An Analysis Of A Dream With In A Dream

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Good afternoon Mrs Black,
Poetry is a powerful form of expressionism; it has the ability to elicit emotional responses from its readers. The structural diversity and free style of this art form mean that one poem can breed multiple interpretations and as such, poetry resonates with readers often in a highly personal and individual manner.
The poem; ‘A dream with in a dream’ by Edgar Allan Poe relates to us all as it deals with existentialism and the nature of human life. The poem exhibits a gloomy tone, beginning with the narrator farewelling a loved one; it is this gesture that sends him spiralling into the centre of an existential crisis. In the absence of his lover; he struggles to remember the details of their relationship. The narrator begins to question the very nature of his reality. He goes so far as to describe existence as a dream supposing that their relationship was nothing but ‘A dream within a dream’. The second stanza captures the audience as there is a sudden change of scenery; the narrator is standing on a ‘surf-tormented shore’ which metaphorically depicts his internal struggle at the loss of a loved one and his inability to cope. He is struggling to grasp sand within his palms. The sand is symbolic of time; he watches helplessly as the falling grains of sand are washed away by the ‘pitiless waves’; He comes to the realization that time is transient and his past is nothing but a distant memory. The poem consists of rhyming couplets and triplets; rhyming such words as ‘brow, now and avow”. The varied meter of this poem is somewhat confusing; the most predominant being iambic tri-meter a perfect example being; “How few! Yet how they creep.” Edgar Allan Poe uses rhetoric to stress his anger at life; the narr...

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...the reader’s empathy for the woman’s struggle. I think we can all empathise with this poem as it highlights the struggles faced between our inner and outer selves; we all must come to terms with the fact that our youth is fleeting and we must make the most of this time in our lives however, we must not be preoccupied with our appearances as over time, these will fade and we must be happy with who we are inside to truly be happy in life. How we view ourselves will never coincide with the perceptions held by other people; like mirrors, our whole lives and all we see is a reflection of our own personal prejudices.
True poetry is a vehicle for personal growth and reflection; it is a timeless form of human expression that encapsulates the emotions of the writer; serving as a catalyst for deeper thought in a generation preoccupied with audio and visual stimulus.

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