I need an interpretation of Poe's "A Dream" for an english project...any help!? Thanks!

-- Anonymous, June 03, 2003

Answers

An early poem. The first stanza left oot probably after a change of residence from his misery with Mr. Allan. The first version was untitled with these first lines: "A wilder'd being from my birth/My spirit spurn'd control/But now, abroad on the wide earth,/Where wand'rest thou my soul."

Check Byron's "I would I were a careless child":"Once I beheld a splendid drea,/Avisionary scene of bliss!/Truth!- wherefore did thy hated beam/Awake me to a world like this."

The immediate inspiration could well have been the death of his coonfidante friend mentor mrs. Jane Stanard and the romantic loss of his first love Elmira Royster to another because of her family.

A neat structure of four stanzas. First compares and contrast night dream and daydream(strongmemory) of lost joys. The contrast is darkness where joys return in dreams to the clight of day where ironically memories bring sorrow- because accompanied by the reality of loss. Second stanza: Rhetorical explanation of that "daydream" is that some light points memory back to the totally lost past. The third is the particular dream valued. "That holy dream" repeated for emotional emphasis contrasted with the antagonism of the world "chiding" him for moping. But contrary to their judgment this is like a guiding light with comfort. The fourth powerful stanza is the second rhetorical question of its value. So what if the light is shaky through obscuring storms. It has the greatest value of all that is revealed in Truth's daystar(day memory). Note there is no descriptionof the dream, no objectification, mainly the pure actiivity and emotion of the mysterious "dream". He is in essence defending the very act and quality of his all too real sorrow later more objectified in such long poems as "The Raven" whose theme in Poe's own words is a mournful and neverending remembrance. It is an activity that haunts all his days as memories haunt the dreams, bringing with the mixed emotions a connection to the past and an ideal perhaps never attained as much as hoped for.

Very adept parallel structure of sonnet length, simple alternating rhyme scheme. The choice of dropping the first stanza(rhetorical quesion) removes the intrusive actual story of the poet and mixed feelings that wander to his own history and before asking the soul what's up. The emotion escalates toward the end. Poe loves repetition and escalation to climax, with subtlest of repetition and internal rhyme in the first lines of the last two stanzas. The last two show less philosophy and more heat(against the chiders) and beauty of expression in praise of the dream. Romantics have a way of drawing out and maginfying the ending, but the orderly structure is very impressive for a short work and "wild heart".

-- Anonymous, June 04, 2003

Your mom has a good pussy

-- Anonymous, June 11, 2003