i need to know what he ment on silence and the haunted palace.

-- Anonymous, June 05, 2002

Answers

I take by rushed punctuation you are referring to the titles of two poems? The Haunted Palace in the context of theFall of the House of Usher in which it appears, is a symbol of place, mind,person held almost empty on the verge of ruin, haunted by bright memories of past now replaced by less congenial ghosts and decay. For Poe the tension between the ideal past, the haunted present and the future beyond the final doom is a common chord running through mostof his poems.

Silence is also one of the big themes, also split and intension. One simply the absence of sound, the other a state filled with dread empty of motion but not of a presence and despair. Being on the shoreline between states, between the past that is lost and the final barrier loss of death with uncertain haunting beyond there too when added to static silence is like the skipping of a heartbeat, or like that mesmerization tale, a horrible suspension that is like being buried alive. See the tale "Silence: A Fable." The body and soul imagery may mean the difference between the peace of the buried body as opposed to that silence falling upon the living soul, breeding terror(The Raven).

-- Anonymous, June 06, 2002