The Raven

5 Pages 1140 Words

ANALYSIS OF “THE RAVEN”
Published in 1845 in the New York Evening Mirror, “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe is arguably the most well known American poem. A first person narrative describes a meeting with a demonic raven with very elaborate language and imagery. Superficially, “The Raven” is a poem of suspense and horror, but it is also an allegory for growing madness induced by guilt.
The poem starts out with dark and creepy imagery of the narrator falling slowly asleep as he reads “a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore” when he hears someone knocking lightly at his door. At first, he dismisses the knocking as simply some visitor. It is obvious that the narrator is not in the mood to deal with visitors at this late hour. He is traumatized by the loss of a love, “a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.” The book that he is reading is an attempt to drown his sorrow for the loss. This attempt to relieve himself of the pain he feels for Lenore is repeated often through the poem.
As the narrator continues to hear the persistent knocking he is finally awake from his napping and opens the door, but he finds “darkness there, and nothing more.” This is the first that we see the narrator starting to lose his mind as he stands in the doorway “wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before.” As he closes the door, he hears the knock again and realizes that it is coming from his window. Upon opening the window a raven flies in and sits on top of the “bust of Pallas.”
At first, the narrator is simply puzzled by this bird. The fact that upon asking its name, the raven replies “nevermore” does not greatly surprise the narrator, for like a parrot a raven can be taught to speak and the narrator thinks that this raven flew away from some “unhappy master” who was bored with the bird’s “melancholy” chant of “nevermore” and that “on the morrow he...