The City in the Sea

The city is one in the west ruled by Death who is revered above all: ‘While from a proud tower in the town, Death looks gigantically down.’ This is another classic Poe poem in that it deals with death and presents it in a non-conventional way. It is seen as a god that rules over a glorious, peaceful city in the west. There are ‘Domes and spires and kingly halls, and fanes and Babylon like walls…’ That the city is in the west is appropriate, because the west, in which the sun sets, has traditionally been associated with death. At the end of the poem a ‘stir in the air’ or a wave moves the towers so that they create ‘A void within the filmy heaven.’ Poe speaks in the last part of the poem of the end of days when ‘the waves now have a redder glow, the hours are breathing faint and low.’ The waves turning red is a sign of hell's coming, because red is the color of fire and hence the color of hell and the devil. ‘And when, amid no earthly moans, Down, down the town shall settle hence, Hell rising from a thousand thrones, shall do it reverence.’ The last lines of the poem speak of the devil's gratitude to death in allowing him to come forth and rule over Earth.

In addition, the end suggests that this city is more evil than Hell for it will hold the city of Death in reverence. It is suggested, that Death may be worse than the Devil.

The weird setting and its foreboding remoteness in "The City in the Sea" is a common device of Gothic fiction. This combines with the poem's theme of a self-conscious dramatization of doom, similar to Poe's "The Sleeper" and "The Valley of Unrest."