In his essay "The Philosophy of Composition," Edgar Allan Poe writes that in an ideal poem, "two things are invariably required first, a certain complexity, or more properly, adaptation; and, secondly, a certain amount of suggestion, an undercurrent, however undefined, of meaning." While he claims to use this statement to justify the "suggestiveness" of the last two stanzas of "The Raven", he points to a more universal undercurrent that lies behind many of his poems, particularly those about deceased women. In poems such as "Annabel Lee" and "The Raven", the speaker secretly confesses to having killed the women they are written about. The complexity of these poems lies in the nature of the speaker, who wishes to make his guilt public, but at the same time enjoys keeping it hidden. The principle of secret confession serves as Poe's poetic inspiration, drawing a connection between confession and creation. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Since the death of beautiful women is such a common theme in Poe's poems, it is obviously a challenging topic. More important than the deaths themselves, however, is how they are told. Poe's speakers tell stories of dead women that imply that they are responsible for killing them. One of the best examples is "Annabel Lee," in which Poe frames the speaker's underlying confession primarily through the use of meter. First of all, the elastic rhythm, or the alternating four- and three-beat lines, make the poem feel like a fairy tale. With the first lines: “It was many, many years ago / In a kingdom by the sea,” the reader is immediately intuited that what follows is a story, and not necessarily the truth. Therefore, the reader is immediately skeptical when the speaker declares that the angels in heaven, who longed for their love, were responsible for the death of his maiden. Perhaps the most revealing part of the secret confession is in the fourth stanza, in which the speaker exclaims, "Yes! that was the reason (as all men know / In this kingdom by the sea)" The exclamation, which shocks him general pattern of lines, gives the impression that the speaker is convincing himself of this false excuse, as if he has only now begun to believe it as it slips out of his mouth. Another possibility is that at this point the speaker has anticipated the reader's doubts and finds it necessary to affirm his story by shouting, "Yes!" In both cases, the speaker's frantic exclamation that disrupts the otherwise fluid, almost hypnotic meter illustrates how the speaker wants the reader to read his confession that lies beneath his thin, meager apology for the death of his girl. Poe also uses rhyme and alliteration to suggest the speaker's fault. One of the most subtle but effective uses of rhyme is the repetition of the vowel sound at the end of every other line. With the exception of a minor variation in the fourth stanza, the end rhyme scheme in every other verse is: "sea", "Lee", and "me". The continuous rhyme of the word "me" suggests that the speaker directs the reader's attention to himself for a particular reason. That is, he points the finger of blame at himself as if to say: "it was me". The alliteration of the "s" sound in the last two lines of the poem imitates the peaceful lapping of the sea, where the speaker supposedly lies with the corpse. Likewise, internal rhymes such as "the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes" and "all the night tide, I lie beside" force the reader to utter the same sounds in each line, mimicking the echo of the voice of those who speak within the walls of the tomb in which Annabel Lee is buried. The alliteration, the rhymeinternal and peaceful rhythm create an eerie calm tone that reflects the speaker's calmness and lack of pain, another sign of his self-accusation. Even the guilty speakers of Poe's tales claim to be of calm composure. At the beginning of "The Tell-Tale Heart", the speaker attempts to prove that he is of sound mind by saying, "Listen! And see how calmly I can tell you the whole story." Throughout the story, the speaker goes out of his way to tell the reader how calm he is and how attentive he is to "prove" his sanity; however, the story as a whole serves as a confession of his madness. Similarly, in “Annabel Lee,” the speaker's calmness in the final stanza indicates his own guilt, as he is strangely calm enough to lie peacefully next to his lover's rotting corpse. The relationship between calm and confession is particularly strong in "The Black Cat," in the scene where the police are examining the area where the speaker has walled up his dead wife and (unknowingly) the cat. Poe writes: “Gentlemen,” I said at last, as the group ascended the steps, “I am glad to have allayed your suspicions.” I wish you all health and a little more courtesy. By the way, gentlemen, this is a very well-built house." [In the rabid desire to say something easily, I scarcely knew what I had said.] 