Dream Within A Dream Personification

A Dream within a Dream is a narrative poem that is published in 1849 by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe was born in Boston (January 19, 1809 - October 7, 1849) and was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. He was famous for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. However, this poem is different from the other pieces that he has written before. It’s not mystery nor macabre, it is an elegy poem. The author wrote it to his wife to expressed the sorrow of losing her in his life.
A Dream within a Dream is written from the third person perspective as a man who feels like he is stuck into a dream within a dream. The isolation that he expresses through the poem like asking himself one of life’s biggest questions: “Is everything real?” A man who lost his way in his own dream then
finally realize that life is fantasy and as how real it looks, it can suddenly gone away. What Poe indicated here is life is but a dream and as hard as we try in this life to change things, certain things wouldn’t be changed to the way you wanted it to be.
“How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep–while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?”
This poem has two stanzas and each with a different setting. Still, both stanzas are composed almost entirely of couplet rhymes, but they each also contain a sequence of three lines in a row that rhyme, although not in the same order. Poe has used perfect end rhyme for every lines of this poem to make it sounds more effective as well. A Dream within a Dream followed by trochaic meter for almost of the poem, but there’s also a few lines that are not follow the trochaic meter like line 4, line 10, and some others.
The author uses a variety of figurative devices in here. As he uses symbolism when he says
“ And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-”
This symbolizes time and the loved one in his life that has left. He also uses hyperbole when he says
“All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.”
Yet, not literally everything we see is dream, Poe has exaggerated his dream since he is lost in grief.
He uses personification in three ways in this poem. First, he says “Yet if hope has flown away”
Even so, we all know that hope is an abstract thing and it can’t literally fly. Next, he says that
“One from the pitiless wave?”
Despite that wave can’t pity, he personified it as life is pitying on him. Then he says
“I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,”
As torment is a feeling that people feel, it’s how they feel when so’s emotions wrack them, not when waves wrack a shore. Poe expresses that he is being tortured from the pain of losing his loved one. Another device that also uses in this poem is metaphor. The author uses metaphor when he says
“And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand–”
This is metaphoring time and lives that he can’t hold to. Furthermore, the author utilizes repetition when he says
“ O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save”
He repeats “O God” twice as to cry for help to the Lord above, the one Supreme Being, wonders if there is any hope left for
him.
As I read this poem, I think that it’s such a heartbreaking thing to suffer the pain of losing loved ones in our life. It’s hard to accept reality that the people we loved are gone forever and we couldn’t never see them again. The devices that he uses in A Dream within a Dream help the readers to understand more and feel deeper in feelings that he has created in this poem.