"Alone"

After having read Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio and spent a few days discussing some of the individual stories in class, I realized that one of the major thematic elements of the “novel” was that of loneliness and isolation. At the same time, I also decided to write another blog dealing with a poem and felt that Edgar Allan Poe’s “Alone” would be perfect to discuss as Poe relates the same feeling that each and every one of the characters of Winesburg struggles with. “Alone” essentially describes Poe’s inability to fit in as a child and ultimately the culminating loneliness he must face over the course of his life as a result of who he is. He opens the poem by describing just how different he is, saying, “From childhood’s hour I have not been/As others were-I have not seen/As others saw-I could not bring” (lines 1-4). It should be noted, that Poe’s upbringing not the smoothest of childhoods, as his mother died at an early age and his father abandoned him when he was only a year old, leaving the orphan to be taken in by Allan family to be foster parents to him. In the opening lines, Poe is reflecting on the turmoil of his early youth, citing the absence of his parents during his childhood as being the start of his loneliness, a feeling that even with him being taken in by the Allan family was ever subsided. He continues to describe his isolation from others around him, alluding to his difference from others by saying “My passions from a common spring-/From the same source I have not taken” (lines 4-5). Here Poe is able to note that the misery that is constantly engulfing his isolation is not the same as what everyone else around him is experiencing, as they are drawing from the spring source of jubilation and delight, while he draws from the spring of desolation in his loneliness. As both the poem and Poe’s life progress, he is still searching for the purpose that his wretched life must have, “The mystery which binds me still” (line 12). His spirit’s thirst for what his lonely life must mean is not quenched, and in response, he continues over the course of his life to find the hidden treasure that must be the point to his existence. There is heavy imagery describing the passing years, as “In its autumn tint of gold/From the lightning in the sky/As it pass’d me flying by” (lines 17-19). Poe restless searches for his purpose and in the midst of a great and furious storm, looks up to the sky for what he hopes could be the answer to the driving question of his life. And when he looks up to find rest for his disillusioned mind, he is answered with an image “When the rest of Heaven was blue/Of a demon in my view” (lines 22-23). In this moment Poe’s journey has finally ended after years of searching, though not with the results that he would have liked to receive. Instead of acquiring knowledge in his gaze up to Heaven, where all other people find beauty and the empowerment of God’s glory, he finds the opposite, a hideous demon, blocking his view of wondrous blue sky. Poe is aware that everyone else in his life has been able to gaze up at the wondrous blue sky to find their purpose among the stars of Heaven, but he now realizes that his purpose lies with the demon that shall forever deny him of any satisfaction or relieve him of his eternal solitude.


“Alone”
By Edgar Allan Poe 
 

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were—I have not seen

As others saw—I could not bring

My passions from a common spring—

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow—I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone—

And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—

Then—in my childhood—in the dawn

Of a most stormy life—was drawn

From ev’ry depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still—

From the torrent, or the fountain—

From the red cliff of the mountain—

From the sun that ’round me roll’d

In its autumn tint of gold—

From the lightning in the sky

As it pass’d me flying by—

From the thunder, and the storm—

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view—