Edgar Allan Poe: Signature of a Genius

883 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Analysis of allen poe's writing

Writing is a mirror of one's personality. When we write, we reveal a part of ourselves. We reveal our mind. We reveal our thoughts. If it is possible to exist, then it is possible to write, because writing is thinking, and thoughts are existence. This especially holds true to the mind of Edgar Allan Poe, who through writing time and time again about his love and loss through both poetry and general prose, generates the story of his life. In these pieces, not only does he create original plots, but deep within the fabric of these plots springs a background world of Poe's own life, deeper than any allegory he produces or any poem he completes. The dark corners of Poe's mind are distinctly represented in his entire work body. Experiences, mostly negative, are displayed as signs everywhere in each of his publications. Not everything is shown straight out, sometimes you have to search for hidden meaning. Sometimes, you have to think to understand thought. Intended or not, Poe left his imprint in "Annabel Lee," "The Tell-Tale Heart," and "Eldorado," all of which tell thrilling tales. Many read the bare surface of Poe's bold narratives, and not much else. There is a deeper meaning to the text which connects the dream world to reality.

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...

... middle of paper ...

.... Either way, the poem generalizes Poe's mysterious life quite nicely.

In final anyalysis, the work of Edgar Allan Poe has more meanings than those that meet the eye. Tragic events and gloomy details of his life are transcribed on paper, not clearly, but hidden in each of his publications. His stories can be viewed more as footprints rather than allegories: they are his footprints he left behind in the universe. His life story, all of his experiences, good and bad, influenced his writing in some way or another. Today, we can analyze this information and infer facts about Poe's life, much like detectives unveiling clues from the forgotten past, yet the past wasn't totally forgotten. Poe is gone now, but he is alive and well in our hearts today when we read his prose as well as poetry. His bold and powerful words are in essence the entire life of Edgar Allan Poe.

Show More
Related

  • Compare And Contrast The Raven And Annabel Lee

    351 Words  | 1 Pages

    Edgar Allan Poe’s poems The Raven, And Annabel Lee Contrast in many different ways but i'll be highlighting three of them in this paper.The mood of these poems is sad because their true loves die in very different settings and how they handle the grief is different from one going totally insane to the other man being calm and almost a little light hearted about it.

    Read More

  • Edgar Allan Poe Figurative Language Essay

    1073 Words  | 3 Pages

    Edgar Allen Poe is known for his dark yet comedic approach toward the his theme of his stories. Likewise, Poe’s themes have gathered many fans due to his impression of reasoning in his stories. The author uses thinking and reasoning to portray the theme. Poe’s unique diction comprehends with the theme of the story. Poe has a brilliant way of taking gothic tales of mystery, and terror, and mixing them with variations of a romantic tale by shifting emphasis from, surface suspense and plot pattern to his symbolic play in language and various meanings of words.

    Read More

  • Edgar Allan Poe Annotated Bibliography

    426 Words  | 1 Pages

    Stuart and Susan Levine edited this source. An annotated edition that noted this poems meanings and themes based on his other works to show a pattern in Poe’s writings. It used his other works to show common themes and referenced the many works to back up their annotations. This proved that he liked to write about the psychological patterns that Fyodor Dostoyevsky taught. Influenced by the study of psychological realism he showed this in his works like this one. This was a secondary source to show that he was not narrow in his thoughts of sane or insane but felt all humans had much deeper, darker thoughts and it was natural to want to experiment with the psychology of life, death and the afterlife. Many high school and college English teachers recommended this book as a way to teach students about Poe and his writings.

    Read More

  • Annabel Lee And Virginia Clemm Comparison

    1202 Words  | 3 Pages

    Edgar Allan Poe draws people not only in his works, but his life. In many of Poe's most famous stories and poems, there are remnants of his childhood and past experiences. For instance, take Poe's poem “Annabel Lee.” This poem is clearly about Edgar Allan Poe and his relationship with Virginia Clemm, his deceased wife. Many similarities can be found between Virginia Clemm and Annabel Lee. To begin with, Annabel Lee and Virginia Clemm are both in a deep love with their partners. Also, both girls are described as young. Finally, the two both die and end up with their partners in their tombs.

