Dream-Land Symbolism, Imagery & Wordplay

There are a lot of creepy critters in this poem, but these are the first ones we meet. Poe doesn't tell us exactly who they are, or if they are the same or different from the "Ghouls" and "sheeted...

This is another important image that's a little scary and a little mysterious too. Even after we've figured out that an Eidolon is a phantom (don't worry, we had to look it up too), that still does...

We're not talking about a few drops here. We're talking about a huge, raging flood of tears. That's why this image is so important. It makes the speaker's sadness into a real, physical thing. The t...

The Mountains in this poem aren't pretty little hills that sit there and look nice. They are huge, raging peaks that move and crumble and crash all over the place. The whole landscape of Dream-Land...

The lakes are another big feature of the natural world in Dream-Land, and Poe actually spends a lot of time on them. We get a real feeling for how sad and cold and lonely they are. Poe is building...

Another set of creepy bad guys who live in Dream-Land. A ghoul can specifically refer to an evil spirit that eats dead bodies, although we also use it to mean any kind of awful, gross monster. Thes...

In contrast to the Ghouls, these spirits might seem creepy at first, but they turn out to be exactly what the speaker is looking for. They are the ghosts of people who have died, and their presence...

This is an imaginary paradise, a place of wealth and happiness and peace. In the old legends, it was a city made entirely of gold. In this case, though, it's not gold that our speaker is looking fo...