A Dream Within a Dream

The Poem: A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe was published in 1849.

The poem addresses reality, what is there to grasp. What is ever more real- what you perceive to be real or a dream as, isn’t it the same thing; as sand slowly runs through your fingers all your left with is the emptiness of nothing. The Narrator is the author, as he speaks about his experience and his ideal of life. Albeit, Edgar Allan Poe was considered insane and ‘a broken man,’ but his vision of perception of life has brought question to many people in today’s world.

As a poem, it is concrete, it contains many denotations as what he says is what he means. The tone is ambiguous and philosophical, it’s melancholic as it can be odd. It tries to envision life where the life you have isn’t yours. As the tone generally stays the same throughout the poem. The Structure is 11 for the first stanza, then 13 for the next. It is a sonnet as each stanza has a rigid rhyme scheme except for the first. It has an End rhyme of AA,BB,CC . Multiple Assonance of vowels have been put in the poem for internal rhyme: that my days have… As well as the multiple scenarios as he sells the reader on the life we perceive is to be nothing but a dream: of a surf-tormented shore; through my fingers to the deep; in a night, or in a day, in a vision, or in non. Some have said to be referenced to Plato: Theaetetus, Aristotle and Descartes. But multiple references towards philosophical viewpoints; as life is but a dream, lonely and fake.

• Repetition from “in a night, in a day.” “dream within a dream” Assonance between the vowels of E such as: Is it therefore the less gone? The Poem’s title presented greatly the significance of the poem. Finally, the poem succeeds to recreate a sense of mystery and confusion to the reader, he presents his life as though it were a new. But as a life not even lived.

The Song used in the project was called Sarajevo by Max Richter, we chose this song to use in the project because the tone it set matched the poem’s sanity, as well as the hurt Mr. Poe was suffering, upon that we realized how melancholic the poem could be, as the background vocals symbolized a “cry.”

Images: for each line we chose an image that represented the situation and how we envisioned it, I added scenes from the movie Inception as to coordinate with Mr. Poe’s belief for the background. The Images change as the lines change with it, allowing the image to relate to the music and the poetry.

1st Image: We used it as quite literal, the way it is and said

2nd Image: it was an image of “it’s only a dream” since the lined spoke of dreams and such

3rd Image:  As the line pursued to speak of Day and Night, Noah found an image with day on the left and night on the right

4th Image: Then we took some scenes from inception: a popular movie based on the same idea of the poem.

5th Image: As the line spoke of dreams once more, we took another picture of one dreaming

6th Image: Speaks about roars and such so we took the wives as an imagery.

7th: Grain’s of golden sand: we took sand slowly dripping out of a hand.

8th: I took the scene of Inception once more to take part in the emotional distress in the poem as well as in the scene.

9th: During while I weep, i took a video of someone weeping to illustrate.

10th: Then hands grasping to synchronize with the line

11th: As the conclusion of ” in a dream within a dream.” We took this picture to illustrate how the young lady was ‘drifting away’