University:
Eastern Kentucky University
Course:
ENG 313 | British and American Literature II
Academic year:

2021
Views:

289

Pages:

2
Author:

Kaiden Murphy

1 07 July 2021 Everlasting Love Edgar Allan Poe is arguably one of the greatest gothic poets of all time. In efforts to make statements, he often utilized the concepts of horror, mystery, or the death of a beautiful young woman. In the poem "Annabel Lee," Edgar Allan Poe uses death of a woman and poetic elements to shine light on love. There is speculation that Edgar Allan Poe wrote this poem in remembrance of his deceased wife Virginia, who died of sickness just like Annabel Lee. In the poem "Annabel Lee," Edgar Allan Poe uses figurative language such as hyperboles and metaphors to explain how true love remains alive and eternal. In the second stanza, the speaker uses hyperbole to say, "We loved with a love that was more than love." With this exaggeration, Edgar Allan Poe hints at the idea that the word love is not enough to describe the passion that lives between the speaker and Annabel Lee. The speaker further specifies the connection between the two when he states, "For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams of the beautiful Annabel Lee.". Mr.Poe utilizes this hyperbole to indicate that no night goes by where the speaker does not dream about Annabel Lee. Even though many years have passed following her death, the love between the speaker and Annabel Lee remains eternal. 2 With the metaphor "The angels, not half so happy in Heaven, Went envying her and me," the reader can speculate that the love between the speaker and Annabel Lee is so heavenly that the divine creatures of heaven themselves felt jealous. Edgar Allan Poe is pushing the idea that a creature such as an angel, to feel an emotion as extreme as jealously in spite of human love, further glorifies the love shared between Annabel Lee and the speaker. Specifically, Poe states < that the winged seraphs of Heaven coveted her and me.= He does not stop there. In addition to highlighting the angel’'s jealousy, he mentions "that her highborn kinsmen came And bore her away from me," implying this jealously leads to the seraphs taking Annabel Lee's life. A seraph, being the highest order of angels, should not bother themselves with the affairs or emotions of humans, but in the speaker and Annabel Lee’s case, they do. The metaphorical remark is Poe's method to describe that the seraphs, the highest form of angels can take away the life of Annabel Lee. However, they cannot nullify the true love that remains alive and eternal between the speaker and Annabel Lee. In conclusion, Edgar Allan Poe's utilization of figurative elements such as metaphors and hyperboles in "Annabel Lee" indicates that true love is everlasting and cannot be waivered. The speaker's love never weakens despite losing Annabel over something he could not control, such as sickness. Perhaps Annabel Lee is a direct representation of Edgar Allan Poe's wife, Virginia Poe, who also died from a sickness. "Annabel Lee" was published a couple of years after Virginia's death and is also Poe's last published poem. Like the speaker in the poem, Edgar Allan Poe never forgot his deceased bride, and even after her death and during his final days, the love he had for her lived and remained eternal.

Analysis of 'Everlasting Love' in British and American Literature

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