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Edgar Allen Poe: Interpretation Of Death

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10G COMPARATIVE ESSAY / BELLA FARRELLY Every single living being dies in the long run; this much everyone can agree on. What’s more contentious, however, is what follows death. Throughout “Spirits of the Dead”, Edgar Allen Poe employs emotive and vivid imagery to build an abstract and melancholy poem that grapples with the mystery that is death with, at surface value, remarkable despondence and fear. On the other hand, in “Because I could not stop for Death”, Emily Dickinson, along a dissimilarly clear journey to a fixed destination, meditates over the topic of death and the afterlife with matched intimacy and fixation. However, the poem’s peaceful and blithe sentiment in respect to death, communicated through its personification, sets it …show more content…

What is vastly contrasting, however, are the results of this manipulation seen as each poem develops to form vastly divergent interpretations of death; Poe’s “Spirits of the Dead” grows turbulent and melancholic, while Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death” becomes relaxed. Interestingly, however, the speaker of “Spirits of the Dead” eventually comes to terms with death and accepts the mystery that clouds it, and in the poem’s final moments, Poe employs a similar use of imagery to Dickinson in its tranquility. Furthermore, Poe’s abstract exploration of death is expressed not in a clear and logical “journey” as Dickinson’s is, where throughout, the speaker guides the audience through a consecutive sequence of events. Instead, Poe predominantly explores the psyche in reaction to mourning, an already deeply abstract approach that is not necessarily grounded in physical reality. Additionally, earthly scenes contemplated do not clearly relate to each other, make sense in chronological order, nor are they substantiated by an ‘explanation’, but instead, they correlate with each relevant stage of mourning explored. This allows Poe to place importance on the development of the psyche as it responds to mourning, while Dickinson’s piece remains a mellow tale of the speaker’s tangible journey toward the fixed destination of death. Although unsurprising in their confusion, resentment and natural aversion to death - given its fundamental eeriness, its abstract nature, and in some cases, the taboo surrounding its discussion altogether - Poe’s speaker still explores it in such a way that naturally encompasses each stage of mourning, as well as the emotional state of turmoil and unrest that ensues. On the other hand, Dickinson’s speaker explores

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3.05 Reading Journal Part A In the Premature Burial, by Edgar Allen Poe, the author speaks of his terror upon being buried while not dead. The theme of overwhelming terror and the way it alters one mentally is used to show the narrator as he is swallowed up by his dread of being buried alive. The narrator is afflicted with catalepsy, which is a nervous condition that inflicts a trance or seizure with a loss of sensation and consciousness accompanied by rigidity of the body. The narrator internally fears that his paralyzed body will be falsely misconstrued as dead.

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Poe struggled with bouts of poverty, anxiety, and fantastic tragedy throughout his life, which may explain his perceptive approach to writing about death (Perkins 308). The fear associated with an untimely death plays a critical role in “The Masque of the Red Death” and “The Premature Burial.” Moreover, Poe places the characters in each story at the heart of this inconceivable fate.

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Although Dylan Thomas in “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” and Emily Dickinson in “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” both talk about the similar issue of death, they are able to talk about different aspects of it with the same idea using unique poetic writing styles. For instance, Emily Dickinson uses irony in her poem by relating to the serious topic of death with a soft tone, treating it as a journey of life. Also, in “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” the speaker gives the reader a tone of urgency and demand, where even with anger and rage towards death everyone will all end with it no matter the situation because that is life. This paper aims to compare two poems with examples that will reveal their similarities and differences within the themes.

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Hook:Edgar Allan Poe’s death has been questioned for a long time now. Background info:Poe’s addiction to alcohol led to his death. Four days after being found at a tavern in someone else's clothing and drunk. He was taken to a hospital and four days later he was dead. Thesis: Alcohol should contain warning labels about the possible damages of overdrinking.

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In answering the question, the theme that I will be discussing is that of premature burial in the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Premature burial is a theme that appears in a number of Poe 's stories such as Berenice, The Fall of the House of Usher, Ligeia and, of course, The Premature Burial. As Wolf says, "Poe must have been virtually obsessed with the idea of being buried alive" (289). The first of Poe 's stories I will discuss with reference to this theme is The Fall of the House of Usher.

