Journal of Literary Criticism part I

STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE’S POEM: “ALONE”

MAULIYA RISALATURROHMAH

FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGES AND LETTERS

UNIVERSITY OF PESANTREN TINGGI DARUL ‘ULUM JOMBANG

Alieza_93@yahoo.com

Abstract

           

      This paper aims to analyze Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Alone” from the perspective of stylistic analysis. The analysis is made under the aspects of graphology pattern, lexical, grammatical, and phonological patterns. Underlying stylistics features of the poems, an attempt will also be made to explain how the stylistic features contribute to the overall meanings of the poem. This research is helpful to analyze the structure and style of Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry, his themes and views. The major aim of studying the stylistics is to explore the meanings and understand the linguistic features of the text.

        Keywords: Stylistic, Edgar Allan Poe, graphology level, lexical level, grammatical level, phonological level.

I.    Introduction

Style or stylistic variations may also be analyzed in linguistic terms for example sentence types, phonological devices, lexical varieties, morphological varieties, rhetorical terms, semantic terms, and even semiotic terms and utterance. “Style” is a word derived from Latin word “elocution” which means style and means “lexis” in Greek. Style is also related to a personality of a person. A style reflects the thoughts of a person’s mind. It describes the way of person’s speaking and writing.

The poem, Alone, by Edgar Allan Poe is written in 1830. It is a powerful lyrical poem that depicts the writer’s isolation as well as the torments in his youth. It is very interested in being analyzed. Therefore, underlying stylistics features of the poems, an attempt will also be made to explain how these stylistic features contribute to the overall meanings of the poem. Because Stylistic approach to literary texts does not only involve linguistic textual analysis but also encourages readers to interact with textual structure to infer meaning (Tutaş : 2006).

II. Methodology

A.       Introduction to the poem “Alone”

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 loved, I loved alone.                           
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn                
Of a most stormy life- was drawn                      
From every 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 rolled                    
In its autumn tint of gold,                   
From the lightning in the sky                            
As it passed 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.                      

Edgar Allan Poe was an editor, journalist, poet, literary critic, and short story writer. The poem, "Alone" was written by Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) in 1829. It was written by Poe when he was only 20 and describes his own inner torment at that young age. Poe writes with emotion and passion because his narratives encompass his feelings about his life and the different obstacles he has faced.

Poe's poem starts off by his emphasizing of how he feels writes of his sorrow and his sense of being different from the rest. Also Poe writes of his seeking to solve the mystery of why he "lives" and why he was even born, he does not know why he was born or for what reason he was put on this earth for. Finally, Poe writes of why his life is so different and unusual compared to everyone else, when others are living normal and happy lives. We can interpret that the poem's overall theme is about how lonely Poe was.

B.       Stylistic

Dr. K. T. Khader says that stylistics is the scientific study of style, which can be viewed in several ways. Stylistics is also the science which explores how readers interact with the language of (mainly literary) texts in order to explain how we understand, and are affected by texts when we read them. The variety in stylistics is due to the main influences of linguistics & literary.

Katie Wales in A Dictionary of Stylistics writes: “The goal of most stylistics is not simply to describe the formal features of texts for their own sake but in order to show their interpretation of the text, or in order to relate literary effects to linguistics causes where there are felt to be relevant”. Stylistics analysis provides a commentary which is objective and scientific based on a concrete quantifiable data and applied in a systematic way.

The following are the levels of stylistics. We analyze the text according to these levels.

1.    Phonetic level: It is an examination of sounds; we study the characteristics and potential utility of sounds in phonetic level.

2.    Phonological level: It is the study of the sound system of a given language; the Formal rules of pronunciation.

3.    Graphology level: It is the analogous study of a language’s writing system; the formalized rules of spellings.

4.    Grammatical level: In this level both the syntactic and morphological levels are discussed. The aim is to analyze the internal structure of sentences in a language and the way they function in sequences. Clauses, phrases, words, nouns, verbs, etc. need to be distinguished and put through an analysis to find out the foregrounding and the deviation.

5.    The lexical level: It is the study of the way in which individual words and idioms tend to pattern in different linguistic context; on the semantic level in terms of stylistics.

III.   Stylistic analysis of the poem “Alone”

A.      Alone as a lyrical

We can say that this poem is lyrical because it is fairly short which contains 22 lines. It also expresses feeling and thoughts of a single speaker in a personal. All these are the qualities of the lyrical poem.

B.      Graphology level

There is no division of stanzas. The poem is written as a whole. It is lyrical. Sometimes there is capitalization. We can see the use of punctuation in the poem. For example: full stop, comma, brackets, and colon is used in this poem.

