The Island Of The Fay Literary Analysis

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“I love, indeed, to regard the dark valleys, and the gray rocks, and the waters that silently smile, and the forests that sigh in uneasy slumbers, and the proud watchful mountains that look down upon all,” wrote Edgar Allan Poe (Poe 285). In “The Island of the Fay,” Edgar Allan Poe discusses some of the quintessential elements of Romanticism. The feeling expressed toward nature, the “mortal sorrow and... death,” and the title itself in its reference to the supernatural (fairies) are all reasons why this specific example is a perfect piece of Romantic literature. Many of his works are the epitome of Romantic literature, including such diverse themes as sanity, admiration of nature, mystery, and the supernatural.
In “The Black Cat,” Poe makes sanity, or the lack thereof, an important element in the story. When the narrator writes of his experience, “his feeling for his wife was too weak to prevent his murdering her” (Poe, Masterplots 233). In the story, the narrator says he killed his cat, adopted another similar to the first, and when it tripped him, killed his wife as she tried to intervene. Reading the story, it is easy to see how the narrator slips into madness. For example, in the beginning of the story, the …show more content…

He uses animals, such as the cats and other pets in “The Black Cat,” and the Raven in “The Raven,” as well as great detail in his descriptions of natural settings. One such example is in his poem “Dream-land,” where Poe writes about the amazing natural sights an adventurer encounters on his journey. “Bottomless vales and boundless floods,” Poe writes, “ / And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods, / With forms that no man can discover, / For the dews that drip all over; / Mountains toppling evermore / Into seas without a shore” (Poe 968). “Dream-land,” among many other of Poe’s works, is a panegyric to the natural world. His dramatization and esteem for nature is typical of Romantic

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