Love and Loss: A Comparative Analysis of Poe’s “The Raven” and “Annabel Lee” Edgar Allen Poe’s literary legacy can be seen in his enduring works, “The Raven” and “Annabel Lee”, which have remained as captivating and inspirational pieces for decades. Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” and “Annabel Lee” are comparable in their recurring similar tones and symbols that convey the despair of losing a loved one. Poe portrays the painful and emotional process of mourning in his works by utilizing a dramatic tone through the unusual behaviours and statements of his characters. Poe employs biblical symbols in his works to depict the beauty of the character's deceased loved ones, portraying them with a sense of ethereal and otherworldly grace. Through an …show more content…
The speaker of “The Raven” expresses their grief for their long-lost lover, Lenore, to the Raven through a frustrated monologue. At the climax of the poem the speaker pleads to the raven, “On this home by Horror haunted-tell me truly, I implore-/ Is there- is there balm in Gilead? - tell me- tell me, I implore!” (Poe 88-89). Poe emphasizes this dramatic tone through the speaker’s melodramatic pleas to the Raven, which can be perceived as unusual and unhinged by the reader. Similarly, Poe’s “Annabel Lee” evokes a comparable dramatic tone which is conveyed through the speaker’s loving but exaggerated speech about their deceased lover, Annabel Lee. The speaker professes his undying love for Annabel Lee in the bold statement; “But we loved with a love that was more than love- (Poe 9). Poe vividly depicts the deep and passionate relationship between the speaker and Annabel Lee, evoking intense emotions through his use of dramatic language; the bond between the two is portrayed as more than just love, but rather an all-consuming devotion that overwhelms the reader with its passion. Poe’s “The Raven” and “Annabel Lee” use dramatic language to evoke intense emotions and convey the
Upon receiving the same answer again and again, the lover drives himself mad, despairing over the loss of his Lenore (Dorsch). In “The Raven”, by Edgar Allan Poe, Poe uses his own personal loss-driven insanity to convey the tragedy of losing a loved one and the madness that sometimes follows. Oftentimes the loss of a loved one can drive people mad. Love is such a powerful emotion, to feel it with another, and then to lose that can drive someone over the edge. In his poem, Poe writes, “Prophet!”
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most notable poets as he has had many powerful and creative pieces that became very popular. As a young boy he had many problems growing up Poe lost his mother when he was only sixteen and left to fend for himself. Throughout his life he was a hopeless romantic who got into a lot of relationships. One of the most known relationships that he got into was with Annabel Lee in which he had created as his last poem before his unexpected death, Annabel Lee. At the time he wasn’t only mourning the death of Annabel Lee but also the death of his wife a few years back which is the reason that he wrote The Raven.
Despite his previous amused response to the talking raven, the narrator in “The Raven” becomes fearful and frantic as he is reminded of the memories of his passed widow Lenore, leading to his eternal madness. Becoming gradually afraid of the Raven, the speaker shrieks, “‘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!’/ Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore’/... And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor/Shall be lifted-nevermore!”(Poe 4). As the narrator assumes that the Raven is here to haunt him of the memories of Lenore, he orders the Raven to leave him in peace.
Every individual person has their own unique way of coping with grief. For Edgar Allan Poe, he utilized his grief to generate dark and intense tones in his stories. The initial death of his mother, due to tuberculosis, prompted a series of deaths of women whom Poe loved. It would not be incorrect to understand that these deaths incidentally inspired how Poe wrote his stories, taking into consideration the dreary and spooky style in which the stories were written. In Edgar Allan Poe’s works “To Helen,” “Annabel Lee,” and “The Raven,” beautiful and dead women are portrayed as the mere objects for Poe’s general mood of his poems, as the representation of the dead women Poe loved in his formative years, and as the spiritual motivation of the narrator’s
Edgar Allan Poe had experienced a loss multiple times. Poe married his cousin when she was 13, he was 27. Both of Poe’s parents died in 1811 and so he was raised as a foster child. In the poem “Annabel Lee” he talks about how his love Annabel Lee passed away. In the poem “The Raven” he talks about his love, Lenore passing away and The Raven comes to him and is repetitive.
