If you had a choice to leave all of your worries behind and to reunite with lost loved ones, even just for a day, would you? Edgar Allan Poe and Brad Paisley address this question by imagining what reuniting with their loved ones and letting go of all of the pain from this world would look like. Both the poem “For Annie” by Edgar Allan Poe and the song “When I Get Where I’m Going” by Brad Paisley address the pain of the world and losing someone along with the longing to leave that pain behind while illustrating different hopes and dreams about what the afterlife will be like. Although they both used a variety of different elements in their works and had different tones, both Poe and Paisley were able illustrate that sometimes the hope of a better future is enough to get one through all of the hard times and overcome the burdens of the world.
Although both Poe and Paisley have similar themes in their works, both have a different take on what the afterlife is like. In the poem “For Annie”, Poe imagines the afterlife as simply the ceasing of the
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For example, in the last stanza Poe writes, “But my heart it is brighter/ Than all of the many/ Stars in the sky” (4). In this line, Poe uses the word “heart” as a symbol of his love for Annie. By doing this, Poe is able to show that no matter how hard his life on earth is, he is able to be at peace because of the faith he has of one day reuniting with the love of his life. Both Paisley’s song and Poe’s poem, symbols are used to represent what the writer believes to be true and important. For Paisley, the symbolism of spreading his wings to fly shows the freedom the writer hopes for. In the same way, Poe’s symbolism of his heart is used to illustrate how he is able to have peace knowing that his love for Annie is stronger than anything he goes through in his life. Both writers use symbolism to illustrate their thoughts on coping with the burdens of the