Poe was the poet. His poems were about horror, mystery, death and even misery. At the age of three, Poe was separated from his parents being that his mother died from tuberculosis and his father just abandoned him. Being stripped away from his brother William and his sister Rosalie, Poe went through a lifetime of tragedy and hurt. Throughout this essay, I will explain how Poe uses the figures of speech in his poems to bring them more alive. I will also be determining whether or not Poe’s work has lived up to my expectations. Poe’s greatest accomplishments were his poems because those are what he is known for.
In Poe’s poem “The Bells” published in 1849, there is a variety of personification and alliteration. The poem is mainly telling us about the sounds of four different kinds of bells. It starts off with light and happiness and slowly begins to end in sadness, fear, and misery of the bells. “What a world of merriment their melody foretells” (Poe 3). This line shows and tells one how joyous and happy the world seems at that near moment as to towards the end of the poem where everything becomes sad and filled with misery. “To the sobbing of the bells” (Poe 27).
This line clearly shows the change of mood in the poem. From beginning to end, this poem describes Poe’s early years in life. Poe’s first three years of life were both joyous and gay until his mother died and his father left which then turned his life to be filled with such misery and pain as described in the poem. In the same poem, I mentioned there being alliteration in which there is. Alliteration is a huge factor in this certain poem because he uses it very often in his lines. Alliteration is just another way of Poe telling us his life story. keeping time, time, time” (Poe 15).
Poe repeating certain words can be interpreted as certain tragedies repeating themselves. “Leaping higher, higher, higher” (Poe 20). This line specifically can be interpreted as how Poe’s life began to be so highly but then came crashing down. Every poem he writes has such meaning to it but we will never know how much it means to him and how hard it is for him to tell us his life story but in poem form. Another poem of Poe is called “The City in the Sea” which always pertains to personification and can also be considered a metaphor.
It is considered to be a metaphor for the death of the human soul. “The waves have now a redder glow-” (Poe 32). This begins to better explain the title of the poem and that the death of the human soul is actually the human soul descending to hell. This poem would be a great example for one of Poe’s death poems. “Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest”(Poe 54). This line has a variety of meaning to it. The meaning that one would interpret from this would be that everyone eventually descends into hell.
This meaning can also be interpreted as everyone is the same because everyone sins no matter how big or small the sin is. Poe used metaphors in a Banda Pena 2 variety of his poems because I feel like he wanted to tell us a story but wanted us to figure out what it was about using the metaphors. These can also be use of symbolism as can Poe’s other poems. Symbolism is a way to represent ideas, qualities or even the bigger picture. Majority of Poe’s poems can be considered symbolism as a whole. His poems dealing with death symbolize his pain and confusion about not only his birth mothers death but also his foster mothers.
The poems dealing with misery can symbolize his relationship with his foster father and how they always bumped heads. His foster father always wanted Poe to follow his footsteps in the family business but Poe was miserable when it came to that. The only time Poe ever felt alive was when he was writing poetry, doing what he loved most. Euphemism was another way Poe expressed how he felt but in a nicely manner. In some of his poems he has all the gory words and in the others he replaces them with words that aren’t so gory.
Poe was a master mind when he wrote his poems because no one really understand what the true meaning behind them was unless you knew his background and history. Another figure of speech Poe uses not so very often is similes. Poe rarely uses similes because similes are the easy way out to write a poem and Poe’s poems are so much more detailed without them. Similes are comparing two things using like or as and Poe decided to use something more interesting such as metaphors, personification, alliteration, and euphemism.
Poe always had a bigger picture to his poems and when people read them he believed that they can see it. Poe was never the type of poet who loved to take the easy way out because he felt his poems were more valuable than any other poets poems. Poe felt they were more valuable than others because they were his poems. Banda Pena 3 Poe was one of the greatest poets of all time. Whether or not his work lived up to my expectations is a question still needed to be answered. After reading a few of his poems, I can vibe and sense where Poe was coming from with his poems.
Having someone you barely know but who is so dearly to you taken away at such a young age is heartbreaking because you’ll never have the opportunity to get to know them and love them the way you’re suppose to. I know how that certain feeling is because of experience. It is rather upsetting knowing that you can’t get to know the person that your family thought so highly of and all you know is stories about that person. Poe wasn’t just one of those poets that you were forced to learn about in high school. He was known every where because of his poems.
Poe was phenomenal at his work and to be able to read it and relate to it is amazing. I believe that’s what Poe wanted most. He wanted the readers to be able to relate to it no matter how gory or horrific some poems were. The question I still need to answer is if his work lived up to my expectations. My answer would have to be yes. In my own opinion, I actually like the gory and things about death only because I’ve had so much in my life. Everyone eventually or has already experienced death and I think that’s what Poe was trying to mainly focus on when writing his poems.
There isn’t one person who has experienced a family death, even death of a friend or even just know of someone who has passed. I’ve experienced death in each and every single one of those ways and the one that hurt most was the death in my family. So I, myself, can personally relate to his poems and maybe even his short stories. Just sit there and take the time to read Poe’s poems and maybe you’ll get a rush out of it. Maybe you’ll even be a Poe fan and follow his work faithfully but that’s all up to you now.