Student Question
What phrases not used in "Annabel Lee" can describe the poem?
Quick answer:
The poem can be described as "hauntingly tragic" due to its themes of love disrupted by death and the speaker's belief that jealous angels caused Annabel Lee's demise. The poem's haunting nature is further emphasized by the speaker's nightly visits to her burial site to lie with her body. Additionally, it can be termed "disturbingly tender," reflecting the unsettling yet deep affection the speaker maintains for Annabel Lee even after her death.
I think we could certainly describe this poem using the phrase "hauntingly tragic," though these words never appear in the poem itself.
The speaker is in love with a young woman named Annabel Lee, but she became very ill and died, prompting her family to come and take her body, hold a funeral, and inter her. The speaker believes that the angels must have envied the happiness that he and Annabel Lee felt with one another and conspired to disrupt and end it. This is what makes the poem so tragic.
However, the speaker also says, in the final stanza, that he goes to her sepulcher—the place where her body is buried—and he lies with her dead body each night. This is what makes the poem so haunting.
For similar reasons, we could describe the poem as disturbingly tender. The narrator's habit of sleeping with his dead lover in her tomb is disturbing, though there is a tenderness in his love for her that we must recognize.
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