The Apparition Poem Analysis

Poem Explication of “The Apparition” The poem dramatizes an internal and external conflict. First, the speaker struggles to mentally make amends with the woman who has broken his heart. Secondly, it is unveiled in the first line that the speaker has been hurt by an external force, a female, whom he wants her to suffer the consequences for her wrongdoings. The speaker refers to the woman as a “murd’ress” in the first line (“When by thy scorn, O’ murd’ress, I am dead (1))” even though she has not physically killed him or anyone. The speaker struggles to move on from the woman and holds a grudge: “From all solicitation from me, / Then shall my ghost come to thy bed” (3-4). His internal struggle to let go of the women shows that he is possibly plotting for the future for when he truly is dead and will not allow her to escape his clutches even past death. As an apparition he will come to her bed. In a home, a bedroom is an intimate, comforting, and safe place for someone and by him violating her privacy it gets the point across that there are no boundaries to his punishment for her. His insight on how he feels about her is questionable, the speaker constantly …show more content…
He first acknowledges a women figure as a “murd’ress” (1). The poet does not yet present the relationship between the speaker and the woman. The narrator questions the woman if she thinks that she is free from his grasp. He emphasizes that even as a ghost he will come to her after his death, this dramatizes the conflicts and presents how badly this woman has hurt the speaker. Since he isn’t dead yet the reader can interpret that the speaker is plotting how he will punish her in the future. The speaker feels that the woman will never find someone to lover her like he did. The poet stresses on the concept of death using words like “murd’ress” (1), “dead” (1), and “ghost” (4) giving the poem an eerie arrangement. Illustrating that the speaker felt somber about the