Annabel Lee Symbolism, Imagery & Wordplay

This is the first major image we come across in the poem. Poe uses it a bunch of times, always as a part of the phrase "a kingdom by the sea." In poetry we call that repeated phrase a refrain. You...

If we were going to have a contest for biggest, fattest symbol in this whole poem, we'd probably bet on the sea. It comes up again and again in the poem, and it's the image that ties everything tog...

She's the one. She's the reason for the poem and she's clearly the only thing our speaker can think about. She was young and beautiful and one half of the perfect couple. But even though Poe tells...

We get the feeling that our speaker thinks this guy is a not a good guy. He shows up for a line, takes Annabel away, and shuts her in a tomb. Then again, he's burying his dead relative, which is re...

There's only one spot where the speaker can bring himself to say straight out that Annabel is dead (that's in line 26: "killing my Annabel Lee"). For the rest of the poem, this "sepulchre" is his w...

Interestingly enough, these are the bad guys in this poem. They take the blame for killing Annabel. It's not a standard view of angels, but our speaker has a dark outlook on everything, so we're no...

If there's any part of the natural world in this poem that feels like it might be sort of positive and friendly, this is probably it. While the wind chills and kills and the ocean is full of demons...