Literary Analysis Of Annabel Lee

Register to read the introduction… The poem appears like an ocean shore; the lines of the poem, emulating the back and forth motion of waves, are long, then shorten, lengthen, then shorten again, this in keeping with the mythical kingdom theme. The predominant rhythm that the poem uses is the anapest, a type of meter consisting of three syllables, with one stressed syllable occurring after two unstressed syllables (Poe's Annabel Lee). For example in the first line, the first syllable of “many” and the word “year” receive stress after two unaccented syllables, as shown here: Itwasma / nyandma / nyayear / a / go (Shmoop Editorial Team). The anapest rhythm adds excitement and a climactic aspect as it builds in momentum just as the overall structure of the poem does; they meet, they fall in love, she dies, he grieves, he accepts. …show more content…
The poem’s rhyme scheme begins simply with an ababcb pattern but gets more complicated as the poem progresses, repeating rhymes within a line (known as internal rhyme) and ending with the pattern abcbddbb in the last stanza(cite). The repeated use of the end rhymes “sea,” “Lee,” “we,” and “me” offer a link from stanza to stanza throughout the poem (Shmoop Editorial Team). Repetition of key words within lines gives the poem its pleasing sound while at the same time emphasizing main ideas. For example, in line 1, “many and many” establishes the fact that a long period of time has elapsed since the speaker began mourning, an important fact to recognize if the reader is to understand the extent of the speaker’s grief. The name “Annabel Lee” appears at least once in every stanza, and the phrase “kingdom by the sea” also appears frequently, adding to the unified