In a Kingdom by the Sea
There is nothing quite like a first love. The emotions are fresh and feel stronger and stranger than anything before; it is almost magical. For most, the feelings of a first love can seem quite difficult to capture in words but Edgar Allan Poe proves himself able in his poem "Annabel Lee". The poem, considered a ballad by most, honors the memory of Poe's deceased wife, Virginia, who died two years prior to him writing the poem. While the death of a beautiful woman is a common theme in Poe's writing, “Annabel Lee” presents a deeper theme of eternal love through the use of imagery and a unique use of the many elements of poetry.
By using imagery, Poe allows what the speaker feels to be known and even felt by the reader. His use of imagery to portray the setting is critical to this particular literary piece, in that it is through setting that one gains a significantly better realization of his anguish. [For example in this quote]:
“A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea" (lines 16-21)
"In a kingdom by the sea" expresses both a mystical, magical place where their love lasts forever, as well as the brutally, depressing home of the deceased lover's tomb.
In this stanza Poe illustrates a strong, dark force stealing Annabel away from him and brutally "shutting" her up in a tomb.
Throughout the poem, Poe's use of personal imagery (the diction used to embody one’s feelings), demonstrates the depth of his feelings- happy and sad. He uses emotional and penetrating words to reveal a vivid image of the speaker's pain as well as the joy he once felt from his tr...
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...aker's sorrow but also the immense positivity and joy he feels about their love. This poem focusing on love, death, and the mourning of a loved one, evokes almost every type of emotion including empathy, anger, joy, envy, and grief, making for an intense read. Also the meter gives the poem a sort of a somber lullaby that parallels the fairy tale theme. The setting and the speaker's feelings are reflected in Poe's powerful words. He uses repetition and wave like rhythms to continue the quick, ever-changing, repetitive lament that embodies the seaside setting, the storyline (love, loss, mourning), and the entire energy of the poem( positive energy of love, negative energy of loss). Any reader who can appreciate the sweetness and sadness of a great story even if it does not end particularly happy would love this poem and should wait no longer for it to rock their world.
The actor Keanu Reeves once commented, “Grief changes shape, but it never ends.” Perhaps, nowhere else is this idea of never-ending grief more prevalent than in dark romanticist Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven.” The popular eighteenth century poem follows the despondent narrator’s encounter with the Raven, the ominous bird later forces him to realize his never-ending isolation and sorrow due to the loss of his love, Lenore. In his poem, through the use of allusions and the literary devices of repetition and comparison in stanza 17, Poe explores the perpetual effects of loss.
Edgar Allan Poe primarily authored stories dealing with Gothic literature; the stories were often quite dreary. Poe possessed a very sorrowful view of the world and he expressed this throughout his literary works. His goal was to leave an impression with every detail that he included in his stories. Although Poe’s stories seem very wretched and lackluster they all convey a certain idea. A trademark of Poe’s is his use of very long complex sentences. For instance, in his work The Fall of the House of Usher, Poe tried to ensure that every detail was as relevant as possible by integrating a wide variety of emotion. In the third paragraph, of page two hundred ninety-seven, Poe wrote, “Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around…” This sentence illustrates the descriptiveness and complexity that Edgar Allan Poe’s works consisted of. The tormented cognizance of Poe led him to use a very gloomy diction throughout his writing. Edgar Allan Poe’s use of symbols and the way he conveyed his writing expr...
For some individuals, poetry is a form of freedom and expression. It is one of the many creative ways to release feelings of anger and happiness from the human mind. The intensity of every rhythm and word, and style of each poem allows readers to uncover deeper significance to the context. The rich variety achieved by mixing a combination of human imagination and reality to tell a story with deeper meaning is remarkable. This concept of combining poems and human imagination together was popularized by Edgar Allan Poe. Living an impoverished life, Poe penned stories of horror and mystery into collections of poems and short stories. He expressed his thoughts on paper with great thrill and excitement. Known for his wild imagination that included suspenseful, dark tales, he posed as a literary figure and inspired many across the world.
As the reading above indicates, Poe grieved continuously throughout his life for his sainted “Lenore”. He wrote numerous poems before and after the death of Virginia Clemm to her. “Annabel Lee” was actually written before the death of Virginia as a token of his undying love for her.
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 opening stanza begins with a triplet, then shifts to couplets. The poem has iambic rhythm and has 24 lines, divided into two stanzas. In the first stanza, Edgar Poe starts off the poem parting from his lover; his wife, Virginia Clem, who was dying from tuberculosis. He says, "Take this kiss upon the brow!/And, in parting from you now" (1-2). Poe voices this in a demanding tone as he already accepted the unfortunate fate of his wife. As a result of the outcome of his wife 's death, Poe wondered if reality is factual. In order to convey his confusion with reality, Poe uses alliteration in lines 4 and 5 when he says "You are not wrong, who deem/That my days have been a dream." After saying goodbye to his wife, Edgar Poe was skeptic about the ability to know things for certain. He argued that life is one vast illusion so in the last two lines in the first stanza, Poe stated, "All that we see or seem/Is but a dream within a
Poe displays his main theme by hinting at how he stood out due to his distinct perceptions. He conveys his woe “from childhood’s hour I have not been/as others were, I have not seen /as others saw, I could not bring”
The short story is generally a study in human terror. Furthermore, the author explains Poe use of a particular style and technique, to not only create the mood of mystery, but to cause the reader to feel sympathy for the narrator. Poe makes a connection between the storyteller and reader with knowledge and literary craftsmanship.
