In his poem The Bells, Edgar Allen Poe uses repetition, form, tone, and imagery to illicit contrasting feelings of happiness and despair.
Poe’s repetition of “bells” is a constant reminder of ringing bells and changes my association with bells throughout the poem. In the beginning Poe describes the bells as “jingling and tinkling” and “rhyming and chiming” after repeating the word bells multiple times. The reiteration engrained the idea of harmonic bells in my mind. In contrast, Poe then proceeds to use “clamor and clangor” and “moaning and groaning” to illustrate the bells. The loudness of clamor and clangor and the negative connotation of moaning and groaning made think of bells at a hectic construction site. Also, the constant repetition of “bells” reminds me of the echoing of bells after they have been rung. The word lingers throughout the whole piece and even after I have finished reading it. Besides Poe’s intricate details about the bells, the way he formatted the poem also swayed my emotions about bells.…show more content… In the first stanza, Poe centers words like delight and rhyme. Both of these words have positive connotations and it evokes a sense of lightness. However, in the third stanza, out of tune, despair, and clanging stand out to me. Additionally, I observed that Poe spent a significantly shorter amount of time describing the more upbeat kinds of bells than describing the more demonic and frightening bells. Poe is known to write more horrific pieces all with some connection to ghouls and death. Therefore, his main focus on brazen bells and iron bells is not a surprise, though still