DDrokenss

Matt

Views on Mortality

The tragic event of a loved one’s death carries the potential to change a person’s worldview. Along with grief, the tragedy impresses the idea of mortality upon those who knew the dead. In Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “A dream within a Dream”, he faces the reality of a loved one’s death despite his efforts to maintain control. When faced with the impossibility of reversing her death, Poe revels in his new found dreamy state of life exposed through her death. In the first stanza, Poe wakes from a dream where his wife lives. The dream makes him feel as though the bounds between dream and reality have faded along with hope as well. In the second stanza, Poe finds himself in another dream where waves crash around him and he pleads with God. Edgar Allan Poe explores themes of mortality and control through his use of dreams, the first stanza and the imagery driven second stanza.
Edgar Allan Poe’s title, “A Dream within a Dream” portrays his view of reality and his feelings of powerlessness. “Take this kiss upon the brow! / And in parting from you now,” (1-2). The first two lines of the poem symbolize Poe’s awakening from his first dream where his wife once again lived. Poe uses punctuation to display passion through his use of an exclamation mark at the end of the first line. Throughout the poem, exclamation marks only appear when the narrator dreams. The appearance of Poe’s wife inside of his dream makes him feel his dreams are just as real as his reality, warranting the title “A dream within a Dream”, which reappears at the end of each stanza. The title’s reappearance further instills Poe’s strange feeling that his waking and dreaming lives are of similar value. His wife’s appearance in his dreams make Poe’s dreaming life more passionate than his waking reality. Poe questions, “Is all that we see or seem / But a dream within a dream?” (23-24). Edgar Allan Poe realizes the lack of control he experiences within his dreams and waking life. In a dream, you have little control over your environment. Because of his wives death, Poe notices that his minimum control in the real world differs little from the lack of control he experiences within a dream. Poe attempts to control his life in a later dream sequence. “And I hold within my hand / Grains of the gold sand” (15). Poe is attempting to hold onto the few things in life he still cherishes despite the inescapable nature of death.
In the first stanza, Edgar Allan Poe expresses his lack of hope after awakening from his first dream. He admits, “You are not wrong, who deem / That my days have been a dream” (4-5). Through use of apostrophe, Poe agrees with those who acknowledge life’s futility. After the death of his wife, Poe loses all life meaning and confesses life as a dream. Poe feels that “hope has flown away” (6). Without the presence of his wife, he retains no hope. Poe further skews the bounds of reality through his lines, “Yet if hope has flown away / In a night, or in a day, / In a vision, or in none, / Is it therefore the less gone?” (7-9). The death of Poe’s wife has made him feel that life is futile and as a result, he declares that it matters little whether he would have lost his wife only in a dream at “night” or in his waking life during the “day”. Both dreams and life eventually pass and in Poe’s eyes, they both are rendered meaningless in their end. The two only differ in their length and this makes little difference once they have ended.
In the second stanza, Poe uses imagery to represent another dream where he finds himself struggling to hold onto any aspect of his life. Edgar Allan Poe uses personification with the first few lines of the stanza, “I stand amid the roar / Of a surf-tormented shore,” (12-13). The imagery and personification of the shore represents Poe’s life and all those who are close to him. The surf, representing death, torments the shore, threatening to take all which Poe holds dear. He attempts to hold onto some pieces of his life as he grasps grains of sands, but “How few! Yet how they creep / Through my fingers to the deep,” (16-17). Despite his efforts, Poe remains helpless as he tries to save them. Poe explains death as “the deep” in order to signify the unavoidable void that death creates between people, especially from his viewpoint on the shore. Edgar Allan Poe again uses apostrophe as he calls out to God in an attempt to save them, asking “O God! Can I not grasp / Them with a tighter clasp? / O God! Can I not save / One from the pitiless wave?” 19-22). Poe’s calling out to God represents his helplessness and lack of control in the face of death. As he realizes that he alone cannot dodge death’s destruction, Poe pleas to God for help.
In “A dream within a Dream”, Edgar Allan Poe presents control as an illusion and mortality as inescapable through his use of title, first and second stanza. After the unexpected death of a loved one, Poe feels as though all hope of immortality is lost. He also realizes that he controls his waking life little more than he controls his dreams. Poe cannot escape the feeling of his life being “A Dream within a Dream”.