An Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe's "the Bells"

Time is free, but it is priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. It keeps ticking even when we’re not ready to move on. Once it is lost, it cannot be regained. Time changes everyone’s perspective of life, and it is the mitigator of all pain. Edgar Allan Poe utilizes a series of literary devices in his poem “The Bells” to support this major theme.

In writing this poem, Poe gave bells the ability to speak, tell their own stories, and feel emotion.

“How they scream out their affright!/Too much horrified to speak,/They can only shriek, shriek” (III, 5-7).

At this point of the poem the bells are in great distress, and they fear for whatever is to come. As the poem moves forward and the plot unfolds, the main character is struck by the death of his loved one.

“For every sound that floats/ From the rust within their throats/Is a groan” (IV, 7-9).

The bells moan and groan at the tragic events of the main character’s life. Perhaps Poe was paralleling his own life at that time. Essentially, Poe did not just make the bells like humans, he made them humans altogether. The poem is about how humanity is moved by different circumstances: in innocent merriment, in joy and harmony, in panic and fear, or in dread and death. Edgar Allan Poe’s usage of personification in “The Bells” helps develop an empathetic connection between the reader and a distant object. Poets often use personification to help their readers relate to the concept being presented and to give a more complete understanding of the emotions that influenced their work.

From the beginning, Poe introduces a recurring idea of bells of different color and structure to symbolize the stages of life, starting with “silver bells”(I, 2). At this point, the silver represents the new, the bright, and the optimistic. Moving on from there, the bells now become “golden”(II, 2) and full of life. They are harmonious and “ring out their delight”(II, 5) with big plans for the future. A single turtle-dove represents mankind, and the moon is man's future-gloated upon by the dove. The bells are “brazen”(III, 2) in the third stanza. Tarnished and without the shine that brought them hope for the future, they are wearing away. The turtle-dove no longer yearns for the moon. A “frantic fire”(III, 10) ,representative of diminished hopes and dreams, has no mercy. The fourth stanza is reached with bells of “iron”(IV, 2) - dark, ghastly, and robbed of all life. The “king”(IV, 20) is time, oblivious to the demise of happiness. With the reign of Death, the poem of life ends.