Death and loss can either stop one’syour life or it can be used as a sense of motivation. Edgar Allan Poe was a poet who lived a life of pain and tragedy but this didn’t stop him from accomplishing his goals of being a poet, but instead it helped give him a reason to write. Edgar Allan Poe used the death of his loved ones to write poems such as “ Annabel Lee” for his wife and “ To My Mother” for his mother- in- law. These poems showed how Poe felt and how they shaped Poe’s identity to be who he is. Edgar Allan Poe’s writing is shaped by his identity by using all the suffering in his life as an inspiration to write.
Final Macabre Essay: (500-600 words) The poem “Annabel Lee” is a poem of loss written by Edgar Allen Poe a 19th-century poet famous for writing macabre poems and uses literary devices in a multitude of ways to convey its theme to the reader. In this poem, a man falls in love with a woman named Annabel Lee, but one day Annabel Lee is killed by a storm. His love remains strong towards his wife even after her death, and the man finds peace because of this, showing that his love transcends death. In this macabre poem, Edgar Allen Poe uses metaphors, internal rhymes, and repetition to convey the theme that love can go beyond death.
From not even knowing who he was to being introduced and engrossed in a whole new world which was only known to him and his love, which he now shared with all his readers. The ending of this poem- from my point of view- was tragic yet strangely engaging for the audience. I can only simply accept that their love was not one to be long-lived , as it was forbidden. Although Annabel died in the end I cannot fault the poet, because even though she didn’t live a long life in which I pictured her growing old with Poe, I came to realise it didn’t matter. Poe would still continue to love her as he did before and to me, that was the beauty of it all, that he was able to love her regardless of her death.
Edgar Allen Poe, also known as Poe, was an inspiration to authors and the genre of horror. Poe was an author of several widely known stories and poems. Some of those being "Annabel Lee", " The Raven" , and "The Tell-Tale Heart". In Annabel Lee, we read about a narrator that had a strong love with Annabel Lee, but she dies, and it has a great effect on the narrator. " The Raven" is a poem about a Raven that flies in the chamber of the grieving narrator and tells him revelations.
Poe experienced lots of loss as a young man. He lost multiple people he loved throughout his life. Some most of the important poems he wrote was the “The Raven” and “Annabel Lee”. Poe carried his idea of death throughout these poems to capture his common themes, which was death and loss.
One can only imagine the heartache of finally being with the love of their life, only to have that love cruelly snatched away by illness. This tragic scenario is depicted in the literary works "The Raven" and "Annabel Lee", by Edgar Allan Poe, where
The poem, “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe dramatizes the theme of everlasting love. The use of contrasting diction effectively conveys this message. For example, the speaker states, “That the wind came out of the cloud by night, / Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee” (26-26). Poe uses the wind to represent a disease, such as tuberculosis. In addition, the choice of the words, “chilling” and “killing” and the use of cacophony emphasize Annabel Lee’s death and the effect it had on the speaker.
“The Raven” is about a man mourning the death of his love and is troubled by a raven that answers all of the speakers questions with “Nevermore”, driving him nearly insane. Throughout this poem, Poe uses many literary devices to bring his work to life so that the reader can feel and almost experience the same feelings as the speaker. Poe uses many literary devices in his poem, “The Raven”, specifically repetition to create a depressing tone for the reader. Repetition is a literary device that repeats the same words or phrases a few times to make an idea clearer. On line 6, he repeats the phrase “ ….nothing more” at the end of each stanza throughout the poem.
“The Raven” Analyzed “The Raven,” is and was one of the most famous poems in the history of poetry written by someone. For most people who have had the privilege of reading the poem, would answer some questions about the poem stating that it is undoubtedly being the Poe us writing this poem with the unique propose to illustrate the strong impact left by the death of a loved one in the mind of the mourner. The answers that come by like these would be true because in the poem he really is going through a hard time after losing someone who has been by his side since he was a teenager. By Poe losing his wife made him start wanting to do things more than ever before because he wanted to do them for his wife not only for him. However once I finished reading the poem “The Raven” I was immediately captivated by the new viewpoint brought to my attention