An Anaylsis of Edgar Allan Poe A Dream free essay sample

It is his way of allowing the narrator a chance to escape from the harsh realties of life into a dream –like reality of how he truly wants life to be. In the first stanza of the poem, the narrator is explaining his dream to the reader. It starts out by telling the reader that in the mist of the darkness surrounding him, he had a dream that brought much joy to his heart, it was full of life and light and then he awoke to only discover that it was truly a dream that left him broken hearted and this was a very devastating thing for him to grasp. The second stanza posses the question what is a dream?He wants to know is life by day a dream of the past or is it a reality of the future. I’m thinking that the narrator had a horrible life in the past, just as Poe, and his life is now a reflection of his past and that he wishes it was all a bad dream and that it would go away in the morning just like his wonderful dream he had that night did when he awoke in the morning. In the third stanza he refers to his dream as â€Å"That holy dream—that holy dream†. It was a shield of protection from a world that was continuously scolding his thoughts, and actions. â€Å"It cheered me as a lovely beam/ A lonely spirit guiding† (Online Literature. om). It was like a beautiful light had shone upon his lonely life and guided him to happiness. In the finally stanza, the narrator wanted to know how did this wonderful dream full of bright light make it through the darkness and storms of night (his life). In other words, how did this dream of me living a wonderful life make it into my dark and miserable mind? How did it get through my twisted life into my thoughts? How could someone like me have a dream of such magnitude when I have such a horrible life? He wants to know â€Å"What could there be more purely bright/ In Truth’s day-star? †(Online Literature. om) Meaning is there anything more pure, bright and truthful than the sun, so I guess my dream was just that a dream and not real life. This particular poem reminds me of Poe’s poem â€Å"The Raven,† because in â€Å"A Dream,† the narrator desperately wants to escape from his horrible life by living in his dreams, but he knows he can’t n o matter how hard he tries because his dreams are not real life and he just has to learn to accept it just like in the poem â€Å"The Raven,† the narrator is trying desperately to escape from his pain of losing Lenore but he cant because his memories of her will always reside in his heart.In this poem the narrator tries to use the raven as an escape from his feelings of Lenore. In both of these poems, the narrators are two depressed men living a life full of sorrow and they learn that no matter how hard you try in life there are just some things you can’t escape from and you have to find a way to move on from it so you could continue to live your life. â€Å"A Dream† like many of Poe’s poems is written in a Shakespearian quatrain with perfect rhyme schemes (Dipsolect. com). This poem also consists of alliterations in the second (line 1) and third stanzas (line 2).It is written in iambic parameter, but it also consists of other literary devices such as the internal rhyme scheme use in the first line of the finally verse, his use of rhetorical questions in first stanza and the trochaic endings in the first and third stanza. He also uses enjambment to connect the first line with the second and the third line with the fourth â€Å"The spondaic ending on the last line of the poem might also be worth noting, as it ends the poem in a double stressed syllable† (Dipsolect. om). It makes the reader feel that the ending is missing and they don’t quite understand how the narrator truly feels at the end of this poem. This poem has a sense of desperation and unhappiness from the narrator. Dipsolect says â€Å"It is not difficult to imagine the narrator sitting curled up in a dark corner of a room, a graveyard or a pub, reciting the poem† (Dipsolect. com). The narrator is obviously in a state of depression and you can sense this throughout the entire poem.He uses the word joy but there is no joy in his life, that’s why he is relying on his dream but it only brings him joy for a moment because after he awakes he comes back to reality. Honestly, I think he’s still not happy within his dream because he knows this is not real and probably wants to understand how a person in his state can have a wonderful dream because his life is full of darkness and sadness. The narrator’s play on words makes the poem become more abstract to the reader, because you would think he was excited about his dream but in reality he was not.According to Dipsolect, â€Å"This could be seen as allowing the reader a great deal of room for interpretation, or as a literary device of mysticism† (Dipsolect. com). There can be many interpretations of â€Å"A Dream† because the last line of the poem leaves the reader guessing and even if you reread the poem you can still gain many different interpretations. My interpretation is this: After reading â€Å"A Dream†, I feel that the narrator is a lonely, misunderstood man that’s seeking a new life.Like Poe, the narrator had a hard life growing up and it has continued or gotten worse in his adult life. He desperately wants to leave his horrible life behind and start a new one. This is where the dream comes into play. When he’s asleep he can escape his horrible life and the negative people around and go into a world where he could have peace, love, and acceptance from the people surrounding him. This is what the narrator wanted along with Poe wanted in life.I also think he felt that he was undeserved of this caliber of life because it has been awful for so long. â€Å"A Dream† is a difficult poem to understand with many interpretations. My interpretation of the poem was sort of different from the scholarly source I use. He felt that the use of darkness was a strength for the narrator in the poem and the use of light was a weakness for the narrator I felt the opposite. After, rereading the poem for the tenth time I see where he/she is coming from and I also see why I went in a different direction.The last line of the poem is not really the closing of the poem. The poem feels incomplete and I feel that it allows the reader to have many different thoughts and interpretations of this poem. However, this was a well written poem and it does what all of Poe’s poems does keeps the reader in suspense and make the feel a sense of sorrow for the character/ narrator in his works. Works Citied â€Å" Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s â€Å" A Dream† † Literature Reviews I. Dipsolect, 4 August 2004 Web. 10 Nov. 2011. http://www. online-literature. com/poe/2159/