Love has multiple definitions. One usually thinks positively of love, as it is a generally happy thing. Edgar Allen Poe, however, utilizes love in the worst case scenario. He takes the idea of love and distorts it into a creepy obsession that haunts the reader. “Annabel Lee” demonstrates a dreadful love experience through a relationship that goes from perfect to creepy and obsessive. In the first stanza, Poe illustrates the beginning of the relationship. He explains that it was a long time ago when their relationship began, and that all Annabel Lee wanted to do was love and be loved by him. The second stanza reinforces the fact that they met a long time ago, when they were both young. Poe uses a beautifully said line to explain their love: …show more content…
Their love was so great that the angels in heaven coveted them. Here Poe gives a bit of foreshadowing with “...the winged seraphs of heaven / Coveted her and me” (11-12). Perhaps the angels fall in love with their love. Along comes the third stanza with the upsetting news of Annabel Lee’s death. The reader does not know for sure if she died, but the idea that she did is reinforced by her being put into a sepulchre, which is basically a tomb. A key point, however, is that she died from a “wind” (15). This gives the reader the intention that maybe the angels up in heaven, who are supposed to be good, sent down the wind that killed her. This idea is confirmed in the fourth stanza, when Poe writes “The angels… / Went envying her and me - / Yes!- that is the reason…” (21-23). The angels were so jealous of their love that they took Annabel Lee away from him. Now is when the poem shifts into the creepy and obsessive tone. Poe explains that nothing can tear their love apart. Now in the …show more content…
For example, he uses wind to symbolize death. The wind that was sent by the angels is what killed Annabel Lee. He does this because cold weather sometimes makes people sick, as in this case. He also explains the death of Annabel Lee twice in stanzas three and four. The repetition of that event shows that it was a traumatic experience for him, so he needs to repeat it in order to emphasize the impact it had on him. Poe also compares their love to older and wiser people. This shows that even though they were young and stupid, their love was real, and nothing, including death, could take that away; their love is eternal. Poe ends the poem without a happy ending. This displays the relationship; most poems have happy endings, as do couples in love. However, the relationship in the poem was cut off by death and had no true closure, or happy ending. That is why Poe chose to leave the reader without a happy ending, wondering what could have happened, because that is what happened to the love in the