English 101

https://americanliterature.com/author/edgar-allan-poe/poem/annabel-lee

ANSWER

Annabel Lee

Annabel Lee is a poem by Edgar Allan Poe. The poem tells the story of a love cut short by tragedy. According to the poem, their love was so beautiful that it made angels jealous.  Angels are supposed to be morally good creatures, and a love that made them jealous is, therefore, a great love, one that they are not capable of experiencing. The poem talks of the love being so great that it makes the angels murderous. The symbolism in the poem is meant to show the strength of love and show that love is so strong that it can overcome all things and rules the physical and spiritual realm.

The poem generally shows the power of love and the beauty of romance. The poem also hints at the possibility of love being faced by dark times. The persona of the poem seems overwhelmed by the love to the extent that it affects his sanity. The lover has been traumatized by the loss of his loved one Annabel Lee, and even though he believes that love conquered despite losing his loved one, he is unable to experience life without his loved one, and the beauty of life is sucked from him.

The main character of the poem is a symbol of the author’s dead wife, Virginia. The sea symbolizes the unpredictable element of nature, which ends up taking away Annabel Lee from the persona. The grief expressed in the poem is endless and seems not to have a way out. The speaker is engulfed by his grief such that it merges with his reality. The poem could be a reality of what happens to Allan Poe after losing his wife, and the reality and the clear depiction of grief in the poem could be him expressing his inability to move on from the grief caused by the loss of his wife.

Work Cited

Poe, Edgar Allan. Annabel Lee. POE Young Readers, 2020.