Aim: How does Edgar Allan Poe’s, “The Bells” convey and reinforce the meaning of the life cycle through his choice of poetic sound devices?
Do Now
The class starts and we begin to work in teams for the Do Now. The Do Now prompt was to name as many possible bells as we can. It was in a competition format in which the team with the most “bells” gets the most points. Me and my team worked and were able to name thirteen bells of which was “School Bell, Electric Bell, Liberty Bell, Bike Bell, Door Bell, Chime, Sleigh Bell, Liberty Bell, Cow Bell, Alarm Clock Bell, Fire Alarm Bell, Church Bell, Jingle Bells, Hand Bell”. We were able to come up with these by thinking of only a certain kind of bell which was a bell that “ringed”.
We then left breakout rooms to see who had the most “bells”. The winning team ended up having more than 15 bells and to my surprise, they used “Taco Bell” which I found was very creative.
“Oh Woe is Poe”
“Oh Woe is Poe” is a pdf we read collectively as a class. It discusses the life Poe lived and the multiple tragedies that occurred in his life. What I found the most astonishing and depressing was the amount of people close to him that died of Tuberculosis. His life was also riddled with misfortune including being poor due to lack of copyright laws, being a constant drunk, and also incapable of receiving proper medical treatment due to lack of medical knowledge and thus *possibly* dying of rabies. After reading all this information it became quite obvious why his poems and pieces were surrounded by dark themes.
Cacophony & Euphony and much more...
As a class, we learned two new terms being cacophony and euphony but also went over several other terms including alliteration and repetition.
Cacophony: Word or words that produce “bad sound”/harsh sounds
Common letters used are k, t, g, d, p, b, q, c, x, ch-, sh-, etc
Euphony: The exact opposite of Cacophony. Word or words that produce pleasant sounds.
Letters commonly associated: l, m, n, r, and softer f and v, sounds
Alliteration: Consecutive or close together words with the same first letter.
Onomatopoeia: A word that represents a sound ex. “Hiss”, “Clink”, and “BANG”
Repetition: Words, phrases, lines, and stanzas that repeat.
Rhyme: The repetition of similar sounding words and pleasing to the ear
Perfect Rhyme: When stressed and subsequent syllables have similar sounds
Imperfect Rhyme: The repetition of similar-sounding words that are not as precise as perfect rhymes.
Rhyme: The repetition of similar sounding words and pleasing to the ear
Perfect Rhyme: When stressed and subsequent syllables have similar sounds
Imperfect Rhyme: The repetition of similar-sounding words that are not as precise as perfect rhymes.
“The Bells” By Edgar Allan Poe
“The Bells” by Edgar Allan Poe is a poem we read together as a class. Although class ended by the time the poem finished me and my group worked together after school to finish the questions on the slides. We first identified the sound devices used and listed them in the chart. We later went back and attempted to answer the effect of sound devices.
We came to the conclusion that Edgar Allan Poe uses sound devices to create an emotional impact through the bells. This is seen with each bell’s description and “sound” creating a specific tone. We found this to be true for every single bell he describes. We agreed for the tone of each one the silver bells stanza having a tone of jolly and merry. The gold bells stanza having a tone of joy and glee. The brazen bells stanza having a tone of discomfort and harshness. And lastly the iron bells stanza with a tone of depression and dismal. These were all due to Edgar Allan Poe’s use of sound devices into tricking the reader to believe that the bells create emotion.
For question one, me and my group agreed that the two stanzas share similar descriptions. Both being described using positive words We at first thought that the silver bells represent holidays and the gold bells represent a wedding but we only find out in the fourth question the correlation between the bells and life.
For question two we noticed the tone shift from the jolly and happy tone from stanza one and two to this depressing and dark tone in stanza three and four. Stanzas three and four were described as such due to the negative words Edgar uses on them.
For question three we just listed all the sound devices we found. For question four me and my group found it absolutely shocking of what the true purpose of the poem was. We never once thought that the bells were used to describe the human cycle. We realized the first stanza describes a toddler, the second stanza describes a child, the third stanza describes a teenager and an adult, and the fourth describes the elderly awaiting death.
Reflection: For today’s lesson I was continuously shocked over and over again. First was Edgar’s extremely sad past, the second being Edgar’s incredible use of sound devices to create this belief that the bells have an emotional sound, and lastly the true meaning of the poem surrounded by the human cycle of life. Throughout this lesson, I learned the hard way the extreme effect sound devices truly have in a poem as they can make inanimate objects actually have a purpose and meaning and can deceive the reader into believing something that just isn’t entirely true in real life. I think I learned this so that if and when I ever decide to become a writer I can not only create a poem that has deep meaning but also so I can identify it in other people’s work so that it can help me find the meaning within in the poem and the purpose of using sound devices. I will definitely use sound devices in the future especially in college to hopefully create a piece that astonishes them and gets me a good grade. If I ever decide to actually become a writer I will definitely use it to create meaningful poems that can shock my readers like Edgar Allan Poe’s poem has done to me.
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