Please! Please! i need major help with edgar allen poe's "Annabel lee." I need the setting, symbols, allusions, diction, message, effect, and especially, why the piece is just "SO POE" as my teacher says. I have SO many projects going on right now, I really need help, because this class is high honors. THANK YOU SO MUCH. I swear, I'll kiss you if u help me- somehow :) Lindsay

-- Anonymous, March 20, 2001

Answers

setting: there is no particular setting. the poem is a remembrance/narrative.

symbols: Kingdom By The Sea--this is an analogous statement, referring to the fact that all was so well in his times with Annabel Lee (who is really supposed to be his late wife, Virginia Clemm). Envious Angels--these were the forms that supposedly stole Annabel from him, meaning that the love was so great that it could not exist among the mortals

allusions: there aren't really any

diction: follows one rhyme scheme

message: he is gravely sorrowful upon the loss of his beloved Annabel, but the truth remains with him that it was a love too stron to be sustained, and in fact it still is, as nothing, not even death can break the tie of love.

effect: plays on the reader's own desires for such a love, and kindles a sort of empathy for Poe

So Poe: Many of his tales and poems have a recuring theme of some sort of bittersweetness. Here it is the fact that he lost her, but through all of his pain, there is one shining piece of hope. It is "so Poe" because simply it is a poem that no other man or woman could have written, as he enforces such an emotion of overwhelming melacholia.

I am sorry that all of this is so choppy and difficult to understand, but I know that you need it now so I just gave you the information that may help you as quickly as it came to mind.

Respectfully,

P A Regan

-- Anonymous, March 20, 2001

Try reading just the opening of Vladimar Nabokovīs "Lolita" for his ideas on the subject.

EJG

-- Anonymous, May 22, 2001