Me

With insistent meter and captivating rhyme schemes, Edgar Allan Poe's "Annabel Lee" and "The Raven" are both very similar. However, in their views of love, namely the loss and mourning of beautiful women, they differ greatly. Through analysis of the two poems, the reader observes that whom Poe had chosen for a speaker, the tone and the sound effects are all factors in both poems that make two poems with a similar theme contrast.

Both poems mean the same thing and follow the same theme or "melancholy topic" as Poe called it in his essay. They both depict a speaker who is severely depressed over the death of a beautiful woman. Poe gave a sense of madness in their character, though, which made them obsess and think constantly about their lost love. They could also both be interpreted as obsessed speakers with intense and undying love. Yet, the two poems differ in their meaning. "Annabel Lee" is much more optimistic than "The Rave" is, especially since the speaker in "Annabel Lee" feels like he will always be with Annabel Lee, where as the speaker in "The Raven" is convinced that he will see Lenore nevermore.

The tone and sound effects play a huge role in interpreting the two poems. "Annabel Lee" tends to sound a lot more like a children's song, so the reader is forced to read in-between the lines and find the optimism, while in "The Raven," the meter and tone and rhyme scheme all contribute to the sound that makes readers find the poem overwhelmingly scary. However, if one were to paraphrase both poems, they would be equally as dark, yet it is the meter, tone and rhymes that pull the poems to opposite poles making one almost optimistic and the other horrific.

Each poem depicts a lover grieving. The speaker in "The Raven" has been nearly moved to madness by his grief and heartache. While it is understood that