PoetryComparison
Thethematic exploration in a poem entails learning of the various hiddenand plain sight meanings in various poems. Poems written by a singlepoet reflect richness in terms of diversity of the mastery oflanguage of poetry. However, the same poets reflect a lot ofcomparison in their content hidden in the style, language, mastery ofart among other allegories. Thesimilarities of two different poems in terms of a theme or stylebring home the sense that the poets have mastery in their work and itis only fair if we return the effort by identifying the allegories.Thisessay aims at discussing some comparisons between the two storiesregarding the shadow self, obsession and the theme of the will oflife.
Obsession
Fromthe analysis of the two poems, it is a clear stance to gather thepoet’s obsession. The obsessions run to entail the feeling ofnervousness, oversensitivity, and the giving into the worrying andstrange fixations from the narrations. The poem Ligeia capitalizes inthe strange fixations from the obsessions as a throng of angelswatching a play performed by mimes who get their control from “vastformless things” (Poe Ligeia1).Such explanations push the obsession to create even the unthought-ofamong human thoughts. The Masque of Red Death pushes to the creationof a disease that causes a contagious death to the victims withinthirty minutes of infections. Despite the rate and intensity ofinfection, the Prince invites people and locks himself up in a castlewith food, in “an extensive and magnificent structure” (PoeThemasque of the Red Death 1),and leaves the nation to die in the wild feats and to infect eachother with the contagious disease. Such obsessions to create theunthinkable, the least and even much-unexpected thoughts push thereader of the poem to recognize the fruitful efforts from the poet.
Themeof will of life
Willof life is hugely from the poem Masque of Red Death with the hugeideology from the Price locking himself up and evading death. Thewill to live has a follow by attempts to escape the real life and getto a realm hermetically closed off. Blood signifies life, as hugelyexploited by the covering of the people on blood, on their faces, toindicate there is life on the face smeared with red blood. The sevenstages in the poem reflect on the seven stages of the human life asexpressed by the poet. Ligeia dies, but her husband retains her inhis head, with a strong willing that she may be present in his head.The memories make the husband see the dead wife in the architectureof the new wife Lady Rowena, and the horror terror of a grievinghusband revives a dead life. Appreciation for the will to live makesLigeia break down the barrier between life and death, not withattempts to scare the readers of the poem, but to accord the memoryof the dead that the power of love is strong enough to resist thepermanence of death.
Shadowself
Inthe poem Masque of Red Death, the Prince’s dominion face a terribledeath from the plague, yet the prince remains “happy and dauntless”(PoeThemasque of the Red Death 2).There are no attempts by the Price to try to fight the plague thatremains widely contagious and a serious killer and offers no help tothe affiliated. He locks himself up with enough food and supplies asthe rest of the populace dies. Hosting only the wealthiest people,the Prince portrays the shadow self, the hard and concrete carefreeheart as his actions reflect the people of the region. Ligeiaconsumes the husband that he gets lost in his descriptions of thewoman. He faces a hard time separating the true and the false fromthe beauty of Ligeia. Her presence alone sends him to a confusingstance with her beauty that confused fantasy and real moments-“inmy heated fancy thus it appeared perhaps” (PoeLigeia2).The two poems relate and share the themes, and not surprising, theauthor for the two goes ahead to receive the honor for composing withthe inclusion of the deepest descriptions, allegories among others.
Inconclusion, the explanations above focus to satisfy the effortscommitted to find common allegories between various works of masteryof poetry from the same poet. Such findings further strengthen theversatility of the poet in creation of their art. Diversity isunmatched in the two poems from the same poet.
WorksCited
Poe,Edgar Allan. Ligeia.Edgar Allan Poe, 2015.
Poe,Edgar Allan. Themasque of the Red Death.Hayes Barton Press, 1842.