Why I love Edgar Allan Poe's "A Dream Within A Dream"

I am excited to say I chose to write about Edgar Allan Poe’s “A Dream Within a Dream”. It was published in 1849. I chose Edgar Allen Poe because I respect his dark thinking and writing. His writing has depth, and to me, depth is a hard thing to find now a days.  

            “A Dream Within a Dream” is a poem about dreaming. Specifically, it is a poem about how life is seen as being only a dream to the poem’s narrator. For example, “All that we see or seem / Is but a dream within a dream” (10-11). Here we can see that the narrator of this poem is saying that everything that people feel, see, or experience in life can be argued to be nothing more than a dream. Even the love between the narrator and his leaving lover is subject to this dream world fate. This is seen in the second stanza. The narrator is upset by the quickness at which the grains of sands are leaving his grasp. He exclaims “O God! can I not grasp / Them with a tighter clasp?” (8-9). In other words, the sands represent time, and the narrator feels that with the passage of time, past events become more and more like a dream.

            “A Dream Within a Dream” rhyme scheme is as follows: in the first stanza- aaa / bb / cc / dd bb and in the second stanza- ee / ff / ggg / hh / ii / bb. Poe’s choice on his rhyme scheme is interesting because the repeating bb line emphasizes Poe’s meaning in his poem. Most of the bb line breaks end in “dream” and “seem” (5, 10-11, 12-13). The repetition really seems to drive in the fact that the narrator believes that life is only a dream.

            I personally love “A Dream Within a Dream” because it give me the illusion that perhaps the reading of this poem is “a dream within a dream”. The poem makes me feel as if I am there experiencing two different dreams. Poe’s imagery is a factor in this. In his first stanza, Poe sets the scene as a very realistic situation. Two lovers are parting, and it seems they are saying their final goodbyes (1-11). However, in the second stanza, the scene is a very dreamlike one. A man is just standing on the beach trying to keep a grasp on his sand, and there really does not seem to be a point to his desperation (12-24). Then, Poe’s genius really comes through that by the end of the poem, I am able to comprehend that he really wants his audience to think that the quickness of time makes the past seem like nothing more than a dream.

            In Poe’s “A Dream Within a Dream,” there a lot of in depth thought going on. Poe uses his imagery and dark creativity to entertain his audience into believing that maybe, just maybe life is nothing more than a dream.