'A Dream Within a Dream' was written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1849, the year he was found dead from drug addiction. Considering the author went through many difficult times throughout his life with the loss of those close to him, this poem could be referring to the emotional pain he suffered which caused him to question reality of life. The poem is written in despair as the tone is a mixture of mystery, loneliness and despair. The poem deals with the speaker's disturbing idea that reality is just a dream as the narrator first separates from his lover and then struggles to accept and live with the truth. The reader feels a sense of loneliness as the poem is full of imagery with metaphorical questions and emotional words, set in two different settings divided into two different stanzas with the use of rhyme and punctuation. The poet uses these elements to create a paradox since the title itself suggests something unknown, the mystery of a complicated situation: chaos. As Poe wants to give deeper meaning to the poem while questioning reality, he suggests that the outer dream is life and the inner dream is ourselves and our memories. The poet uses heavy metaphors and imagery throughout the poem to convey a deeper meaning. In the first line of the poem, the speaker uses the image of a kiss on a forehead, suggesting a separation. This could have two meanings; one separating from a lover and the second separating from his former self who believed there was purpose and meaning to life. The speaker then also goes on to make the truth known to the person he is estranged from and says that his life was a dream but now hope is gone and so is the beauty and meaning of life. One of the most important metaphors...... middle of paper ......ry: reality. At the end of the poem, the questioning continues but the reader can now see how life waits for no one. It is an illusion and nothing more than a dream. Life can be one of those dreams so real that when we wake up we don't know if it actually happened or not. The long metaphor of life passing by causes the speaker to lose his motivation towards hope and love as he continues to question himself. Time and memories slip away because everything is just an illusion that we cannot control. As the two different stanzas symbolize the inner and outer dream of what we see and seem, the diction as well as the rhyme scheme makes the main argument clearer to the audience through carefully planned structure and punctuation. Ultimately, the reader is left with a more important question: is life a dream and our memories are all dreams within this dream??