Annabel Lee
Uploaded by champi_08 on Sep 07, 2002
The first time I read the poem "Annabel Lee", I thought it was a really nice poem. But, when I read it for the second time, I realized that it was anything but 'nice'. It was very dark and disturbing, and even had hints of necrophilia (yuuck). Now, this wasn't the kind of poem that I thought was going to be taught to kids like us, so I decided to read the poem over, and this time, a little harder.
After reading the poem for the third time, I realized that I could be wrong for describing the speaker as a necrophilic. The speaker said that he just lied by the side of his dead girlfriend in her tomb at night, and he said nothing about trying to have sex with her. I mean, there is no indication of sexual desire anywhere, and the poem is very 'un-sexy' in tone. I could see he is sad and angry, but I don't think that he lusts for his dead wife.
But, necrophilic or not, 'Annabel Lee' clearly shows the bad side of love. The speaker's love for Annabel Lee has turned into obsession after her death, with the speaker already being paranoid and almost insane. I mean, no one would like to be described this way, right? 'And this maiden she lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me'.
Love truly is a strange phenomenon. It's like fire-- it can be very comforting and warm, but it can also cause great misery and torment. Love is intangible… incomprehensible. It is different for each person who experiences it. It can have no real definition. It is one of the greatest forces that run the world, but it is a double-edged sword.
Let me use a Filipino saying to precisely sum up everything that I've said so far: 'Anything, no matter how good it is, if taken excessively, is harmful'