Edgar Allan Poe’s Annabel Lee (Narrative Criticism)

Edgar Allan Poe was a 19th century poet best known for his dark, short stories and poems. The recurring theme in most of his work is the tragic separation of lovers through death. His plots, though short, usually give insight into the deteriorating psyche of the lover left behind to suffer alone. Annabel Lee is one such poem that describes the passion and devotion of one man for his dead wife.

Annabel Lee
By: Edgar Allan Poe

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love –
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me –
Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud one night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we –
Of many far wiser than we –
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling -my darling -my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea –
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

This poem was written by Poe after his wife died and was published two years later on the year that he died. Clearly the poem was deeply personal for its author therefore I believe the objective was twofold; Poe meant to express to his readers how much he loved his wife and was devoted to her, even after her death, and he also wanted to make a point that there is such a thing as true, undying love.

He communicates his objective first by setting the mood, “in a kingdom by the sea.” The sea is usually a metaphoric (or literal) divider of loved ones in literature and is used even in poems and songs today to symbolize an undefined distance. In addition to that, the atmosphere by the sea is usually damp and cold (a perfect setting for a poem by Edgar Allan Poe) which attributes to the death of Annabel Lee caused by a strong, chilling wind—though her husband would argue it was the doing of jealous angels in heaven.

The second part of his objective was more clearly portrayed through the narrator of the poem, Annabel Lee’s husband, who spoke of her as if she were a goddess. Indeed her name is mentioned in every single stanza and in the last one, twice. He describes her as beautiful (four times) and speaks of their love as something eternal, which cannot be undone, and is capable of making angels envious of them. The husband strikes me as a man who is obsessed with his wife to the point of insanity, not unlike Poe who began losing his mind near the end of his life.

The saying goes “people do crazy things when they’re in love,” however, climbing into a tomb to lie beside your dead lover is over-exaggerated. This is where the flaw of the narrator becomes evident in that the story is no longer believable. Not even Poe in his depressed, maddened state would crawl into his wife’s grave even when he claims that their “love [was] a love that was more than love.”