“That a maiden there lived whom you may know/By the name of Annabel Lee/ And this maiden she lived with no other thought/Than to live and be loved by me.” From these lines in Edgar A. Poe’s “Annabel Lee,” we are shown how much the speaker loved his bride in life. Yet, as we read further, we find this love has turned into obsession after death, with the speaker exhibiting paranoia and near-insanity. Though many believe that the speaker experiences inevitable, but extreme, grief, there is much evidence in the poem to support otherwise.

To start with, the speaker’s reaction to the death could be seen as simply grieving if he did not think or fantasize about his Annabel Lee as he does. He says, “the moon never beams without bringing me dreams/Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.” This may seem like a loved one’s longing to see the departed; yet, the speaker goes on to say,”All the night tide, I down lie by the side/Of my darling-my darling-my life and my bride,/In the sepulcher by the sea-/In her tomb by the sounding sea.” These lines demonstrate how deeply affected the speaker is, how obsessed with his bride’s death that he should wish to be by her side.

If he cannot be by his bride’s side, the speaker finds comfort in believing that his Annabel Lee died because their strong love was coveted. Though we do not know how long Annabel Lee has been gone, through the speaker’s words we see that he still cannot accept her death as anything but a result of “the angels’ jealousy.” This presents to the reader a deep paranoia and denial the speaker seems to have. The speaker’s denial and yearning for his lost bride is also shown through the poem structurally. By putting his loved one’s name in capital letters, he seems to unrealistically want to bring life to the lifeless body by giving power to her name. Some may see this as evidence of his growing insanity as the poem is structurally a rhythmic chant trying to conjure Annabel Lee.

To conclude, “Annabel Lee” is a poem of a woman’s death and a man’s obsession with his loss. Added to this post-mortem obsession, the speaker also demonstrates a paranoia and denial over the finality of the death. As he says, “Neither the angels in heaven above,/Nor the demons down under the sea,/Can ever dissever my soul from the soul/Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.”