Could you help me out with a summary of the sleeper and/or a dream within a dream? any help would be greatly appreciated, THANX! =)

-- Anonymous, November 28, 1999

Answers

To me Poe is talking about, in The Sleeper, another of his loves that have passed away. It may have been Virginia, it may not have been. In his poem, Poe is standing before her grave near a lake. It may have been a place the dead used to visit while alive for the last 7 linesin the last stanza state "Some sepulchre, remote, alone, Against whose portal she hath thrown, In childhood, many an idle stone- Some tomb from out whose sounding door She ne'er shall force an echo more, Thrilling to think, poor child of sin! It was the dead who groaned within." In short, Poe stands somewhere out in the woods, near a lake, before a family sepulchre that belonged to his dead loved one.

In A Dream Within A Dream, I beleive Poe is stating his confusion. Maybe he just lost someone he loved or something went very badly for him. It looks like he tried to prevent whatever it was that happened, but could not. He now is looking around at life and seeing things pass by as if it were all a dream and no matter what he does to try and wake, he cannot. It is as if life to him now were an endless night of dreams.

-- Anonymous, November 29, 1999

Well im not sure about the Sleeper but i think a dream w/in a dream means that something sometimes seem so real but only in dreams could it happen like for instance, it seemed like the answer is so far away or the problem is so complex and it seems like their is no solution....

-- Anonymous, November 04, 2004