In Poe’s “To Helen”, the speaker …show more content…
The diction in “That a maiden there lived whom you may know” (line 3) serves to give the poem a fairytale like feeling and again portray Annabel as fairy-like and famous, thus making her seem unreal. Also, in “This maiden she lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me” (lines 5-6) Annabel Lee serves as a symbol of impossible pure beauty and love. Like in the Raven, the speaker speaks a lot about a woman but still the reader knows nothing about her. No details are given about her physical appearance or her personality thus reiterating his obsession with the ideal woman.
In Poe’s “To Helen”, the speaker possesses an obsession with Helen whom is portrayed as the ideal woman. In “To the glory that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome” (lines 9-10), the speaker highlights Helen’s out of this world nature. The various settings and the interplay between them parallel he speaker’s treatment of Helen. On one hand she is a real person but on the other she is practically a goddess, a woman straight out of a mythological fantasy, so beautiful she can’t be