    Read More

  • Tragedies Influence Poe's Works

    761 Words  | 2 Pages

    A mutual understanding towards many of Poe’s works is that the loss of a lover brings about insanity, but the truth is that in Poe’s works the loss of a young lover leads to depression. This is a theme that is played out in more than one of Poe’s works, but it is most prevalent in the depressing poem Annabel Lee. The speaker is conflicted with losing what is his whole world and his childhood lover. While all is well with both him and the girl alive, an insurmountable depression takes hold once the winds blow out to carry her to the grave. This is a theme that plays out often in his works and has been observed as one of his main inspirations. Within Peter Coviello’s research, he comes to the conclusion that “Within [Poe’s] world, only very young girls, who are not yet encumbered by the revulsions of adult femininity, seem capable of providing a site for stable heterosexual male desire in Poe.” Rather than using a full fledged adult as his lover, he engineered a child into his poem so the lover does not harness the potential to mutate into a monstros...

    Read More

  • Edgar Allan Poe

    800 Words  | 2 Pages

    ... his work lives on, so does the mystery of his death. The purpose of this paper was to examine the disheartening life of such an amazing poet, critic, editor and author and show how influential his success even after death can inspire us to try our hardest despite the circumstances. Poe's life is one of dismay but also of triumph, and we could all learn a great deal from him.

    Read More

  • The Life of Edgar Allan Poe

    859 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Edgar Allan Poe's Annabel Lee

    932 Words  | 2 Pages

    Edgar Allan Poe is highly known for his literature, in which he intended to frighten his readers and leave them with chills up their spines by inducing feelings of horror and terror.In one of Poe’s most famous poems “Annabel Lee”, he demonstrates the theme of love being accompanied by jealousy and loneliness, even after death by using repetition, mood and symbolism in a eerie and frightening fashion.

    Read More

  • Examples Of Imagery In Annabel Lee

    709 Words  | 2 Pages

    The poem “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allen Poe is a beautiful story that outlines events that happened between the speaker and his love. The story paints a mental picture of a love that is so strong that angels become jealous and take Annabel Lee away from the speaker, but even though she is gone, his love for her never ended. The story is full of imagery that leads to the central message of the story, which is love.

    Read More

  • Edgar Allen Poe's Annabel Lee

    916 Words  | 2 Pages

    Edgar Allen Poe's Annabel Lee Everyone dreams of their one true love, the love that they can't live without. The one person who makes their life whole and/or complete and the person who makes them feel like no matter how bad things get everything will be okay as long as they have each other. In the poem Annabel Lee Edger Allen Poe writes of such a love, a love so deep that even the "the angels not half as happy in heaven went envying her and me." Poe's use of a combination of anapestic and iambic meter, along with a poetic diction that creates a fairy tale like realm between he and his love makes the readers of Annabel lee see and image of enduring love and creates a poetic masterpiece.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Irony In Annabel Lee

    887 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Edgar Allan Poe: Reality Reflected Through Horror

    735 Words  | 2 Pages

    It was once said by Edgar Allan Poe that, “Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.” It was no mystery Poe’s stories were dark, and at many times, frightful. Even though many thought of him as a deranged lunatic, the exquisite horror of his reality shaped his stories. Poe’s life is considered a reflection of his stories by the results of disease, mental illness, and emotions.

    Read More

  • A Comparison Of Poe's Personal Life In The Raven By Edgar Allan Poe

    1302 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Literary Techniques In Edgar Allen Poe's Writing

    731 Words  | 2 Pages

    Poe writes about the nature of God and the universe, combined with a beautiful and poetic visualization of life and death. The writing of this man did not only come from the enjoyment of composing the stories that he did. But from a darker place, that only he was possible to portray on paper. From the passing of his beloved mother while at college, the financial troubles that his father put him through at a young adult age, and the health of his ill wife, all contributed to the deep and dark mysteries in his style of

    Read More

  • Edgar Allan Poe

    4000 Words  | 8 Pages

    Edgar Allan Poe led a strange and unusually hard life, but through his experiences he produced many outstanding and wonderful works which have with out a doubt contributed to American Literature in several different areas. His stories are treasured by an immense readership. Although, Poe was quiet popular for his gothic tales, he was also well known for being and accomplished humorist, which is seen in many of his short stories. Poe was credited for singlehandedly inventing the detective story. No other played a more crucial role in shaping and developing the aesthetic theory, in the nineteenth-century, than Edgar Allan Poe. Thus, Poe remains a permanent fixture of our literary culture.

    Read More

More about Edgar Allan Poe: Signature of a Genius

Open Document