what is the poem Annabel Lee about? What does the Kingdom by the sea Mean or sybolize?

-- Anonymous, January 01, 2003

Answers

If you cannot find comments on previous postings I will try again. The poem is really very self explanatory in its story. The KIngdom question is vastly overshadowed by the controversy over the identity of Annabel Lee, purposely vague and idealized as with most other Poe female naems.

I like to simplify it in two ways. The "Kingdom"image is taken up in "Hop Frog" with the negative connotation(for Americans) of a hoary tyranny emphaiszed further by the actions of the "highborn kinsmen". This world is an oppression for the older, suffering Poe. Heaven has jealously stolen his love(s), the death of his wife and difficulties in new courtships(Helen Whitman "Stanzas for Music"). So between the two oppressors and is the defiant position of the narrator, firmly fixed by the tomb on the coast between land, sea and sky. And it is there he makes his statement made gloomy and somewhat horrifying of course by the closed reality of the tomb itself. This is a poem of ulyttimates and extremes. Ligeia too has highborn settings as does of course "Conqueror Worm" to enact this most important and tragic drama.

The other path could be a reference to Mrs. Whitman's location in Providence, Rhode Island near the coast. As a clue to Annabel Lee it is meant perhaps for Mrs. Whitman but contains I believe inexscapable references to Virginia. Agian check out Tripetta in "Hop Frog" who is more clearly a Virginia figure, and that tale being a satirical revolt and reversal of many of Poe's writings. Tripetta and the dwarf, "little people", like the "children" in "Annabel Lee" escape happily after a monstrous act of vengeance.

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2003

what is the author trying to say?

-- Anonymous, January 08, 2003

That's what I am trying to find out what is the poem Annabel Lee is all about. And noone is giving an answer.

-- Anonymous, January 09, 2004