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• Maria Mirabela

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Comparing Edgar Allan Poe's "Annabel Lee" and "The Raven"

Edgar Allan Poe's view on poetry is that all poems must be a "rhythmical creation of beauty". In his eyes, melancholy and sadness are beautiful. He thinks that the death of a young beautiful woman is itself full of beauty. In both "Annabel Lee" and "The Raven", Poe writes about this so-called beauty. In "Annabel Lee", a young man is mourning the death of a beautiful young lady. Even though the woman had died quite some time ago, the man is still in melancholy. He misses her terribly and constantly thinks of how she was tragically taken from him by the angels who were jealous of their love, and by her family who didn't think the he himself was capable of bringing her to her final resting place. He loved Annabel Lee more than any other human can love another. The following quote tells the reader how much he loves her and shows that he would do anything for her, even if that means sleeping by her tomb, each and every night. "And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side of my darling, my life and my bride, in her sepulcher there by the sea, in her tomb by the side of the sea." In "The Raven", a man, most likely older than the man in "Annabel Lee", mourns the death of his love that he called "Lenore". Lenore, like Annabel Lee, had died several years earlier. In "The Raven", man hears tapping on his chamber door and sees the curtains slowly swaying. He believes that it can be no other than Lenore. Unfortunately for him though, it is only but a bird, a large, black bird known as the Raven. Although the men in these two stories are similar because they both mourn for their loved ones, they are also different. The man in "The Raven" may be sad about his lost, but his love cannot compare to that of the man in "Annabel Lee".

In these two short stories, the two main characters, as mentioned before, are very much alike, yet at the same time different. They both lose the woman of their life and they both are still in mourning. Poe's poems are usually about such sorrow and sadness, and it is this that makes his poems similar to Baudelaire, Rimbaud, but in the mean time, unique pieces of art.