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Edgar Allen Poe's The Bells

392 Words2 Pages

The onomatopoeic poem The Bells written by Edgar Allen Poe has many intriguing themes presented in his piece of work. The first theme is that happiness rings joyfully, but death lurks in the air. An example of this would be “Hear the tolling of the bells--/Iron bells!/ What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!” (Poe). To clarify, the monody is the regret or the agony of a death of a person, and with hearing the depressing hymns of the iron bells causes the pertinent thoughts of solemn and death to appear. “They are neither man nor woman--/ They are neither brute nor human--/ They are Ghouls:--/ And their king it is who tolls;/ And he rolls...” (Poe). The fictional legendary of ghouls are well-known as feasting on the corpses of the dead and fully satisfied with joy afterward. With the creatures being brought into this poem this way can generate that death is very present, and helping to spread the misery of death all over. Lastly, Poe says “To the …show more content…

Correspondingly the poem presents “How they scream out their affright!... What a tale their terror tells… What a horror they outpour…” (Poe). With the personification of the bells helps give a feeling of intensity, danger, and tension spreading through leading to a fear of “horror” and “terror”. “How we shiver with affright” (Poe). This is the only place in the poem where “we” is mention causing us to place ourselves in this position of shivering in fear. This effect is very intriguing, but chilling with uneasiness. Final Poe writes, “Feel a glory in so rolling/ the human heart a stone--” (Poe). These two lines are disturbing with fear as the stone is crushing a person’s heart as the ghouls are taking enlightenment in this harsh activity. It’s the sense of sickening of fear mixed with the thrill of horror. Poe’s The Bells has a fear just constantly lurking by his psychotic thrill of

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