The Madness In Annabel Lee By Edgar Allan Poe

The Madness that Eats at the Heart Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee” is one of the last poems that Poe wrote before he died. “Annabel Lee” is a poem about madness; the madness that Poe himself experienced when his wife was taken from him by scarlet fever. Since Poe felt the madness that is expressed in “Annabel Lee” he is able to create a mood of pure insanity from the narrator. He pulls a couple of tricks in order to create this feeling such as repetition and metonymy. The narrator also has a few uncommon ways of speaking about love and death that helps prove the madness that the narrator has. Repetition is strewn across each stanza in order to mimic the ravings of a lunatic. But Edgar Allan Poe takes special care in choosing which lines to repeat. He only repeats phrases or ideas that are significant. The narrator repeats the setting by saying, “In the kingdom by the sea” (Poe 494: 2). The line gives a vague idea of the setting which is intentional in order to cause a higher feeling of craziness. A kingdom by the sea is also worded to make it sound dreamlike and fanciful, which gives it a feeling of being unreal and as if the narrator made the might be lying. Poe also choses to repeat the word “love” and the name “Annabel Lee.” This gives the effect of obsession which is a common trait of …show more content…
It proves the narrators insanity when he begins to blame the wind for Annabel’s death (Poe 495: 25-26). But it doesn’t stop with just nature getting the blame, the narrator blames Annabel’s relatives for taking her away: “So that her highborn kinsmen came / And bore her away from me” (Poe 495: 17-18). Even the heaven are blamed by the narrator for Killing Annabel Lee when he calls them jealous of his love by saying “The angles, not half so happy in Heaven, / Went envying her and me / Yes! that was the reason” (Poe 495: 21-23). This is evidence enough that the theme is of