Analysis of "Annabel Lee"

A paper i did for American Lit. in school... it may bore you.

Alexei Markel

Mr. Ruggeri

American Literature

April 11, 2010

How Love Transcends Death in Poe’s “Annabel Lee”

            “Annabel Lee” was the last poem written by Edgar Allan Poe days before his death on October 7, 1849. Like many of Poe’s other poems and stories, this last work explores the topic of death. Poe once said, “The death of a beautiful woman is the most poetic topic in the world”. This particular poem tells of the narrator’s love for an Annabel Lee in a “kingdom by the sea”. The poem’s meter, language and style convey an archaic feeling and remind of an old English fairy-tale. Poe suggests that love of such strength as presented in his poem can transcend death. This theme was by no means invented by Poe. Dante Alighieri who lived in the 13^th century wrote in the Inferno and Vita Nuova of a woman, Beatrice, with whom he claimed to share a spiritual bond over which death had no power. Poe and many others have borrowed this theme of spiritual connection after death. Edgar Allan Poe uses traditional English ballad form as well as repetition to tell of the death of a beautiful woman suggesting that the dead can maintain a spiritual connection with the dead.

            Poe begins by painting a romantic and fairy-tale like setting using traditional English ballad form:

                        It was many and many a year ago,

                        In a kingdom by the sea,

                        That a maiden there lived whom you may know

                        By the name of Annabel Lee

Here we see that Poe, by saying that the subject was someone whom you may know, “presents a universalized dead woman and a fictional dead woman for the purposes of the poem…” as poetry critic Harold Bloom puts it. So, Poe’s message in this poem is intended for the reader as well as for the narrator. Poe goes on to say that the love between the narrator and Annabel Lee was “a love more that love” (9), giving the situation a super-natural feeling, establishing that for a post-mortal connection to exist, as it did for the narrator and subject of the poem, the connection and intimacy in life must be great. Also, Poe uses here, as well as throughout, the rest of the poem traditional English ballad format: alternating tetrameter and trimeter lines. According to the criticism of Coleridge, a critic whom Poe admired, the purpose of a ballad was to present emotionally charged material that is too strong to be said only once. Hence, Poe’s use of repetition.

            Repetition, a characteristic of the traditional English ballad, plays a key role in conveying the emotions of the narrator to the reader, especially, in stanzas two and three. The second stanza says that the love was so strong, that even the angels were jealous, and because of that they swooped down from the heavens and killed Annabel Lee, and “shut her up in a spelchre” (19). The third stanza adds more emotion by stressing the tragic and irreversible nature of her death. Poe’s use of repetition is something that Harold Bloom addresses in “Thematic Analysis” of the poem: “…repetition fosters remembrance, even as it points out the futility of trying to recover the dead, serving as a fragile means of consolation that speaks intimately with the voiceless dead as well as with the reader” [1].

            In stanzas four and five, Poe is consistently using traditional English ballad form (alternating tetrameter and trimeter lines), as well as repetition, and concludes the poem by making his most interesting and important point that even death cannot completely separate the narrator from his Annabel Lee. “Nor the demons under the sea/can dissever my soul from the soul of the beautiful Annabel Lee” (33, 34). The last stanza, like this document itself, makes a great use of repetition to convey a feeling of peaceful and pleasant reminiscence:

                        For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams

                        Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

                        And the stars never rise but I see the eyes

                        Of the beautiful Annabel Lee

Poe is stressing that Annabel Lee is still with him, completing his point that a connection with the dead can be maintained, although the specifics of this “connection” are left for the reader to ponder (unfortunately).

             Poe takes a dramatically different approach to the topic of death as compared to Beth Henley’s “Crimes of the Heart” and Joseph Heller’s Catch 22. In “Crimes of the Heart” death is merely a mirror to show what other people think of life, and in Catch 22 it the tragic and result of an absurd and irrational war.  “Annabel Lee” presents us with the comforting idea, that one’ loved ones leave him physically when he dies, but he can still maintain a spiritual connection.

Works Cited

[1] Bloom, Harold. "Thematic Analysis of "Annabel Lee"" Literary Reference Center. Ebsco. Web. 30 Mar. 2009.

 

 

 

           

 

Author's Note

This was a formal paper. I hope yuo find it not to boring and maybe informative.

Reviews

[Mandi Hidalgo]

I enjoyed this a lot. I, personally, read "Annabel Lee" when I was 10 years old and I always had the image of him being so tormented by the loss of his love that he buried himself alive with her. Thus the lines,

"And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea."

This is, by far, my favorite poem by Poe. If you've never heard the song version done by Sweet Sister Pain, I suggest you check it out.