Porphyria's Lover Essay

In The poem entitled “ porphyria’s lover”, Robert Browning illustrates a shocking idea behind two abstract opponents - love and death. This oxymoron includes multiple literary techniques such as personification and imagery which tells the story of a lunatic man who is obsessed with the love of Porphyria to the point where he decides to calmly strangle her to death. With the use of these terms, Browning successfully conveys an unsettled tone similar to paranoia in which he not only creates an eccentric poem portraying the speaker’s insane key to love, but also leaves the reader in wonder of why one would literally be “madly” in love.

Before the poem comes into life, a personified description of the setting occurs, signifying the speaker’s mood in relation to the weather in the same manner that one would describe a person. To give an example, the speaker notices how ‘’ the sullen wind was soon awake” and “ tore the elm-tops down for spite” while also “did its worst to vex the lake” which all implies to the sullen, angered, and vex attitude of the speaker as he marks his broken heart into the poem. Such reflection occurs because it is common for narrators in dramatic monologues to project personal details into inanimate objects such as the “ sullen wind and vex lake” in order to indirectly farm their
To emphasize;The speaker is already known to be in a heart broken distress when Porphyria confidently enters this cold house where the speaker sits in remorse. Her arrival shuts the sullen and negative air out right before she continues onto making the “ the cheerless grate blaze up” which would reflect to the warmth and comfort that was previously lacking. This imagery is combined with a literal and metaphorical idea that introduces both the storm and the unhappiness being “ shut out” by Porphyria as she glides