Loneliness And Isolation In Alone By Edgar Allan Poe

Poems can have many interpretations when it comes to breaking the piece down to find its meaning. "Alone", by Edgar Allan Poe, directly and indirectly presents Poe's actual feelings towards his childhood. Poe introduces an adult speaker, which represents him, who is recalling his childhood. He uses a somber tone to describe his sorrow of feeling like he did not belong and he reasons about what loneliness and isolation did to him and compares it to a storm and a mountain. Edgar Allen Poe used his own life experiences in his literary works to get away from the stresses of his reality.

The structure of "Alone" is in AABB iambic tetrameter flowing easily. In stanzas 1-8, Poe possesses powerful diction such as sorrow and alone to set the ambience of the poem. By doing so, he creates a somber tone to describe his feelings towards his life. His use of descriptive language recounts his indifference to things that others enjoy in the world which shows his perception of how he felt throughout his childhood. Poe confesses that he did not experience what others did in their childhood. He recollects why he never found joy in the things that made others happy and questions the obstacles that led him to be so unhappy while everyone else was.
Throughout the poem it is revealed that he has always been different from everyone else.
In order to convey this idea, he talks about how he cannot derive his passions from a common spring, which is a place where water flows from the ground. In figurative sense, the common spring represents the passions that normal people usually have. He also uses images such as "from the torrent or the fountain; from the red cliff of the mountain" and "demon in my view"
to

contrast how there is beauty in the world but how it does not alter his sorrow. He has attempted to see the beauty of the world but there is always something that gets him back to his original depressed state of mind. The torrent and the spring are also a contrast of life; how it can be cruel or gentle. Although the flow of the water can become gentle, apart from always being forceful, Poe still feels as though he is drowning in his solitude.

Poe frequently uses anaphora and builds towards the climax to create a strong emotional effect. This means that he wanted to create an emotional effect and express the things that happened in his childhood as an emotional and depressing moment. At the beginning of the poem he is trying to find the mystery of why he is unable to feel and see what others do. He then concludes that "the demon" in the poem is himself, which is a void that constantly keeps him depressed and disconnected from society.He is unable to reach the "heavens", which is a symbol of the world that he cannot reach since he isolates himself from the world because of his misery. He realizes that he will never overcome it and will always be depressed.