C.      Lexical level:

Nouns	Pronouns	Common Nouns	Collective Noun	Proper Nouns
Childhood , hour, passion, source, sorrow, heart, joy, tone, dawn, life, depth, mystery, torrent, fountain, cliff, mountain, sun, gold, sky, thunder, storm, cloud, Heaven, demon, autumn, spring,	I, others, my	Heart, childhood, hour, source, sorrow, joy, tone, life, depth, mystery, torrent, fountain, mountain, gold,	-	autumn, spring, heaven, sun, sky, thunder, dawn, cloud,

Verb	Adverb	Adjective
Seen, saw, bring, taken, awaken, loved, drawn, binds, round, passed, took,	Then, still	Common, same, stormy,

D.      Grammatical level

The use of punctuation used in this poem shows that the poet has a conflict in his mind. He is bewildered of his life.

   Use of colon: colon is used where poet describes about his loneliness. He feels so lonely in not only in his house but also in his life. For example:

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring

                                Above it talks about how ever since childhood Poe was not interested in the same things as other children. Poe writes of how as a child he had never actually experienced his childhood because he was so different then everyone else, he never lived a normal life as everyone else, he had seen how everyone else lived a normal life and lived happily, but could not match his own. He sees everyone else happy but could never feel that sense of happiness in himself.

My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;

                                It is about his isolation and the common joy or dilemmas. In these lines Poe writes of not being able to get rid of his sadness, and feeling happy, he could not feel joy in himself nor his heart, he was seemed to be doomed to live a sad and "different" life.

   Use of full stop: Poet uses full stop three times in the poem. Each full stop shows the completion of one poet.

Firstly,

My passions from a common spring.

The spring symbolizes the source of happiness, everyone has drank from that source (happiness), but he himself has been the only one that has yet to drink from that spring.

Secondly,

And all I loved, I loved alone.

He could neither share his love with others, he never felt any love, he feels no one had ever loved him, as both his parents had died before he was three years old, and was taken into a foster home, where he had a fruitless relationship with his stepfather, and his wife Victoria. His love (parents, wife) had died at such an early age. Poe felt abandoned and left out, he loved others but it seemed that his love was not returned.

Thirdly,

And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

When we see the last line, it emphasizes that Poe sees the dark image of the demon. He cannot see the beautiful view as others see. No matter how beautiful the world appeared to others, the world as he saw it was evil and filled with horror and unhappiness.

  Use of comma and brackets: Here, the use the comma is also used in the middle of poem. And the use of brackets is in the last of poem.

From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,

The word "torrent" depicts an image of violent rushing energy, while "fountain" portrays an image of peacefulness. When Poe relates these images to his own perspective and the perspective of others, it emphasizes the difference between his feelings and those of others.

From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed 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.

Towards the end of the poem, Poe presents images of nature such as "the red cliff of the mountain" and "the sun". Poe is effective in converting these images into beautiful and calm images when he says "Heaven was blue". However, he applies a technique of brackets at the end of the poem "(When the rest of Heaven was blue)." He uses brackets while he talks about how he sees "the thunder", "the storm" and the gothic image of a "demon" formed by the cloud. These terms usually do not match with blue sky. Yet the lines in the bracket suggest that others see a peaceful blue sky while he sees the dark image of a "demon". This intensifies the isolation that Poe feels it because it draws a line separating from others views when the sky is viewed peacefully to others and Poe sees demon in the sky. The verses "From the torrent, or the fountain, From the red cliff of a mountain, From the sun that round me rolled..." can also be symbolic for the moment when he began to feel rage and anger, but did not know why he felt this way. Red usually represents anger or passion, the sun can represent burning heat, feelings that someone may have when they become angry.

E.      Phonological level

The twenty second lines poem has following rhyme scheme.

AABBCCDDAABB………

These rhyme means that every two lines of poem have same rhyme, and it occur continually. We can also see that the use of alliteration in the poem. And only there is one refrain in this poem. We can see it in line eight.

And all I loved, I loved alone.

There are many rhyming words in this poem. These are the following:

been, seen,                            ill, still                                   blue, view.

bring, spring,                        fountain, mountain

taken, awaken,                     rolled, gold

tone, alone,                           sky, by

dawn, drawn,                        storm, form

References

             

CHAN, Wing Yi, Monica. 2007. A stylistic approach to the god of small things written by Arundhati Roy. English Department. Thesis & Disertation.

Aslam, Saima. 2014. STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE POEM “BEREFT” BY ROBERT FROST. Department of English. University of Sarghoda, Pakistan. Vol.2, No.1, 2014. European Journal of Research and Reflection in Arts and Humanities.

Tafreshi, Ali Rabi. 2010. Stylistic Analysis of a Poetic Text: A Case from Persian. Islamic Azad University Faculty ofTeacher Training, South Tehran Branch. Vol.1, Number 1, Spring 2010. Journal of Lnaguage and Translation.

Riffaterre, M.1974. The stylistic approach to literary history. In R. Cohen (ed) 1074: 147-164.

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