Annabel Lee Themes

This Study Guide consists of approximately 39 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Annabel Lee.
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Annabel Lee Themes

This Study Guide consists of approximately 39 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Annabel Lee.
This section contains 873 words
(approx. 3 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Annabel Lee Study Guide

Memory and Reminiscing

Readers are urged by the tone and setting of this poem to question how well the speaker actually remembers his relationship with his dead lover. From the very first line, the speaker admits that he is talking about things that happened "many and many years ago." Repeating the word "many" emphasizes the amount of time that has passed since Annabel Lee's death. This encourages readers' suspicions, since memories, especially extremely pleasant memories, are often idealized versions of reality. In the third stanza, the poem makes a point of mentioning once more that there is a considerable distance of time between the events being described and the speaker as he is recalling them. It becomes even more difficult to believe that his brief, youthful love affair could have been as pure and beautiful as he describes it. If his claim was that a recent love had died...

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This section contains 873 words
(approx. 3 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Annabel Lee Study Guide
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Annabel Lee from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.