Blackout Poem – “Annabel Lee”

“Annabel Lee”, written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1849, is a creepy and dark ballad about a man that still loves his dead wife and that spends his nights laying next to her in her tomb. They fell in love when they were young ‘in a Kingdom by the sea’ and he thinks that their love is so strong that his wife’s death was caused by the jealousy of the angels. The name of the woman in the title also lets the reader understand that she is the most significance person in her husband’s life.

The themes that best describe this poem are love, mortality and family. The poem “Annabel Lee” is significant because shows that true love goes over everything, even death, and nothing can really stop it. Furthermore, thanks to the symbols that the author uses, such as the sea where Annabel Lee gets the chill that kills her, the atmosphere is full of suspense, which makes the reader curious and eager to continue the story.

In the middle of the second stanza, when it is said, “But we loved with a love that was more than love”. (9), it can be notice the use of alliteration, a literary device that repeats a speech sound in a sequence of words that are close to each other. It is also mentioned quite a few times within the poem the verse, “in a Kingdom by the sea”. (2, 8, 14, 20, 24), which is an example of visual imagery, as it is useful for the reader to picture the setting where the story takes place. Finally, there is an example of personification when it is said, “That the wind came out of the cloud by night, /Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee (23/24), as the wind is taking human qualities, killing and chilling the woman.

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