Love and Death

The Essay that got me into Challenge English 8.

The central idea of all three poems is the relationship between love and death.

To start off,  the first poem How do I love thee? by Elizabeth Barrett Browning had a tremendous overall message which was that weak love gets stronger after the death of a loved one. “I shall love thee better after death” ( Browning 1). Elizabeth is saying that if somebody was weakly in love and the person they love dies, that person starts to miss them which their love grow stronger because they wish the dead person will just come back.  Furthermore, The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes discloses that if a person loves someone so strongly, that person could be willing enough to sacrifice themselves to save their loved one.The author expresses this by telling a story about the Highwayman and Bess, the landlord’s daughter. The Highwayman went off to steal gold and told Bess that he will come back by moonlight, kissed her hair, and left. The Red Coated Men showed up. ( This takes place in the 1700’s.) They took over Bess’ father’s inn and tied her to the end of her narrow bed with a gun beneath her breast. She could see through the window of the road that he  will ride on. She twisted her hand and writhed her fingers until one finger could get to the trigger. When the man finally came, he then sees Bess shoot herself to warn him about the Red Coats, for she knew that the gunshot will scare him away. The Highwayman did not figure out it was her until morning. He went back to get revenge when he got shot like a dog on the highway. The woman named Bess gave up her life to warn the Highwayman that the Red Coats were there. She did so because she loved him so much that she put her life in danger to save his life. Last but not least, Annabel Lee by Edgar Allen Poe is by far my favorite because it states that strong love stays the same even after death. “But our love it was stronger by far than the love of those who were older than we, of many far wiser than we. And neither the angels in heaven above, nor the demons down under the sea, can ever dissever my soul from the soul of the beautiful Annabel Lee” ( Poe 6). The author expresses this idea by telling the character’s feeling to us through the wonderful poem. The character is saying how their love was so strong that nobody ever ever can take their love apart.

To conclude, How do I love thee?’s overall message is that weak love gets stronger after a death of a loved one, The Highwayman’s message is that strong love can lead to sacrifices, and Annabel Lee’s message is that strong love stays the same.