A Dream Within A Dream: Poem Analysis

Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, “A Dream within a Dream,” conveys that the narrator is experiencing a daydream adjusted to the narrator's perception of reality happening at two levels of detachment away from the actual reality. Poe incorporates the themes of uncertain reality, the toll of untrue love, and time illusion to illustrate the narrator managing to escape reality by indulging in the daydream, replaying his perception of a memory. The poem’s structure consists of the use of juxtaposition with the two stanzas containing two unalike but connected scenarios dealing with the narrator’s uncertainty of reality and time. The poem also makes use of meaningful repetitions, specifically towards the last two lines of each stanza, to emphasize the phenomena of false awakenings, lingering that somehow his daydream is a manifestation of what he wishes were true, when ultimately it is not. Alliteration is used throughout the poem by certain sounds repeating themselves within a line to connect with the idea of time being …show more content…
As the narrator’s love life comes to an end, the death of it ultimately takes a heavy toll in his mind, leading to the “death” of the narrator’s hope and stability. The “surf-tormented shore” can also be a metaphor for time. The sea slowly but continuously pounds away at the visible existence of the shore, paralleling to the notion that time keeps going on but the end of the shore marks “the end of time.” The narrator stands “amid the roar”, again marking that he is surrounded by the chaos of life and cannot do anything to steer his surroundings to his own liking, which may have lead to the daydream as a form of dissociation. The choice of the word “standing,” a very inactive verb, employs how little the narrator can do to manipulate his own life from there