'I may say an excellently well-built house. Do you go to these walls, gentlemen? these walls are solidly joined;' and I knocked loudly, with the stick I had in my hand, on that very part of the brickwork behind which lay the corpse of the wife of my bosom. The speaker, who enjoys keeping calm in the presence of the police so close to the evidence of his crime, he has an inexplicable urge to expose the evidence that will undoubtedly point to his guilt. However, there is no indication that the speaker's need to confess is motivated by remorse. inclination to self-torment is a prevalent topic in “The Crow,” as Poe discusses in his essay “The Philosophy of Composition.” is illustrated by his repeated questions to the bird, who knows he will only answer, "Never again." questions in order to receive the answer from the expected 'Never Again'". the most delicious because the most intolerable of pains2E" The pleasure of torment is not only a fundamental element of the Gothic genre, but also a correlative of confession. Poe's narrators enjoy a kind of hidden confession because it is a kind of self-torment. The concept of self-torment, particularly through the act of confession, is closely linked to the idea of ​​narcissism The very act of tormenting oneself immediately shows a certain degree of self-obsession been kept only in one's head. Logically, therefore, a poem characterized by the speaker's confession is a poem that talks about himself. The relationship between self-torture and narcissism is well defined in "The Tell-Tale Heart", in which, at end of the story, the narrator lifts the floorboards in front of the police to expose the corpse of the man he killed Ironically, the object that drives the speaker to kill the old man is his eye, homonym of the word "I." The underlying hypothesis is that the "eye" is at the same time the symbol of the speaker's torment and of his own obsession with himself. Narcissism is indeed prevalent in many of Poe's works, both prose and poetry. Many of his poems, although written under the guise of talking about particular women (such as"For Annie" and "Annabel Lee"), are all about the speaker. For example, in "Annabel Lee", the woman about whom the poem is written is almost entirely absent from the poem, except for her name. When the speaker describes it, he does so in terms of himself. The first information the reader learns about her is that "she lived with no other thought / than to love and be loved by me." Later, the speaker describes her as "my darling, my darling, my life, and my bride." The speaker's self-obsession is made even more evident by the same device that exposes his guilt: the repetition of the vowel "ee" in the final rhyme lets the reader pronounce the word "me." The pervasive narcissism in Poe's works is of fundamental importance in establishing the connection between confession and creation. The speakers' self-obsession, combined with the absence of women in the poems, makes it clear that the speakers are much more concerned about themselves than the women they killed. It is as if the speakers compensate for the silence of the dead women by inserting their own voices. Therefore, the absence of women provides some poetic inspiration. This is what Poe means in "The Philosophy of Composition" when he writes: "the death of a beautiful woman is without doubt the most poetic subject in the world, and likewise it is beyond doubt that the lips best suited to such a subject are those of a grieving lover." The logical deduction from this statement is that a person is justified in killing his lover for the purposes of poetic inspiration. This is exactly what the speakers of "Annabel Lee" and "The Raven" did. However, what Poe understood in writing these poems is that those who speak are in positions of enormous power. A person who killed his lover has the power to tell it, but more importantly, he has the power to shape his story however he chooses and to reveal as much or as little as he wishes. In other words, it is not the murder, but the act of confessing to it that inspires poetic creation. Richard Wright explores this relationship in his 1940 novel, Native Son. The protagonist, Bigger, gradually claims that he intentionally killed a girl, while her death was truly accidental. By claiming the murder, Bigger takes responsibility for an act of power, thus redefining his identity. The narrator says, "He had killed and created a new life for himself. It was something that was all his" (105). Soon after, the narrator says, "He wanted to suddenly get up and shout, telling them that he had killed a rich white girl, a girl whose family was known to them all" (129). Bigger not only exposes the relationship between murder and creation; feels the need to confess. Bigger's analeptic reworking of the events of the murder shapes much of the narrative, spanning the process of the murder through to confession and finally creation. This is the concept that lies at the center of Poe's works. The reader does not have to believe that Poe killed the women in order to write about them. The voice of “The Philosophy of Composition” is not Poe's, but rather the voice of Poe's guilty speaker. Poe probably wrote "The Philosophy of Composition" to inspire people to suspect his narrative voices of this kind of guilt and to encourage people to reread his poems, looking for the underlying confessions if they hadn't caught them before. However, the idea that the death of a beautiful woman is poetic has an aspect of truth. Without writing it clearly, Poe goes further to say that "the lips best suited for such a subject are those of a grieving lover." In fact, the only lips more suited to storytelling than those of a grieving lover are those of a murderer. The latter offers much more poetic creativity, secret confession being the prime example..