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The tone in the bells by edgar allan poe
Literary devices in sonnet 18
Compare and contrast the same form of sonnets
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Ramos 1
Ezrah Ramos
Professor Stephanson
English 1020
3 April 2014
In the poem, “The Bells,” Edgar Allan Poe used the various sounds attributed to bells to portray different situation. During the holidays, the silver bells were luminously tinkling with merriment. One can easily observe the evolution of the material the bells are made of as symbolism for the different stages in life. Then, during a wedding ceremony, the bells are golden and harmoniously exploding with sounds of joy like the festive couple. Nevertheless, the bells change to brazen ones during fires. The bells become terrifying and chaotic as they warn about the coming danger. Finally, the bells change to iron-made during funerals. The material is slowly tarnishing similar to the deterioration of the human life over time.
The first part of the poem is a sonnet consists with an octet followed by sestet. Poe uses sound to create a rhyme scheme following the traditional pattern of a Petrarchan sonnet. The use of sound conveys a theme of a holiday celebration, particularly Christmas. Additionally, Poe uses imagery with wo...
Kim Addonizio’s “First Poem for You” portrays a speaker who contemplates the state of their romantic relationship though reflections of their partner’s tattoos. Addressing their partner, the speaker ambivalence towards the merits of the relationship, the speaker unhappily remains with their partner. Through the usage of contrasting visual and kinesthetic imagery, the speaker revels the reasons of their inability to embrace the relationship and showcases the extent of their paralysis. Exploring this theme, the poem discusses how inner conflicts can be powerful paralyzers.
Poe also uses figurative language. Poe word choice just adds to the feeling of how composed and how well put together his writing is. Poe like to pull good objectives and good word choices , to put into detail, “ Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to hearken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused revery or meditation’ (5). In this quote Poe loves using lots of descriptive words, even if the sentence is short , to describe the pendulum swing for example, one adjective is not enough, Poe uses three, “dull, heavy and monotonous
The entire poem including the first stanza, as scanned here, is octametre with mostly trochaic feet and some iams. The use of a longer line enables the poem to be more of a narration of the evening's events. Also, it enables Poe to use internal rhymes as shown in bold. The internal rhyme occurs in the first and third lines of each stanza. As one reads the poem you begin to expect the next rhyme pushing you along. The external rhyme of the "or" sound in Lenore and nevermore at then end of each stanza imitates the haunting nature of the narrator's thoughts. The internal rhyme along with the same external rhyme repeated at the end of each stanza and other literary devices such as alliteration and assonance and give the poem a driving chant-like sound. The musicality of the rhyme also helps one to memorize the poem. This helps keep the poem in your head after you've finished reading it, lingering in your thoughts just as the narrator's thoughts are haunting him. The rhyme also helps to produce a humming beat in the readers mind driving him on steadily..
In the song “Church Bells” by Carrie Underwood the meaning truly hits home. The meaning of the song is money is not worth sacrificing happiness. In the song Jenny grows up poor. She then marries a rich man but he ends up abusing her and stealing her happiness. She married for money but ended up regretting it. In her song, Carrie Underwood describes Jenny, “Jenny grew up wild, like a blackfoot daisy” (1) and “broke as hell” (3). These are both examples of similes. These help to portray the meaning of the poem by explaining how Jenny grew up as a rough and tumble country girl. A blackfoot daisy is a type of wildflower and by comparing Jenny to this it shows she was wild. The other simile compares Jenny's family's finances to something terrible.
Some people never get satisfied with what they have. In the stories, "Amir", and, "Gold Mountain Poems", The life lesson is to be happy for what you have. In both stories the main characters are immigrants coming to America. In the story, Amir just moved here from India and is upset with the people. In the poem the speaker is taken to an immigrant island instead of being released to go live in America. In both stories they are grateful for what they have.
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...
Throughout “Alone”, Poe uses various poetic devices to captivate his reader. For instance, Poe uses external rhyme throughout the poem, at the end of each pair of lines. Along with the use of rhyming, Poe also uses descriptive imagery. A m...
