I need a summary of Annabelle Lee ASAP

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I have to do a school project where i read a poem in front of my class and then summarize it and give some background info about the author. In this case, im doing Annabelle Lee. If anyone can email me by 03/09/03, that'd be great.

-- Anonymous, March 09, 2003

Answers

I too am running short of time. The narrator is talking about his reactions to the death of A.L.rather than give any voice orimage to his "great love". A whole line about her love for him. The rest about "our love". The pity of the children lovers(Romeo and Juliet) envied and separated by the world and the heavens themselves. The love that revolts against this enmity forever, though that revolt creates a shiver of horror in that the narrator has been stuck down by that shore "many and many a year ago." The plot I am sure you know. Poe himself felt persecuted and bitterly bereft though the recent death of his wife was a despondency he wrote this poem to get himself back to work. As a springboard it might not be the exact symbol of his dead wife though elements are there. It is the normal Poe poem about defiance, loyalty to the Muse and the crushing inescapable reality this side of death- on the shore. Poe backed up to his last desperation months before his death.

There is another poem that probably inspired the form of Poe's poem using a similar woman's name, the narrator's tragedy of mourning on "a cot by the side of the sea."

I agree with everyone else that Poe should have not changed the last line "the sounding sea" which changes to a very meaningful downbeat. repeating the endless rhythm "by the side of the sea" again is philosophically and metrically consistent- but it does not end the poem so powerfully.

This is Poe's last poem. Check outwww.eapoe.org if you can.

-- Anonymous, March 09, 2003


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