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Edgar Allan PoeA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
“The Oval Portrait” draws attention to life’s fleeting nature and to the paradox of trying to preserve life through art. It suggests that no matter how “perfect” an image of life is, the image is still a mere illusion that cannot substitute for actual life. Ultimately, life’s beauty simply cannot be pinned and preserved through art.
In the frame narrator’s report of his thought process after first encountering the painting, he says that his shock is neither due to “the execution of the work, nor the immortal beauty of the countenance” (482). The diction of this comment foreshadows the action of the story-within-the-story that will soon follow, because the artist’s work is, indeed, an “execution” of “immortal beauty.”
The painter’s wife is a woman of “rarest beauty” and “all light” (483). Because of the story’s use of light symbolism, the identification of the painter’s wife with light also identifies her with life, and her radiance can be seen as the beauty of life itself. Light is explicitly identified with the “flame” of her life near the story’s end (483).
By Edgar Allan Poe
A Dream Within a Dream
A Dream Within a Dream
Edgar Allan Poe
Annabel Lee
Annabel Lee
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Berenice
Berenice
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Hop-Frog
Hop-Frog
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Ligeia
Ligeia
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Tamerlane
Tamerlane
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The Black Cat
The Black Cat
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The Cask of Amontillado
The Cask of Amontillado
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The Conqueror Worm
The Conqueror Worm
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The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
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The Fall of the House of Usher
The Fall of the House of Usher
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The Gold Bug
The Gold Bug
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The Haunted Palace
The Haunted Palace
Edgar Allan Poe
The Imp of the Perverse
The Imp of the Perverse
Edgar Allan Poe
The Lake
The Lake
Edgar Allan Poe
The Man of the Crowd
The Man of the Crowd
Edgar Allan Poe
The Masque of the Red Death
The Masque of the Red Death
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The Murders in the Rue Morgue
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
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The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
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The Philosophy of Composition
The Philosophy of Composition
Edgar Allan Poe