Annabel Lee: Love, Heavenly-Envy, and Death

There are many authors from different places in World who managed to engrave their names in our
minds. Hemingway, Falkner, Steinback… The list will go on, but there is one particular name on this list
that we definitely cannot forget. The name is Edgar Allan Poe. He is known for his 'dark' symbolisms in
his artwork, and his short stories are definitely priceless. One of his best-known artwork is called
"Annabel Lee," the name of a little girl living in a kingdom which was surrounded by a sea full of
monsters. Annabel Lee appears to be a tragic love story of the two child. The poem is told by the boy
who fell in love with the beautiful Annabel Lee, and in the poem, the boy tells us the story of their love;
how they were in love with each other that even the angels were jealous of them, how they got
separated, and despite all of this, how he kept loving her. The vital thing in this magnificent poem is
how Poe transfer his pain and his misery under this poem's lines mischievously. Poe had tragic losses
in his life, and it is easy to see that he tries to transfer his pain in his lines. Annabel Lee is one of the
examples of this. Annabel Lee's symbolized details can help us to understand and realize the misery
that Poe had suffered throughout his life.

All of the things that we know about Poe's life were deliberately changed and poisoned by one of his
enemies. So, to understand the real Poe, we first need to refresh our basic knowledge about him. The
first thing we need to know about him is that his parents died three years after when Poe had born.
Therefore, Poe and his siblings needed to live with foster families. Poe's foster family wanted him to
become an elegant bachelor and a businessman, but he decided to pursue his dreams just like his role
model Lord Byron. In his adolescence, Poe had learned how a bachelor's expenses could harden his
life. He begins to gamble to afford his life. He had had to leave the college because of the humiliation
feeling caused by the poverty of college life. After he had left the college, he decided to visit his fiancee.
However, life was too cruel to Poe. That visit of his resulted with him to be left with a broken heart
after he found out that his fiancee has become engaged to another man.

Throughout his life, he suffered from the poverty caused by his expenses and his broken heart. Thus,
every line that Poe had written appears to be a mirror to his feelings, inner thoughts. If we analyze
Annabel Lee in detail, we can realize some of those inner thoughts. For example, in Annabel Lee, Poe
tries to portray a kingdom which is surrounded by a deep-sea full of monsters. By using this metaphor,
Poe maybe tried to emphasize his captivity in his own life because of poverty, or maybe he tried to
mention his enemies who surrounded him. Also, in poetry and literature, we see that poets and
authors often use the symbol "sea" to emphasize the life and its difficulties. As I have mentioned
before, Poe had had to bear many difficulties in his life. So, the kingdom surrounded by the sea may
represent Poe's himself.

Another example that we can connect to Poe's life is the image of envious angels. No evidence can
make an angel to be seen as "envious" in any source. Therefore, here, it can be said that Poe had tried
to find a reason for that separation, just like the separation that he had with his parents.

Also, we can connect the death of Annabel Lee with Poe's life, too. In the poem, the narrator mentions
about Annabel Lee as the source of pure beauty. The death of pure beauty can be understood in two
ways. The first one is, one day, even the purest beauties will face death. The second one is, her pure
beauty is now untouchable as she is dead. So, she will be remembered as beautiful as she was before
she had died. The second meaning is closer to Poe's life than the first one. Poe often uses the image of
a mysterious woman who comes back from death. So, he usually mentions about a woman who passed
away but then returned. It can be sensed from this image that he is desperately lonely for his mother,
who had died when he was only 3.
To conclude, Edgar Allan Poe's life was full of difficulties when he had to live by himself. He and his
broken heart had to bear many things, and we can easily say that Poe's life was almost miserable.
However, in today's World, we can definitely say that if he had not suffered all of these miseries, he
would not have created those masterpieces. It is essential to know that sometimes great miseries may
give birth to masterpieces, just like in the Poe's case.

Aleyna Ertoy
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