My Initial Analysis of Annabel Lee (sans other opinions as well as proper formatting.)

The beach or the ocean could be associated with relaxation, young love, and a certain whimsy towards said love. Young love is often all consuming. The initial attraction combined with the infatuation causes the young couple’s thoughts and actions are over-shadowed by their inner passions. In the poem, Poe says, “And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me,” the way that he only mentions her point of view could be indicative of a certain pride in the fact that someone loved him and that their thoughts resided solely on him. His past had been filled with much heartache and rejection from the world (The Baltimore Literary Heritage Project). The idea that someone that he loved, loved him back, was a romance he could not refuse, no matter what the cost.

In the second stanza, he refers to them as ‘children’. Typically, children are representative of innocence, and purity, and un-bridled curiosity towards anything new. “But we loved with a love that was more than love – I and my Annabel Lee,” says Poe. One interpretation would say that though there is a certain child-like element, this love they shared was not mere triviality, it was the love that could crush a thousand men and make a million girls cry. There is much reference to time and age, in Annabel Lee, as would indicate its relation to their love as well as the people themselves. Night and adults are depicted as being the enemy and eventual destroyer of the entire relationship. In the beginning of the second stanza, Poe states that ‘..the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me,” and later, after Annabel Lee is taken from him, he says, “The angels, not half do happy in heaven, Went envying her and me,”. Seraphs are child angels, and this again points to the metaphoric age difference between them and the rest of the world.

It also notes that his love was stolen away by her older, whether this be figurative or not is up for debate, ‘kinsman’. It says he came, “And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulcher,” Also up for debate is if this is figurative for an unwanted marriage or for literal death. Either way, her death is described as a cold event. Perhaps her love had ebbed and she moved on, or perhaps she caught a nasty illness and her cold corpse was all that remained of their once love.
The poem ends by saying that no matter what other people, who may or may not know what they are talking about, say, and any supernatural being, good or nefarious, “can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.” Poe goes on to boldly state that not a night goes by that he does not think or dream of her as he lays by her tomb.