The Valley
The poem opens in a green valley, and that image is really crucial for establishing the mood at the beginning. We tend to have such cheerful, happy associations with green valleys that it's hard to...
The Palace
This is definitely the big hitter in this poem. It's the main image, the one the speaker describes in the most detail. It's also a complex and kind of mysterious extended metaphor. Poe uses the ima...
The King
The king shows up in a surprising number of places here, but he's always a little bit of a mystery, too. We never hear about what he looks like, or anything like that, but he's at the center of the...
The Windows
Poe uses the windows in the palace to symbolize two human eyes. He imagines people looking through those eyes to see what's happening inside the palace-head. Ever heard the old expression "The eyes...
The Spirits
The supernatural is everywhere in this poem. From the title to the last line, we're in a world of spirits. In a way, they're as close as this poem gets to having actual characters. They laugh and s...
The Door
The door of the palace represents the mouth of a human head. Spirits, who symbolize human speech, come streaming steadily out of the door. Just like the windows, the door is one of the ways that we...