"Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allen Poe wrote "Annabel Lee" in May of 1849, a few months before his death. It first appeared in The Southern Literary Messenger posthumously in November 1849. Although this poem is said to refer to a number of the women Poe had in his life, most acknowledge it to be in memory of Virginia Clemm, Poe 's wife who married him at the age of thirteen and who died in 1847 before she turned twenty-five. Poe 's work often returns frequently to his fixation with the Romantic image of a beautiful woman who has died too sudden and too young. In “Annabel Lee”, Poe uses imagery and diction to create a very supernatural and mythical setting when telling a story of how a powerful love and nature created a wonderful …show more content…
An example of this is when he talks about the “winged seraphs of Heaven” who were jealous of the love that the narrator and Annabel Lee shared for each other. When he 's talking about the “winged seraphs”, (l. 11) he really just means angels in heaven, however, his version has a more dramatic feel to it. The boy in love with Annabel in this poem does not have the typical view of an angle and that is something I find interesting. These “winged seraphs” are twisted and cruel and they are the reason that Annabel was killed. In lines 11 and 12 Poe writes, “With a love that the winged seraphs of Heaven / coveted her and me” and then later, “A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling my beautiful Annabel Lee”. The seraphs were jealous of their love and killed Annabel. Poe has a different, but also creative style of writing in this …show more content…
He says that the angles nor demons “Can ever dissever my soul from the soul / of the beautiful Annabel Lee” (ll. 32-33). So even though she is dead, his love and bond for her is just as strong as it was when she was alive. He has a wonderful memory of her, but he is hurt that she is gone. He has dreams about her and still feels her presence because he is so consumed by his love for his beautiful Annabel Lee. However, it becomes creepy when every night he goes out to her tomb and lays next to her corps. “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” (ll. 39-41). His love for her is no longer light and pure. Instead, he is trapped by this love and is left sad and alone. This poem shows the harmful part of the emotions in the boy who once had a perfect love with his beautiful Annabel
Many of Poe’s stories and poems can be tied to events that have happened in his life. A lot of the hard times that he had had gone through in his life he used as motivation to write his poems and stories. For example the story “The Masque of the Red Death” is thought of to be related to the consumption (aka tuberculosis), which took the life of many of the women he loved. In “The Tell Tale Heart” the dying old man good be seen as Poe’s adoptive father on his death bed, and how the old mans eye made the murderer uncomfortable could be an analogy for how Poe’s father made him feel uncomfortable because he knew that his father did not love him.
In "Annabel Lee", a young man is mourning the death of a beautiful young lady. Even though the woman had died quite some time ago, the man is still in melancholy. He misses her terribly and constantly thinks of how she was she was tragically taken from him by the angels who were jealous of their love, and by her family who didn't think the he himself was capable of bringing her to her final resting place. He loved Annabel Lee more than anyother human can love another. The following quote tells the reader how much he loves her and shows that he would do anything for her, even if that means sleeping by her tomb, each and every night. "And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side of my darling, my life and my bride, in her sepulchre there by the sea, in her tomb by the side of the sea."
But the speaker is able to redeem himself when he states, “Yet knowing how way leads on to way I doubted if I should ever come back,” which shows some maturity in his character (Frost 14-15). It takes maturity to be able to recognize immaturity and the speaker exudes this here. This gesture of recognizing his flaw is exactly what separates Poe and Frost’s speakers. Poe states,” with a love that the winged seraphs of Heaven coveted her and me, and this was the reason that, long ago, in this kingdom by the sea, a wind blew out of a cloud, chilling my beautiful Annabel Lee,” which shows the speaker blames the angels rather than accept the death of his partner was natural (Poe 11-16). By saying the almighty angles were jealous of the love he had for Annabelle Lee would be a stretch but saying they would kill for this shows how immature the speaker is.
Annnabel Lee is a poem of two lovers, in their own world, living a perfect life. This poem reflects Poe 's own pain, in which Annabel Lee dies, and her lover is heartbroken.
Poe, Edgar Allan. "Annabel Lee." Poetry Foundation. Ed. Poetry Foundation. Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute, n.d. Web. 26 Jan. 2014.
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...
