Question

Read Edgar Allan Poe’s poem "A Dream Within a Dream," and write a 250- to 300-word essay answering these questions: Which word best describes the tone of the poem? Give details from the poem to support your answer. How would you change the diction to change the poem’s tone? What effect would this have on the poem’s meaning?

Answer 1

When we read the poem "A Dream Within a Dream," we can say that the word that describes the tone of the poem is "melancholy". The speaker is very melancholy, saying that he is going to leave this world and that everything that our eyes touch is unreal, impalpable, untiring like a dream within a dream, from which we never escape. The speaker of the poem is tired and hopeless with this type of reality and therefore offers melancholy and sad thoughts in the poem.

To change the tone of the poem, it would be necessary using changing the diction to use words with a more positive and lively meaning, which would show the dream within a dream as something happy and palpable. However, this would totally change the meaning of the poem and we would no longer be able to capture the message that the poet intended to convey.