Space

Emulation

Edgar Allan Poe, without a doubt, had his fair share of lifelong difficulties; His mother died, his father abandoned him, his foster mother died, his foster father abandoned him. It was a rather traumatizing pattern. This constant death and abandonment being part of his childhood really explains the feeling of loneliness and despair within his writing. In the above excerpt from Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, Alone, he describes a deep sense of loneliness despite all of the colour and emotion in the world around him. The poem in its entirety represents an adult who is permanently depressed due to a difficult childhood. Although it’s not specifically spoken in the excerpt, I believe the troubled adult it speaks of is none other than Edgar Allan Poe himself. He never got the opportunity he needed to share the horrors of his past with the people in his life. As a result, he has kept these dark secrets deep within his chest and is growing lonelier by the day. Due to his awful past, he sees only darkness and fails to enjoy the beauty of nature in the surrounding world. In the line, “the mystery which binds me still,” Edgar Allan Poe questions why he feels so alone even though there is light in the world and good things have happened to him since he was a child. Although he questions it, the growing loneliness is an unchangeable result of his childhood trauma.