Point of View

“A Dream Within a Dream,” for the most part, is written from a first-person singular perspective. This is especially evident from Poe’s laments in the second stanza of the poem, in which he focuses on his specific and personal experiences of loss. In fact, the frequent use of first person emphasizes the inevitability of those loses. Usually, the use of first-person signals a sense of personal agency, that the marker of the individual in the form of “I” or “me” is capable of enacting meaningful change in her own world. But despite the heavy use of “I” in the second stanza, with at least one in almost every line, the content of the poem emphasizes Poe’s impotence in the first-person to preserve all that he cares about – he rhetorically exclaims “Can I not grasp / Them with a tighter clasp? … can I not save...