Edgar Allan Poe's life can be summed up in just a few words: death, love, loss, sorrow, and mystery. What better way to express this than through a poem? Poe did exactly this in "Annabel Lee," made famous by its smooth flow and rhyme. The poem details a relationship between two young lovers. Annabel Lee, is killed by the envious high angels of heaven in order to destroy the love between herself and the narrator. However, this setback was evidently minor because their love still existed, and even thoug...
Edgar Allan Poe’s 1849 poem, “Annabel Lee”, explores the common themes of romance and death found in many of Poe’s works. The poem tells the story of a beautiful young maiden named Annabel Lee who resides by the sea. The maiden and the narrator of the poem are deeply in love, however the maiden falls ill and dies, leaving the narrator without his beloved Annabel Lee. Contrary to what many might expect from a poem by Poe and yet still depressing, the poem ends with the narrator accepting Annabel’s death and remains confident that they will forever be together despite her parting.
Most people agree that Edgar Allan Poe wrote "Annabel Lee" about his departed wife, Virginia Clemm, who died of tuberculosis two years earlier. Some critics, however, contend that in the seventh line of the poem he states, "I was a child and she was a child," and he certainly was no child in 1836 at twenty-seven when he married his thirteen-year-old bride. Maybe the poem is about an earlier love, or perhaps it is purely fictional, but addressing Annabel Lee as his "life and [his] bride" in line thirty-eight and writing it two years after his beloved young wife's death, it is seems logical that it is indeed written about her and is simply embellished with a bit of poetic license.
For poets, it is essential that they write about what they know and what they feel, as the substance of what they are revealing will enhance their work and ultimately attract audiences. Edgar Allan Poe is one poet whose personal endeavours can be extracted from his poems. His works such as The Raven, Annabel-Lee and Ulalume are just a few of his most celebrated poems that reflect diverse aspects of Poe’s own life. Poe’s reoccurring themes of death in conjunction with love, the subconsciousness of self and ambiguity attracted audiences to become entranced in his work (Spark Notes, 2014). Adjacent to these intriguing themes is how Poe’s personal life was inexplicitly perceived in his poems, in particular The Raven.
Poe's poem starts off by his emphasising of how he feels writes of his sorrowness and his sense of being different from the rest. As many people knew, Poe had never really lived a normal life, both his parents died before he turned three, his stepfather had never treated him well, and his beloved wife Victoria, died so young. In the first three lines of the poem, "From childhoods hour I have not been; As others were, I have not been; As others saw, I could not bring;" Poe writes of how as a child he had never actually experienced his childhood because he was so different then everyone else, he never lived a normal life as everyone else, he had seen how everyone else lived a normal life and lived happily, but could not match his own. He sees everyone else happy but could never feel that sense of happiness in himself, and he never fit in wherever he went. Also, in the next two lines, "My passions from a common spring; from the same source I have not taken;" Poe writes of how everyone seeks to feel joy and happiness, and he wants to feel that same emotion, but he cannot, the spring symbolizes the source of happiness, everyone has drank from that source, the happiness that is, ...
Poe utilizes a gradual change in diction as the poem progresses. Initially, he begins the poem with melancholic diction when the narrator is falling asleep: “while I pondered, weak and weary,” “nodded, nearly napping,” and “of someone gently rapping” (1-4). The utilization of alliteration in these lines supply a song-like rhythm, which is soothing to the reader. This usage of diction conveys a mellow tone. Further into the poem, when the increasingly agitated narrator becomes vexed at the raven, he lashes out at the bird. Here, he states, “Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore! / Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! / Leave my loneliness unbroken!--quit the bust above my door! / Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!” (98-101). Here, his uses archaic words and phrases such as “thee,” “Night’s Plutonian shore,” and “thy soul hath”. This usage of unorthodox language creates a theatrical, dramatic, and climactic effect, which leads to an impassioned tone. By presenting both tones, Poe is able to show the contrast between the two. This transformation from a tone that is mellow to one of frustration and anxiety represents the spiraling downward of the narrator’s mental state.
Edgar Allan Poe was able to clearly illustrate the theme, the speaker, and the setting of the poem through the use of repetition and imagery. It is unmistakable that the theme of the poem was love. Poe used an extensive amount of repetition of the word “love” throughout the poem, to convey that love is the main theme of his poem. He also used the phrase “in a kingdom by the sea” many times in order to reveal that the setting of the poem was in a kingdom by the sea. Repetition and imagery also gave clues as to who was narrating the poem. The excessive use of the word “I” and “my” indicated that Edgar Allan Poe was the