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The theme of grief exists as a significant theme in Edgar Allan Poe’s narrative poem, The Raven. The source of grief comes from the narrator’s emotions toward the death of his loved one. The dark and creepy atmosphere enhances the theme of grief and helps the audience to feel the narrator’s grief. The poem starts “upon a midnight dreary” (456), and the narrator already feels “weak and weary” (456). This sets up a gloomy atmosphere and gives the audience an idea that the poem will be mournful. As the poem progress, the narrator claims, “all my soul within me burning” (457), and it proves that the narrator suffers the grief from something that he is deeply attached to.

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To begin, it’s important for the two poets to led the readers to understand the context about death behind their poems and how it has inspired them to write about it. Throughout Dickinson’s life, she has experienced death in many ways and forms: with that, death has made a great impact in her writings. In Dickinson’s poem, “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –,” Dickinson looks into the physical procedure of dying and how it affects not just herself, but others as well. When Dickinson was dying on her deathbed, she describes the fly as a figure of the theme death itself, as the wings of the fly basically cuts off the speaker of the poem. For Whitman, he has experienced death in the time of the Civil War.

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Many people go through horrors in their life. However, most don’t record them in the way Poe did. From a young age Poe experienced death in his family. As Poe lived his life, he started using his feelings and life experiences in his work. He based his feelings in his poems such as Annabel Lee and Alone.

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These components exhibit Poe’s unsettled emotions with the passing of his loved one, he expresses a tone of apprehension while pondering of a meaningless life without her. Desperately pining for her, he demonstrates a tone in which the reader can recognize he has become soulless and overwhelmed with grief. Poe releases this tone in the lines, “days are trances and all my nighty dreams,” revealing his days and nights have become replaced by meaningless thoughts and extreme anguish. Poe’s use of complex tones transmutes across all the stanzas. This allows the reader to acknowledge his sense of fulfillment from a fervent relationship, to utmost perturbation, until he at last becomes completely defeated mentally, emotionally and even physically.

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Poe uses unreliable narrator in the texts “The Raven” and “Annabel Lee” to prove that all human nature is unreliable. Edgar Allan Poe was an american writer and poet. He was best known for his short stories and poems that captured the imagination of readers around the world and terrified his readers. His story telling gave mystery and horror to the modern world. Poe explored all themes that were dark and creepy.

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In the poem “Because I could not stop for death” by Emily Dickinson, death is described as a person, and the narrator is communicating her journey with death in the afterlife. During the journey the speaker describes death as a person to accompany her during this journey. Using symbolism to show three locations that are important part of our lives. The speaker also uses imagery to show why death isn 't’ so scary.

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Edgar Allan Poe was an American author; he mainly focused in genres such as short stories and poems. Poe didn’t have much of an academic background in literature but, he excelled in it. Some people believe that his success was mostly due to the fact that his life was very sad, filled by a series on misfortunate events, such as being an orphan, suffering from poverty and being constantly surrounded by death. In his works, Poe portrays narratives that are characterized by their mystery and macabre. The topic of death was ever present in his work, constantly describe with dark moods and somewhat terrifying settings.

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However, for Poe, death is poetical. And not just any death, but rather the death of a beautiful woman— by beautiful we will assume he refers to the women he admires, the women he found beautiful on the inside, because death is also the end of all external appearances. In any case, if one is familiar with Poe’s style, we will know that the death motif was nothing new in his stories, neither was the death of his female characters. Nevertheless, to understand why he had the audacity of presenting the death of a woman as something poetical, it is necessary to know more about his personal life.

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In “Because I Could Not Stop For Death”, Emily Dickinson uses imagery and symbols to establish the cycle of life and uses examples to establish the inevitability of death. This poem describes the speaker’s journey to the afterlife with death. Dickinson uses distinct images, such as a sunset, the horses’ heads, and the carriage ride to establish the cycle of life after death. Dickinson artfully uses symbols such as a child, a field of grain, and a sunset to establish the cycle of life and its different stages. Dickinson utilizes the example of the busyness of the speaker and the death of the sun to establish the inevitability of death.

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