Literary Analysis: Edgar Allan Poe

A great poem shocks us into another order of perception. It points beyond language to something still more essential. It ushers us into an experience so moving and true that we feel at ease. In bad or indifferent poetry, words are all there is. Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” is a great poem, not because it is popular or it is classic, but because of its underlining message. “Annabel Lee” is a poem of death, love, and beauty. It captures the narrator’s interpretation of these three ideas through his feelings and thoughts for one woman. The narrator, Edgar Allan Poe, becomes infatuated at a young age with the character in the poem, Annabel Lee. Even after she passes away, his love for her only increases and only becomes stronger, revealing that they were meant to last forever. So, it is clear that in “Annabel Lee” Edgar Allan Poe depicts the death of a lovely woman, his lovely woman in words of eternal love. It all started “many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea” (Poe 1-2). They fell in love when they were just little children in the kingdom by the sea, which portrays a fantasy setting. It makes it seem like a fairy tale, like a paradise on Earth, not very real, not very true, but Poe shows otherwise. The fantasy setting intensifies their relationship and also indicates that both Annabel Lee and Poe came from two different worlds, but through love, it became easy to see each other as a union of both places. They “loved with a love that was more than love” (Poe 9), a love so strong and powerful that nothing could come in between. In fact, the emotion they shared amongst each other was more than just love. “But our love it was stronger by far than the love” (Poe 27). That emotion was far greater than the meaning of love, than the message of love. That emotion was forever, was eternal, and was true. It is crazy with what depth one can love someone during the presence of the other. It is even crazier when one can love that special person even more, after