- Literary Devices
- Repeated Clusters
- Themes and
Interpretations
- Author's Life
- Form and Structure
- Lyric Poem
- Rhyming scheme:
A, A, B, B
- When a poet writes a short emotional,
rhyming poem with songlike quality.
- Example:
Line 1 (A) - Been
Line 2 (A) - Seen
Line 3 (B) - Bring
Line 4 (B) - Spring
- Lines 1 to 5 portrays the difference of thoughts
he had compared to other kids his age.
- Basically, Poe is saying that from his childhood, he was not like the others. Therefore, he didn't view life the same way as others did because of the different experiences he had gone through.
- Related to Poe's life as a child. His family died when he was young, causing him to face hardships at such an early age. Due to this, he viewed life differently than those around him. The way he views life is considerably more depressing or dark.
- The theme of this poem is
isolation and suffering.
- The last line (line 22) refers to Poe's father. His father was known to be abusive, and was considered a "demon" in Poe's view.
- Born on January 19, 1809 and
died on October 7, 1849.
- The poem, Alone, was originally written in 1829, but was left untitled and unpublished. It was later published in 1875, after Poe had died.
- Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts. After his parents died, he moved to Richmond, Virginia to live with his foster parents. After, he went to Baltimore and then New York to begin his writing career.
- Imagery
- Personification
- Dichotomy
- Parallelism
- Metaphor
- The last line of the poem (line 22) can be considered a metaphor because Poe did not really see a "demon". The word, demon, in this case is being used because it can be compared to Poe's father. Hence, this line is indirectly comparing Poe's father to the word "demon".
- Alone is structured by talking about
the past and then moving on to the present.
- Alone is a very emotional piece created when Poe was a young man. This poem consists of a rhyming scheme and is short enough to have songlike qualities.
- This allows the reader to understand the present, by reflecting upon the past first.
- In line 4 and 5, Poe talks about a "common spring". In literal meanings, "spring" would be a stream of water. In this case, Poe uses it because he is comparing a source of water to childhood; in the sense that he lived a different childhood, and experienced different things.
- In line 17 and 18, this poem gives human characteristics to lightning. This is shown when the lightning flew past him. Lightning cannot actually fly, thus giving human characteristics to lightning.
- Lines, 20 and 22, portray clouds with the human characteristic of forming. These clouds "form" into a demon, therefore, this can be concluded as personification.
- In line 8, the ideas in the statement are contrasting each other. "And all I loved" refers to the idea of expressing love to others; but is then contradicted by the next idea: "I loved alone".
- Lines 2, 3, and 13, 14, are grammatically similar in their construction. This adds balance and rhythm as well as a flow to these lines.
- Imagery is used throughout this poem in a rich way. The poem itself allows the reader to visualize what is happening through the descriptive language that Poe uses. This imagery can be considered as depressing or dark because the whole poem is very dark.
- Imagery is purely used from line 13 to 16. The scenery is described as a dark clouded area, with a stream and a main fountain near a red cliff, with a mountain in the background. The sun is still shining bright with a red-tint of gold (autumn).
- The poem starts many lines with the word, "from".
- Maintains a dark-theme of imagery throughout the poem.
- Childhood is a repeated topic in this poem.
- A total of eight lines start with "from".
- At the beginning of the poem, Poe's main topic of the past was his childhood; which is displayed through the whole poem.
- As mentioned before, this poem was used to portray the sad life that Poe had gone through. Which started very early from his childhood. He experienced many hardships at an early age; which affected thoroughly affected his life.