Denis Xhixhi
1/15/13
Mr. Jennings
2nd Hour
Explication: “Alone”
Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, “Alone”, is a poem that conveys the feelings ofloneliness with dark language and metaphors. This poem contains many metaphors and small details that could be easily overlooked, but are crucial in understanding this poem and all that it implies.
“Alone” is a poem written by Edgar Allen Poe. This poem starts out by talking of the speaker’s childhood,“ From childhood’s hour”(1) is part of the first line of the poem and Edgar Allen Poe simply adds the word “hour” after “childhood’s” and signifies that this person had a short-lived childhood. An hour is a relatively miniscule amount of time when talking of childhood and childhood itself is usually when people are happy and have no real pressure from life, so by this simple addition of a word, he tells the reader that his childhood ended rather quickly. The poem goes on to say in the next three lines, “As others were- I have not seen /As others saw-I could not bring / My passions from a common spring-“(2-4).These lines use hyphens to give a summary of his childhood by stating something that is a common occurrence as a child and then quickly denying it. In addition, the author compares normal interests to a common spring and by doing that, gives way for imagery.<--what is the effect/purpose of the imagery?
In lines 6 through 8, the author states, “ My sorrow- I could not awaken / My heart to joy at the same tone / And all I lov’d- I lov’d alone-“(6-8). At the beginning when he stated the speaker could not awaken his sorrow and heart to joy at the same tone, that goes deeper into the narrator’s feelings by drawing out that he not only was lonely, but in addition, he felt no sorrow nor joy, which left a sense of nothingness. Line number 8 states, “And all I lov’d Ilov’d alone”(8). In this line, by italicizing the second “I”, Edgar Allen Poe portrays a deeper sense of loneliness by having that one letter stand out because he was the only person who loved what he loved, there was no one else that shared his feelings, which was what made him alone.<--GOOD PAR.
In lines 9 through 12, Edgar Allen Poe uses imagery to further explain the loneliness of the speaker. “Then” is the first word in that line and is italicized. That italicization, like the first one before it, being one of two in the entire poem, gives a sense of importance,and in the context, of an event that happened in his life. The poem goes on to say, “ in the dawn / Of a most stormy life- was drawn / From ev’ry depth of good and ill / The mystery which binds me still-“(9-12). “Dawn” meaning the beginning of, “Stormy” meaning difficult and rough, are the word choice he uses to convey his message through imagery. Each word is one that can be pictured easily and can be related to specific emotions in a person. Stormy for example, could and is used to describe hardships and sadness. He uses these words to give the reader a picture of the emotions of the speaker so that he could further describe the narrator’s life and the reader’s understanding of it.
Lines 13 through 22 are abundant inmetaphors.
From the torrent, or the fountain—
From the red cliff of the mountain—
From the sun that ’round me roll’d
In its autumn tint of gold—
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass’d me flying by—
From the thunder, and the storm—
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view—
These metaphors further try to enhance the understanding of the reader to the narrator’s life as the reasons for the loneliness have already been given. Lines 20 through 22 state,“And the cloud that took the form / (When the rest of Heaven was blue) / Of a demon in my view—“(20-22). Edgar Allen Poe used the final three lines in his poem to seal the overall thoughts of the speaker’s lonely childhood with one last metaphor. That metaphor made the sky heaven and the cloud a demon to him. By using that piece of imagery, the author made one last attempt to convey the speaker’s loneliness to the audience.--HOW DOES THIS CONVEY LONELINESS? HOW DOES IT WORK WITH THE OTHER PARTS OF THE POEM?
“Alone” is a poem by Edgar Allen Poe that is used to show the loneliness that the speakerfelt as a child. This poem, through specific italicization, many metaphors, and great imagery, successfully gives the reader a dark and depressing image of the speaker’s childhood.
DENIS: Good start. Keep working on being specific with your analysis. Make sure to not just state what the poem is doing (creating imagery) but describing (what kind of imagery) and explaining what effect the language creates.