1. Poe's Poetry Summary and Analysis of "The Raven"
Summary:
The unnamed narrator is wearily perusing an old book one bleak December night when he hears
a tapping at the door to his room. He tells himself that it is merely a visitor, and he awaits
tomorrow because he cannot find release in his sorrow over the death of Lenore. The rustling
curtains frighten him, but he decides that it must be some late visitor and, going to the door, he
asks for forgiveness from the visitor because he had been napping. However, when he opens the
door, he sees and hears nothing except the word "Lenore," an echo of his own words.
Returning to his room, he again hears a tapping and reasons that it was probably the wind outside
his window. When he opens the window, however, a raven enters and promptly perches "upon a
bust of Pallas" above his door. Its grave appearance amuses the narrator, who asks it for its
names. The raven responds, "Nevermore." He does not understand the reply, but the raven says
nothing else until the narrator predicts aloud that it will leave him tomorrow like the rest of his
friends. Then the bird again says, "Nevermore."
Startled, the narrator says that the raven must have learned this word
from some unfortunate owner whose ill luck caused him to repeat the
word frequently. Smiling, the narrator sits in front of the ominous raven
to ponder about the meaning of its word. The raven continues to stare
at him, as the narrator sits in the chair that Lenore will never again
occupy. He then feels that angels have approached, and angrily calls
the raven an evil prophet. He asks if there is respite in Gilead and if he
will again see Lenore in Heaven, but the raven only responds,
"Nevermore." In a fury, the narrator demands that the raven go back
into the night and leave him alone again, but the raven says,
"Nevermore," and it does not leave the bust of Pallas. The narrator
feels that his soul will "nevermore" leave the raven's shadow.
Analysis:
"The Raven" is the most famous of Poe's poems, notable for its melodic
and dramatic qualities. The meter of the poem is mostly trochaic
octameter, with eight stressed-unstressed two-syllable feet per lines.
Combined with the predominating ABCBBB end rhyme scheme and
the frequent use of internal rhyme, the trochaic octameter and the
refrain of "nothing more" and "nevermore" give the poem a musical lilt
when read aloud. Poe also emphasizes the "O" sound in words such
as "Lenore" and "nevermore" in order to underline the melancholy and
2. lonely sound of the poem and to establish the overall atmosphere.
Finally, the repetition of "nevermore" gives a circular sense to the
poem and contributes to what Poe termed the unity of effect, where
each word and line adds to the larger meaning of the poem.
The unnamed narrator appears in a typically Gothic setting with a
lonely apartment, a dying fire, and a "bleak December" night while
wearily studying his books in an attempt to distract himself from his
troubles. He thinks occasionally of Lenore but is generally able to
control his emotions, although the effort required to do so tires him
and makes his words equally slow and outwardly pacified. However,
over the course of the narrative, the protagonist becomes more and
more agitated both in mind and in action, a progression that he
demonstrates through his rationalizations and eventually through his
increasingly exclamation-ridden monologue. In every stanza near the
end, however, his exclamations are punctuated by the calm desolation
of the sentence "Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore,'" reflecting the despair
of his soul.
Like a number of Poe's poems such as "Ulalume" and "Annabel Lee,"
"The Raven" refers to an agonized protagonist's memories of a
deceased woman. Through poetry, Lenore's premature death is
implicitly made aesthetic, and the narrator is unable to free himself of
his reliance upon her memory. He asks the raven if there is "balm in
Gilead" and therefore spiritual salvation, or if Lenore truly exists in the
afterlife, but the raven confirms his worst suspicions by rejecting his
supplications. The fear of death or of oblivion informs much of Poe's
writing, and "The Raven" is one of his bleakest publications because it
provides such a definitively negative answer. By contrast, when Poe
uses the name Lenore in a similar situation in the poem "Lenore," the
protagonist Guy de Vere concludes that he need not cry in his
mourning because he is confident that he will meet Lenore in heaven.
Poe's choice of a raven as the bearer of ill news is appropriate for a
number of reasons. Originally, Poe sought only a dumb beast that was
capable of producing human-like sounds without understanding the
words' meaning, and he claimed that earlier conceptions of "The
Raven" included the use of a parrot. In this sense, the raven is
important because it allows the narrator to be both the deliverer and
3. interpreter of the sinister message, without the existence of a blatantly
supernatural intervention. At the same time, the raven's black feather
have traditionally been considered a magical sign of ill omen, and Poe
may also be referring to Norse mythology, where the god Odin had
two ravens named Hugin and Munin, which respectively meant
"thought" and "memory." The narrator is a student and thus follows
Hugin, but Munin continually interrupts his thoughts and in this case
takes a physical form by landing on the bust of Pallas, which alludes
to Athena, the Greek goddess of learning.
Due to the late hour of the poem's setting and to the narrator's mental
turmoil, the poem calls the narrator's reliability into question. At first
the narrator attempts to give his experiences a rational explanation,
but by the end of the poem, he has ceased to give the raven any
interpretation beyond that which he invents in his own head. The
raven thus serves as a fragment of his soul and as the animal
equivalent of Psyche in the poem "Ulalume." Each figure represents
its respective character's subconscious that instinctively understands
his need to obsess and to mourn. As in "Ulalume," the protagonist is
unable to avoid the recollection of his beloved, but whereas Psyche of
"Ulalume" sought to prevent the unearthing of painful memories, the
raven actively stimulates his thoughts of Lenore, and he effectively
causes his own fate through the medium of a non-sentient animal.
Analysis:
