Edgar Allan Poe was not only a poet, but also a critic and a writer. He was well known for his expressive short stories and poems that captured the imagination of readers. Annabel Lee was not the only writing by Poe that narrates death. According to Britannica, most of his work was concerned with terror and sadness. He was capable of writing angelic or weird poetry, with a supreme sense of rhythm and word appeal.
The two poems, “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe and the poem, “i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)” by E E Cummings, have similarities because they both have the same theme of love. In the poem, “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe, the author writes the poem in a very overwhelming and emotional way. In this poem, the author talks about losing someone that they love and having the person taken away from them. Even though the poem is very gruesome and mentions death, it still is very powerful due to the theme of love. In a passionate and determined tone, the author states, “But our love was stronger… Nor the demons down under the sea, can ever dissever my soul from the soul, of the beautiful Annabel Lee” (Poe 27, 31-33).
Mark Twain is a very humorous author. He uses dark humor in several of his stories, and it tends to be the theme, author's style, and the most used literary device. In Mark Twain's short story “The Invalid's story” The reader is shown lots of dark morality. In David Gallons short Stories for Students literary analysis, he states “The narrator has many conversations with thompson, the expressman on the train, who ruminates about the inevitability of death itself”(Gallons 150). Morality is show in Mark Twain's short story “The Invalid's
The Lenore his love can represent someone who is very dear to us and whom when we lose them we will grieve a lot. Poe on the other hand represent the true person who has to bear the loss and go through various stages of losses from denial to anger displacement to even depression. It was very wise of the author ton leave out the suicide part since it would mean that people who grieve after the loss of a loved one will always end up in depression followed by suicide. Though many a times readers and scholars wonder what was really going through Poe’s mind as he was writing this great masterpiece, an in-depth analysis of the language, symbols and the overall theme of the poem can be deduced. These five elements show us the psychological weaknesses of the protagonist in the poem The Raven.
Unsurprisingly, in Poe 's poem, "The Raven" and short story, "The Tell-Tale Heart", suspense was created skillfully through the point-of-view of the narrator, irony, and narrative structure. One of the techniques that Poe used in both “The Raven” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” to create suspense, was the point-of-view of the narrator. Poe created a first person point-of-view that limited the readers’ knowledge on what was happening which created suspense since suspense was based on the unknown As shown in “The Raven”, through the first person point-of-view, the narrator stated, “As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door” which only gave the readers information on where the source of the knocking was, but the readers didn’t know who was knocking. The unknown source of the sound created suspense. The narrator also found out that there was nothing at the door as he stated, “Darkness there and nothing more”
Poe uses the aid of the literary repetition to slow down the speed of the story and to increase the level of anticipation. For an example, Poe uses this technique in the first sentence of his story to get the readers hooked to the story when the narrator opens the story with ‘‘TRUE! —Nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am’. The phrase ‘very, very dreadfully nervous’ creates the suspense that something bad is bound to happen due to the narrator’s nervousness. The adverb ‘dreadful’ in the phrase proves it as it carries out the meaning of something that causes fear, dread or terror.
“The Raven” Analysis “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary” (Poe 1). Poe opens one of his most famous poems, “The Raven”, with this line, like a dark fairytale. “The Raven” is considered an elegy describing a man trying to cope with the death of his lover, Lenore. Poe uses many literary devices to portray meaning about his feelings. “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe is a literary portrayal of his pain on the death of his lover, Lenore, using symbolism, repetition, and alliteration.
It consists of eighteen six-line stanzas with a decidedly emphatic meter and rhymes The story of “The Raven” is all about the man who is mourning because of the death of his love. He encounters the raven and answers all of his questions by saying “Nevermore”. Nevermore is an example of repletion. It is a literary device wherein it repeats the same words or even phrases many times to emphasize the idea. A literary device plays a significant role in the literature and poetry.
The lines that are in octameter are long and drawn out. This is because the narrator is dwelling on the death of his loved one, Lenore and Poe wants to convey that through this style of poetry. The cut final line of each stanza promotes a circular motion that the reader experiences throughout the duration of the poem. This leads the reader to believe that the narrator is in a downward spiral internally with this feeling of melancholy. This structure then leads us to suspect that the narrator is mentally unstable.
Poe creates a suspense throughout the poem with the repetiton of the raven's answer ,”Nevermore”. We know that the narrator is in deep agony since he lost his wife and he is looking for ways of getting rid of this pain or even bringing his wife back to life. That's why he has been looking at various books, hoping for a miracle or something supernatural to happen. Thus, when the raven arrives, the narrator may have thought that he could find the answers to the questions in his head. And thus, everytime the raven answers his question with the same line, the narrator goes mad and the tension builds.