Edgar Allan Poe's Life

The Meaning of Life Portrayed Through “A Dream Within A Dream” Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer during the 1800s whose “life was filled with poverty, mental illness, disappointments and tragedies” (Reiff 1). Poe is famous for a number of “tales and poems that imply horror and mystery” (Biography.com Editors). The reason that Poe wrote in such a horrifying and mournful manner is because of his childhood and how he was raised. With both of his parents being gone at such a young age, Poe only knew of the heartbreaking and devastating things in life. “The only thing that gave Poe passion was poetry,” and the reader can see this in all the different aspects of literature that he wrote (Reiff 1).“A Dream Within A Dream” was one of Poe’s best
For Poe, his difficult times we're having to grow up being raised by guardians that were not his real parents because both of his parents either died or left at a young age. Also his stepdad treated him harshly and this caused all of his writing to be about devastating situations in people’s lives. The direction of Poe’s life at the time when he first completed the poem “helped to shape the different feelings expressed” by the author throughout the poem (Cummings). Poe uses personification in the poem that states, “Yet if hope has flown away,” stating that the days that he spent with this person are gone and he can never get them back (line 6). By doing this, Poe gave the poem a more sentimental meaning helping to attach to the reader more as if this certain situation is happening or has already happened in that person’s life. Critics have said the poem states that “as the poem is dissected for evaluating the mood, motivation and inherent upheavals his life underwent” it also shows that Poe has been “traumatized by the events that he embarks” throughout the entire poem (Rood). As Poe express the meaning of life lacking strength and solitude,he also goes into detail on how difficult everyday of life can be no matter what obstacle the person is going
Disparagers have noted that “the dream hypothesis was first discussed in Western literature by Plato and Aristotle in Ancient Greece about a zillion years ago” (“A Dream Within a Dream”). Critics have found out that “according to the poet, this world and all existing life is an illusion of sorts as reality doesn’t exist” making life to seem insubstantial and have no meaning (Rood). A chain of situations in Poe’s life could have caused the “melancholia and resentment” feeling that is obviously found in the poem, but it could also have been “a product of musing” which means that Poe just wrote it to get into people’s feelings and make them feel as if they are living in a life filled with fraud (Cummings). The whole poem is a “juxtaposition of iambic tetrameter and anapests strewn into one poem” (Edgar). With the use of rhyme scheme and philosophical evidence throughout the poem, it helps to give it a dreamy and hazy effect that is made through the change of setting from a concrete setting to a symbolic dreamscape.
Within the short two stanza lyric poem “A Dream Within a Dream” which is one of his prime work, Poe, illustrates in the poem that a human life is slipping away like sand falling out of one’s hand. Poe is considered to be a despondent person