How Does Poe Use Repetition In Annabel Lee

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True love is a tough and complicated story to tell. It needs to involve precise and romantic events that only happen in fairytales. Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” gives the story of true love from a one sided perspective. Poe creates a beautiful, yet disturbing speaker to tell the love story. This choice allows for balance between the speaker being a weird creepy guy, and a loving boyfriend. Poe has the narrator expressing his feelings towards his true love, Annabel Lee. Throughout the entire poem all the speaker can think about is Annabel Lee. From stanza to stanza, something relating to his love for her is mentioned. Poe does this to show how obsessed this man is with this girl. When first noticing how obsessed the speaker is with Annabel,…show more content…
It can be found all throughout the poem. Poe is known for repetition in his poems, but by using it in “Annabel Lee” he emphasizes ideas. The most noticeable piece of repetition is the mentioning of Annabel Lee. By repeating her name often, it is evident how much the speaker loves her. On top of that, each time she is mentioned, nothing negative is said about her. Poe is able to continuously portray Annabel as a pure young lady. Repetition is also seen with the rhyming that goes on in almost every other line. This stays fairly consistent for each stanza, excluding the last. Poe’s reason for changing that pattern is most likely because the poem takes a significant turn at that point. Another area of repetition most seen in the first half of the poem is, “In a kingdom by the sea,” (2). Poe gives insight into the setting and tries to put focus on the setting by repeating this phrase. Despite repeating so often, each time Poe changes something slightly with the phrase. This symbolizes a change in scenes while having the same…show more content…
He uses the words, “It was many and many a year ago,” (1) to start out the poem by flashing back. In this flashback, the memories of Annabel Lee are told. The love the speaker had for her, the angels being jealous, and how Annabel died, are all explained in this flashback. Choosing a time period of kingdoms and “maidens” (5) is another way to make it seem like a fairytale type of love. Without these hints of fantasy, the heavy stuff Poe gets into towards the present becomes unbalanced. Once the present is reached, Annabel Lee is already dead. Poe does not let that stop the speaker from discussing the love the two had. The difference now is the speaker is in a tough state of mind, and it leads to peculiar

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