18 pages • 36 minutes read
Edgar Allan PoeAnnabel Lee
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1849A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
The Sepulchre [sic] (Coffin)
What good would a gothic poem be if it didn’t feature regular references to a coffin? Certainly, in “Annabel Lee,” Poe does not want the reader to find out. The recurrent image of Annabel Lee “shut” (Line 19) away in a coffin—her body presumably rotting all while the sea waves rise and fall with their characteristic indifference to human plight—creates a consistent reminder for the reader that they, too, will one day find themselves in such a place.
In addition, the presence of Annabel Lee’s coffin—static, motionless—when set against the rolling sea, echoes the feeling of emotional and psychological imprisonment and isolation the narrator feels now that he is alone on this earth without his lovely bride beside him. Such an interpretation clearly leads to the realization that there are two “coffins” in the poem: the literal coffin Annabel Lee inhabits, and the figurative coffin the narrator’s grief has constructed. The lines between the two coffins blur when the narrator succumbs to his grief/desire and slides into the coffin next to his deceased lover: Here, they are one again.
The Seaside Kingdom
The narrator’s repeated mentions of “this kingdom by the sea” remain unfailingly ambiguous. In what geographical space is this kingdom to be found? What are its coordinates or the names of its rulers and other inhabitants? Like so much else in “Annabel Lee,” the narrator provides no answers or clarifications.
While such deliberate, sustained ambiguity can be frustrating, it results in the reader sensing that they are inhabiting not so much an actual place as an imagined one. Or, more specifically, the narrator considers his surroundings a “kingdom” simply because it is where he first met his beloved. This, when coupled with the narrator’s sense that vengeful angels were behind the murder of his bride, creates a prevailing idea that the poem is chronicling two simultaneously corrupt kingdoms: one on earth, and another in heaven.
A positive interpretation of this dynamic can be that the narrator is something of a noble—albeit solitary—knight, who refuses to cede territory to the evil-doers around him, and who has, in the process, placed these evil-doers on notice that they will not be able to continue to act with such heartless impunity.
The Sea
In a poem as concerned with death—and the accompanying dynamics of stasis, confinement, and despair that come with it—as “Annabel Lee,” the constant presence of the ocean provides a powerful, imagistic counter to such bleak concepts. This is perhaps best understood in the poem’s final stanza, where various elements of nature—the moon, the stars, the sea—create a kind of natural holy trinity within which the body of Annabel Lee and the narrator reunite on a nightly basis.
Therefore, in “Annabel Lee” the ocean represents an enduring, sacred innocence, given that it is wholly indifferent to the various machinations of the scheming angels, demons, and kinsmen. Further, no matter what types of cruelties and injustices the humans and spirits in the poem may conceive and concoct, their powers are ultimately nothing beside the enduring, resounding power of the ocean.
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By Edgar Allan Poe
