Israfel" is a mesmerizing poem, the beginning of which was first set down by Poe during his days at West Point College. (Allen 233) The poem itself is a direct contrast to Poe's usual poetry, which usually deal with death and dark thoughts or other melancholy, Gothic ideas. Poe's idea of the death of beautiful woman being the most poetical of all topics is here, nowhere to be found. This proves that Poe, when so inclined, could indeed write about something other than opium induced nightmares and paranoid grieving men who are frightened to death by sarcastic, talkative, ravens. Besides "Israfel", Poe's other poetry, "To Helen", as well as "Annabel Lee" and others, are virtually unrecognizable to the everyday reader as being works by Edgar Allan Poe. His name is usually associated with his tales of horror and the macabre. His one poem, "The Raven", a work which deals with a mans steady decline into madness, is probably his most recognizable piece of poetry. A situation, which I feel is unfortunate, considering that the aforementioned are in most cases the equal to "The Raven." Scholars have bestowed upon Edgar Allan Poe, the mantle of "horror writer" a crown which does him a great injustice considering the great variety of works that he wrote and the passion which drove him during his writing.
The biography includes where Poe grew up and how his lifestyle were. Through research and sources, I found out that Poe lived a hard life. He was in a lot of debts with no money. Not only was that, “Annabel Lee” known as a romanticism which was also established during the European times. This poem was one of my favorite.