Annabel Lee
Introduction
Edgar Allan Poe was a master of the Gothic genre and often used themes of love and death in his works to probe the psyche and the line between sanity and madness. One of his most notable poems, Annabel Lee, offers a disturbing examination of these themes. The poem uses repetition of sound and words, alliteration and assonance, throughoutalong with vivid imagery and startling contrasts to depict joyful youth driven into maddening despair. This paper explores the structure, plot, and significant poetic elements of "Annabel Lee" to uncover how Poe reveals that it is a thin line between happiness and love, and death and madness.
Structure of the Poem
Annabel Lee is a lyrical ballad comprising six stanzas with varied lengths. The rhyme scheme alternates between lines in a pattern of ABABCB in most stanzas (Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, 2013). For instance, in the first stanza, Lee (B) rhymes with sea (B) and me (B), whereas ago (A) rhymes with know (A).
As for the poems meter, it is predominantly composed in anapestic and iambic meter, with some variations. This gives the poem a rhythmic, musical quality. Punctuation is used strategically to convey emotion. Notably, Poe uses dashes to express heightened emotion or urgencysomething that another great poet, Emily Dickinson, also did (Wardrop, 1998).
Plot Summary of the Poem
The poem is narrated by a man who tells a story of his lost love, Annabel Lee. Their love was so powerful that it evoked jealousy in...
…draws him into the melancholic madness of the narrator.Poe also creates striking imagery to evoke the sorrow associated with death and the eternal nature of love. His depiction of the chilling sepulcher by the sea or the bright eyes of Annabel Lee paints vivid pictures in the reader's mind, eliciting powerful emotional responses (Silverman, 1992). Indeed, it is enough to compel the reader to go madeas though that was Poes intent.
Conclusion
Poes Annabel Lee uses various poetic elements to explore the lines between sanity and madness in a poem about ruined love. Death is portrayed as an overwhelming force like the sea, that the narrator refuses to accept. Thus, he lies with his deceased bride in her tomb, berating the angels he believes took her…
References
Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore. (2013). The Poe Library. Retrieved from http://www.eapoe.org/index.htm
Peeples, S. (2004). Edgar Allan Poe Revisited. Twayne Publishers.
Poe, E.A. (1849). Annabel Lee. Retrieved from http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174151
Roppolo, J.P. (1954). Meaning and 'The Masque of the Red Death'. Tulane Studies in English, 3,103-118.
Silverman, K. (1992). Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance. HarperPerennial.
Wardrop, D. (1998). Review Essay: Inflections of the Pen: Dash and Voice in EmilyDickinson. The Emily Dickinson Journal, 7(2), 115-117.
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