The five stages of death: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance; many, if not all, people entirety, go through these stages over the course of their lives. Edgar Allan Poe's "A Dream Within A Dream" follows a despairing speaker who mourns a lost loved one. Most people cannot understand the utter desolation of seeing a loved one. dear to die, the helplessness of a passing life, the resulting self-loathing with the failure to protect what one loves most The poem begins with an almost calm acceptance and a gentle farewell. between two lovers In the first line, the speaker grants a "kiss on the forehead" (line 1...is that redundant?) to his missing lover, this classic display of affection draws the reader into a picturesque reverence. From there, the speaker questions existence and the afterlife, as a traditional question on which it still remains controversial today, the speaker attempts to create a feeling of. the hope of seeing his love again. His hope that has “flown away” (line 6) gives hope a birdlike quality, and even though hope may disappear, there is always an optimism that will return. The question of “Yet if hope is gone. . .Is it therefore less disappeared? ” (lines 6-9) is striking to readers, it is the first use of italics and leads the reader to answer the question. The speaker's question is that in the complete loss of hope, does hope really matter when you lose something that you can never get back? The following use of italics in “All we see or seem / Is but a dream within a dream.” (Lines 10-11) Unifies "gone" (line 9) and "All" (line 10) with the speaker's hope and love having gone, it is still the only thing he can see. The speaker's "dream within a dream" (line 11) may allude to two different means...... middle of paper ...... he is slowly losing his fondest memories of his lost love. Once again, the speaker uses italics to bring together two main concepts in his stanza, "One" (line 25) and "all" (line 26), the latter being his deceased love, still the only thing that concerns him after all this time. As a whole, the poem compares life to a dream in many aspects. The fact that man cannot control what he dreams of, nor how, as the day goes by, the memory of the dream fades. The speaker of the poem loses control of his world when his love disappears, and then, as he grows older, his fond memories of their time together fade away with the passing of time. This poem is enjoyable through the darker experience of loss that many people experience over time, and it leaves the reader with the hopeless helplessness that the speaker feels throughout the poem. “Grief changes form, but it never ends. » (Keanu Reeves)