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Edgar Allan Poe Sonnet To Science Meaning

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“Sonnet to Science,” is a sonnet by Edgar Allan Poe about science and I believe that he is criticizing it. He says that it alters things with “thy peering eyes” which could be a metaphor for how through the scientist’s eyes, scientists are changing the world for the worse. If we go into detail, then we notice that this sonnet was written around the time of the Enlightenment (18th century) which is better known as the Age of Reason. During this time period, there was a huge revolution in science where it progressed dramatically. After the Enlightenment, people would only believe in things that were proven to be true with science. Poe calls it the “Old Time art” implying that we should no longer use that methodology. He is accusing science
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First, Barry employs scientific diction to describe the work of scientists and how they function. Scientists often use different tools to do their job and to find answers. Barry states, “There a single step can take them through the looking glass into a world that seems entirely different.” The use of the word looking glass refers to old technology that was commonly used by the scientists giving light to the way scientists function by mentioning their instruments.

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The conceptualization of a better world has always plagued the mind of our species. However, this notion comes with the realization that mankind is and has always been cruel and terrifying, even to each other. Although some people tend to believe that they live in a perfect society, most people have never really explored the dark side of themselves until analyzing the works of Edgar Allen Poe. Both Nathaniel Hawthorne and Poe established themselves as anti-transcendentalists through their spine-chilling literature of horror, giving us the basis to what is today’s horror. They showed us what cruel animals humans can truly be.

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Edgar Allan Poe’s use of literary devices to show the how fear of the characters in his stories are both helpful and harmful to them. Poe shows how the fears and obsessions of the narrators in his tales either lead to their inevitable death, or their miraculous survival. Edgar Allan Poe uses many literary devices in his texts, such as symbols, ironies, and figurative language, to show the strange and distorted ways of the characters, and the repercussion of their fears and obsessions. In Poe’s stories, a literary device he uses frequently throughout his stories, are symbols.

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Science and knowledge are two important factors in society around the 19th century. Mary Shelley supports the connection of these two key topics throughout her writing in the novel, Frankenstein. With her style, structure, and Romantic elements portrayed in the novel, she discusses that scientific progress/knowledge is dangerous and harmful as it places man above God and destroys his morals. This is done by examples of appeals to emotion, imagery, and figures of speech that convey her style and ultimately ends up as support of the previous statement.

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