Title: “Alone”
Poet: Edgar Allan Poe
Text Type: Poem
Date Finished: 13/03/13
I was surprised by the passion that was truthfully put into the poem “Alone” from the first line. The poem tells the reader a story of how Poe was never an ordinary child growing up, as he was always the odd one out and could not find his place in this world. The poem, created by Edgar Allan Poe, was written in 1830, about how he was always a sad child that did not endure a normal childhood as most children did. The meaning by the way Poe has written of his distresses and his sense of being a diverse character, his seeking to solve the forever unanswered question of why he lives and why he was born, and finally why his life is so different, when others are living in completely normal and happy lives.
This poem speaks in a way of telling you how not everybody is the same, we all have our own individuality. In the first three lines of the poem, Poe says, "From childhood’s hour I have not been; As others were, I have not been; As others saw, I could not bring;" he writes about how as a child growing up he never experienced his childhood because he was very different from everybody else, he never lived a normal life as everyone around him, he had witnessed everyone else happy and cheerful where Poe was always glum and could not feel the sense of happiness himself , and never fit in wherever he went. In the next two lines, "My passions from a common spring; from the same source I have not taken;" where the poet writes of how everyone seeks to feel happiness and joy, and he wants to feel that emotion also, but he however cannot, the spring symbolizes the source of happiness, everyone has drank from that source, the happiness that is, but he himself, has been the only one that has yet to drink from that spring. In the following three lines, "My sorrow I could not awaken, my heart to joy at the same tone; and all I loved, I loved alone;" where he writes about not being able to dispose of his sadness, and feeling happy, he could not feel joy in himself nor his heart, where he seemed to be hopeless living in this miserable and different life. He never felt love nor could he either share his love with others as it was inexistent, as he feels he was never loved, as his father abandoned him and his mother died all by the age of three, and his wife Victoria, who he loved, had died at such an early age. He believed the love he shared was never returned therefore he stopped giving it away.
The theme of the poem “Alone” is individuality. I