Edgar Allan Poe uses figurative language throughout his poem. One example of figurative language prevalent throughout the poem is personification. The first example of personification in the poem is “And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.”(8). This line is implying that each burning log of wood is losing its flame and losing the shadow it had created. The second example in the poem is “Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian Shore! / Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore’.”(47-48). The raven
Some believe that Annabel Lee was written for his wife, but others think that the love of his life, Sarah Emira Royster, that he was parted from as a youth of 18, was the true recipient for the beautiful but morbid poem. . Mr. Poe was scheduled to wed the same Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton just days before his death. “The significance of “Annabel Lee” to their relationship may, however, be reflected in the account of his desire to have it published for the first time with their wedding announcement in the local papers. Since Poe died just ten days before they would have been married, the poem was instead first printed at the end of his obituary written by Rufus Griswold in the New York Daily Tribune” (Poe Museum)
Poe was born into a family of professional actors. He experienced death at an early age when his parent died before he was three years old. John and Frances Allan raised Poe as a foster child in Richmond. John Allan gave Poe excellent schooling opportunities. Though he never finished college, Poe became very successful by using his life experiences to write dark, twisted literature that appealed to adults ("Edgar Allan Poe"). The last of Poe’s poems to be published was “Annabel Lee.” It is thought to be inspired by his late wife Virginia (Johnson). In this poem the speaker mourns the death of his young bride, Annabel Lee. His loss encourages him to proclaim that jealous angels caused Annabel Lee’s death to separate the young couple. The speaker reveals that he has not been able to accept their separation and has been spending night after night at her tomb (Johnson). The use of figurative language further establishes the theme of jealousy. Poe uses personification of the wind to explain the death of Annabel Lee ("Overview: 'Annabel Lee'."). The “chilling” wind is what takes Annabel Lee away from the speaker (Poe Line 26). The article "Overview: 'Annabel Lee'" states, “A chilling wind emerges from the sky, and so her death is tied to heaven and the jealousy of the angels” ("Overview: 'Annabel Lee'"). Poe uses imagery to refer to the jealousy the angels have for the speaker and Annabel Lee’s love. Poe states, “The angels, not half so happy in Heaven, /Went envying her and me” (Poe Lines 21-22). This imagery that the angels are not happy in Heaven further emphasizes the extent of their jealousy. The double naming of Annabel Lee’s burial chamber is a metaphor to allow the theme of death to overshadow the theme of love. This is able to show that their love can conquer the grave and overcome the jealousy from the angels("Overview: 'Annabel
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.
D. H. Lawrence wrote an essay that extensively describes Edgar Allen Poe’s writing style. Lawrence looks at Poe’s work as a scientific and mechanical way of writing. The tales Poe writes are not really tales at all. The only reason they are even considered as tales is because they are a concatenation of cause and effect. Lawrence saw Edgar’s stories as more than just a tales. They are love stories. Poe does not write looking at the human part of someone’s life. The characters are looked at as inanimate objects with human qualities, rather than the characters being human with inorganic qualities.
The diction of “Annabel Lee” helps create the impression of a fairy tale-like love story. With words such as “maiden” (line 3), “kingdom” (line 8), “beautiful” (line 16), “high-born kinsmen” (line 17), Poe paints a picture of a whimsical, fantastic love story when, in reality, Annabel Lee dies in her girlhood. This is wherein lies the irony: the glamorization of the persona’s love of Annabel Lee
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.
The explication was an opinion thought and also details about this poem. I found out that poems have a lot of meanings once you annotate it and break it down. “Annabel Lee” was an interesting poem that had brought out my attention. Although poems are not one of my biggest things to read or do, I enjoyed “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe.
It can be concluded that the speaker is a caring and loving gentleman. The narrator of the poem is a young gentleman whom can also be perceived as Edgar Allan Poe himself. “That a maiden there lived whom you may know/ By the name of Annabel Lee” (line 3, 4). The poem is about a person loving a woman; therefore it is positively obvious and apparent that the narrator is a gentleman. There are also repetitions of the words “I” and “my” throughout the whole poem, which confirms that the narrator is in fact Edgar Allan Poe himself. “And, so all the night-tide, I lie down by the side/ Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride” (line 38, 39). The use of the words “I” and “my” supports the theory that the person narrating the poem is Edgar Allan Poe. It is also visible that the speaker is very sad and emotional about the loss of his wife. The narrator is having a difficult time getting over the death of Annabel Lee which is apparent in the last stanza. He still sleeps by her even though she is