The Theme Of Despair In Poe's 'Silhouettes'

“Silhouettes” continue the familiar theme seen in the first two examples of despair. The reason for the narrator’s despair is love, or more precisely the loss of the love object. In all of the three examples, hell seems to describe the feelings of despair, agony and anxiety connected with love. The three examples also represent the lost love object in fairly negative manner as she is described as a serpent and a destroyer whose poisonous words and burning tongue as she sang her siren song and lured him into hell – into unceasing despair. A hell that he no longer cannot live without.

The fourth instance, “Abandoned by the Light”, continues the themes of despair as seen in the first examples. The title echoes feelings such as loss and fear. The lyrics are told from by the narrator’s viewpoint narrator, and portray despair of a man who fell in love and now has to pay for the consequences. Whereas the

The lyrics describe the last moments of a man who has sunken into deep despair, however unlike in earlier examples the reason behind his despair is kept hidden. The melancholic narration shows from the narrator’s viewpoint how life and the world have become meaningless. The first stanza tells how the death came to the narrator’s door and entered. Death is described as a “lonely shape” with a “grey face” and no eyes. As the narrator states, death’s piercing stare reached his soul and even as the death said nothing, the narrator “knew his reasons well”, thus implying of feelings such as guilt, despair and apathy. The narrator feels that he is only “a burden to others” and sees no reason for him to stay so he decides to follow death. As death escorts him through the city, he observes the city and his overwhelming sense of emptiness and despair is revealed. He feels that hell is around him and that there is “Nowhere to go, but lower from here / Deeper, down into the fear and