Annabel Lee Reader Response Essay

Kendra Pittman Suggs

Marie Loggia-Kee

LIT/375

December 14, 2015                                                

               Annabel Lee Reader Response Essay

“Annabel Lee” was written by Edgar Allen Poe in May 1849, just a few short months before he passed away. The poem is sort of an acknowledgement to Virginia Clemm who was Poe's wife. The poem is narrated by a young man who describes himself as a child. The man falls in love with a young woman named Annabel Lee. They live in a kingdom by the sea. Annabel Lee and this narrator seem to be very happy and very much in love. Their love is so powerful that the seraphim in Heaven freeze her to death with wind chills due to their jealousy.  The narrator is so in love with Annabel Lee that he decides that he isn’t going to give up on her but rather keep her close to him in his dreams and lay by her side physically every night in her tomb. This poem seems to be very devoted to the idea of youth in both the narrator and Annabel Lee. This was possibly because of the way that many romantics from the early nineteenth century viewed adulthood. Adulthood was a corruption of life and childhood had more to and more to offer in terms of love.  Accordingly, Poe treats the narrator's childhood love for Annabel Lee as fuller and more eternal than the love of adults. Annabel Lee is moderate and tireless in her love and it is so pure that nothing can complicate it.

Annabel Lee is very similar to a ballad. The speaker is calm, his language is direct, and his poetic form is tightly controlled. As the first stanza moves into its fifth line, however, the control begins to slip. In addition to a conflicting rhyming pattern in each of the poem's stanzas, Edgar Allan Poe repeats a lot of words. The effect of structuring a poem like this causes it to linger in the reader's mind, and when words linger, it becomes personal to the reader. The poem builds meaning each time a word is repeated.  One of the biggest rhymes in the poem is the love interest's name, Annabel Lee, with the location of the poem: the Kingdom and Annabel Lee's tomb are both described as being 'by the sea'.

Love is definitely the major theme of "Annabel Lee." This theme is a little dark and twisted in some places but undoubtedly, this is a poem about love. The foundation is based on the guy that loves the girl and no matter what, he is not going to stop loving her.  What is interesting about this theme is that the poem doesn't remain focused on the bright side of love. It digs deep into the perilous parts of these emotions. It shows how love can trap a person and torment them and leave them sad and longing for their love lost. It hits very close to almost any reader’s reality. Love has created a certain type of person out of this man, but love has also ruined his life. It starts off so good with him being with the girl that he loves and then he ends up sleeping next to her corpse nightly.

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