...’ adds to the unsettling nature to this tale. The groan the old man makes when he sits up in bed on the night of the murder, ‘the groan of mortal terror’ is a noise that suggests that the man is afraid and is on edge. It creates suspense as ‘Terror’ emphasises the fear of the man. When being investigated he shouts and slides the chair over the floor. ‘Raved, swore, and grated the chair across the floor.’ This creates lots of tension because it shows how the narrator is mad and angry through guilt. Poe’s use of onomatopoeia, ‘grated’ emphasised the roughness of the narrator’s actions as he grows even madder at the eye.
Along with imagery and symbolism, Poe incorporates many poetic elements to express his feeling. These include assonance, alliteration, and rhyme. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds. For example ?For the race and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore.? This repeats the vowel sound of ?a?. Poe also used a lot of alliteration. For example, ?Doubting dreaming dreams no mortal level, dared to dream before?. Notice the repetition of the ?d? sound. One last element used in ?The Raven? is rhyme.
Throughout “The Raven”, Edgar Allen Poe depicts the speakers slow decent into madness through onomatopoeia, personification, and dialogue. As the speaker nears slumber one dreary night, something seems to wake him up and draw his attention to his door, where a tapping coming from the door. The noise seemed to be tapping, yet it was near midnight and the speaker did not expect any company. Although he had almost fallen asleep he believes that the person tapping at the door might be his lost love, Lenore, so he decides to answer the door yet when he does there is “darkness there and nothing more” (24). The onomatopoeia of the tapping begins his descent into madness and continues through the whole poem, ultimately leading to him going insane at the poems end. Yet once he opens the door he stares “deep into that darkness peering” (25). At this moment Poe sets the eerie mood by having the speaker open the door to nothing, although the tapping still keeps him awake. After closing the door and walking back to his bed, the speaker hears the tapping again, but louder and coming from his window lattice. He walks to his window and opens it to find a “stately Raven of the saintly days of yore” (38). The speaker sees the raven as almost royalty from a time long ago. As the raven walks into the room the speaker’s sadness turns into a smile, foreshadowing his future lunacy. After opening the...
The poem “Bell Theory", written by Emily Jungmin Yoon is portraying her dissatisfaction with how she been treated in the United States. She is basically stereotyped daily and made fun of for mispronunciations of words. She uses poetic devices such as imagery, repetition, and metaphors to symbolize her disapproval and emphasize her melodramatic chaotic life. Jungmin also used things such as real life references for example tensions between Japan and Korea to depict how stereotypes are not only a thing between Americans and Asians but between Asians themselves as well. The crux of the poem is that no matter how closely related you are people will always find a way to differentiate themselves and call themselves superior.
Poe’s life is reflected through Poe utilises the device of trochaic octameter meaning that the trochee begins with a syllable that is stressed followed by a weak (unstressed) syllable (Study Institution, 2013). The overall aim of using trochaic octameter is to exaggerate the stressed words, creating hyperbole. Using the first two lines of the first stanza as an example, “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore…” it is evident that every pair of words is a trochee, a set of stressed and unstressed syllables (Dictionary.com, 2015). When hyperbole is apparent, it also allows the alliteration to be enhanced. In the fourteenth stanza, the first two lines exhibit these two devices working together, “Then methought the air grew denser, perfume from an unseen censer, Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted For Poe, the hyperbole of his life was that his father abandoned him and that his mother died when he was just two years old.
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 Allen Poe’s alliteration and repetition of words support the poem’s flow and musicality. Poe begins with the alliteration of the m sound in “merriment” and “melody” (3). The soft m sound, also known as a liquid consonant, helps to keep a quick and continuous pace for the poem. Similarly, the alliteration of the s sounds in sledges, silver, stars, and seem, emphasize the calming sounds of the bells (1-2, 6-7). The s sound helps express the soothing and comforting effects of the bells, essentially contributing to the merry tone of the poem. Furthermore, the alliteration of t...
What really makes the poem so powerful are the elements Poe uses. First he sets the scene, “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore-…” already it’s clear that it is late at night and a man is weak and tired trying to ease his sorrow by reading old books of “forgotten lore” (DiYanni 1173). Then the poem goes on to tell that there is a tapping at his chamber door. When he opens the door he is surprised to find, “Darkness there and nothing more” (1173). He whispers into the darkness “Lenore,” hoping that his lost love had returned, but all that was heard was, “an echo [that] murmured back the word, ‘Lenore!’”(1173). Angered and perplexed, he turns back into his chamber, suddenly there is a loud tapping at the window lattice. H...