Analyzing The Mood Of Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven

The mood of the poem "The Raven" can be described in many words. In a single word, it can be considered "Gothic”. More specifically, however, the mood is mysterious, melancholy, and even slightly morbid. Edgar Allan Poe created the mysterious mood in his poem by using figurative language, imagery, setting, tone, and the speaker to help enhance his writing.

In Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven,” the author uses many negative and positive tone words to get the mood of the poem. The negative tone words show how the raven has a negative effect on the character. The authors choice of words leaves a positive effect on the poem as well.

Many people often dislike hearing scary noises in a desolated place where there is no one around. Any noise can be very frightful to the mind and to the heart. Our mind can sometimes create an image that does not exist and would essentially make anybody go crazy at the moment of hearing those scary noises. Edgar’s Poem, “The Raven’’, basically tells the story of a man that has lost everything including his beloved wife who he misses very much to the point of having hallucinations of the wind calling her name “Lenore“. He experiences realism and fantasy with a raven that shows up in his chamber door. The person in the story appears to be alone in his house and depressed about the loss of his wife Lenore. Then, standing at the chamber door, a raven will respond to the narrator’s arguments with the word “Nevermore” making the story more allusive and suspenseful as it develops. Each time, the raven becomes more mysterious and it is scary to hear the raven say the word “nevermore”.

If I were to describe “The Raven’s” tone with only three words; I would use the following: morbid, suspenseful, and psychotic. This seems like a strange combination of words, doesn’t it? But it is this tone that has made “The Raven” such an intriguing poem for so many years. Although you would have to read the whole poem to fully get the effect of the tone, here are some lines that I think best express it: “But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only, That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour. Nothing further then he uttered – not a feather then he fluttered -Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before – On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.’ Then the bird said, `Nevermore.’” The talk about death and the morrow, as well as the talking to the bird, and the chilling use of the words bring out the morbid, psychotic and suspenseful tone. It would only seem fitting that this proves how the sorrow the death of a loved one brings will stay with you forever. Sorrow can be associated with depression, but an eternal depression can be associated with madness, hence the psychotic tone. On the more obvious note, the morbidness is connected to the death and this man that has lost his loved one, and a bird has come to haunt him, and this bird

“The Raven” was written in 1844 by Edgar Allan Poe. It is probably one of Poe’s most recognized works. The poem has several underlying themes, the biggest and most obvious is about a man who is grief stricken over the loss of a loved one and his inability to cope with it. A raven that visits him drives him deeper into depression and mental illness by continuing to give negative answers to his questions he asks about Lenore, his lost love. The poem alludes to the raven as being a dream or hallucination, thus setting up for an even darker theme of madness of the speaker as well. By the end of the poem, we see the speaker descend into a deep, dark depression that that he will likely never break away from because he cannot get assurance his lost love is at peace. Poe captures the feeling of darkness and depression quite well by setting a tone and a cadence that is similar throughout the poem, and it helps to contribute to making it more depressing. The continuous use of the words “never” and “nothing” makes me believe that there will be no happy resolution for the speaker in this poem.

“From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore-”(773). “But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er, She shall press, ah, nevermore!”(775). The grief and shattered personality of his is used in the text to place in his understanding of life’s relationships, especially with those he has had with people he loved in his life and suddenly lost them due to an illness. In stanza 11 of this poem Poe says - “till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore of ‘Never- nevermore.’” (774). The word diges is a lament sung for the dead and here the narrator plays a birdsong and blames this word for transforming the bird’s song into a dirge of “Nevermore” meaning at no future time, never gained again, therefore also representing as a symbol of death and dying that destroys all hope. The raven now takes on super-natural abilities. He is no longer an ordinary bird, only now to be controlled by those who are evil such as the devil. “On this home by horror haunted, -tell me truly i implore!” quoth the Raven

Edgar Allan Poe is famous for his numerous literature pieces. One very world wide known poem is “The Raven”, it has been an incredibly popular choice among readers for many years and will still be studied and enjoyed for future years to come. Not only does this form of Gothic Literature capture and inspire the heart, but it makes you feel and think deeply, and urges you to open your eyes with a different perspective. In the beginning of the poem the narrator is sitting lonely and weary, and he hears a tapping at the door and discovers the sitting raven, throughout the story the narrator asks questions and the raven does not answer any of them and the narrator begins to become irritated and upset. Towards the end of the story the reader starts

One of Edgar Allan Poe’s prominent poems is The Raven. Written in January 29, 1845, the poem revolves around a man grieving over the lost of a loved one, Lenore, and encounters a raven around midnight, that only says “Nevermore”. The main theme of the poem is about undying devotion. The narrator experiences an internal conflict

Poet Edgar Allan Poe, in his narrative poem, “The Raven”, articulates a story of a depressed and grieving man, that was thinking about his loss, Lenore, in the middle of the night then, he hears tapping at his door, the man sees nothing for a while then a raven flies in and, then the man starts talking to the raven, and every time the raven replied to what the man said, the raven would say “Nevermore,” this had gone over and over then it had angered the man and it reminded him more of his loss,

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe is one of his most famous poems. Set in the narrator’s den Poe is giving us a look at a grieving man. He has lost a woman named Lenore. According to literary critic Dhahir “Like Poe’s other works, “The Raven is directly influenced by his personal life, his sorrows, his loneliness, his bouts of depression, and his private battles with mental demons”(Dhahir 1). Edgar Allan Poe’s use of imagery and symbolism in The Raven help set the melancholy tone of the narrator.

The character then starts questioning the raven, yet all the raven would reply and say is “Nevermore” (line 16). The character then ask more question getting more personal. The raven still replying “nevermore” causes the character to get more frightened yet still talks to the raven.

The Raven’s only word is ‘Nevermore’ which symbolizes the despair of the narrator, and also makes coherence through the poem. Narrator has lost everything that he wants so he is hopeless about death and life. Even he goes to death with the raven; he thinks he will be alone in there too. `Other friends have flown before - On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.' Then the bird said, `Nevermore.'

When the narrator realizes that the raven is not leaving, he then decides to try and figure out what exactly is the meaning of its appearance and it only speaking the word nevermore. He concludes that maybe the bird came from an angry owner making the bird sad like him and causing it to repeat that word. The way the narrator describes the bird in the next lines of the poem point toward the true meaning of it, he uses terms such as, “grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous…” (Poe, Line 71). It is at this moment when the narrator’s mood darkens even more and he connects the raven fully to Lenore. The way the bird is looking at him makes him think about the word nevermore in a

He opens the shutters of the window to get a better look outside. “…with many a flirt and flutter, in there stepped a stately raven of the days of yore;” (689, lines 37-38). This is where the raven itself is first introduced. The only words in the whole poem that the raven says is “Nevermore!” This saying is an oxymoron according to “Quoting the signifier ‘Nevermore’: Fort! Da!, Pallas, and Desire in Language.” (Wardrop). This part of the poem starts taking a dramatic change because it is the start of plot twist in other terms. The narrator wants to move on, but the thought of his dead wife is hard to

Then, it finally comes, the most pivotal word in the poem, the one most associated (besides “raven”) with it, the one that best concretizes the idea behind it, the raven mutters “Nevermore.” This is where the poem starts incorporating the element of dark fantasy, the passage to which had been set up by the preceding development of an unsettling atmosphere surrounding an increasingly unaccepting-of-reality and despaired person, both classical components of dark fantasy. Understandably, our speaker was flabbergasted; and at first struggled to understand the relevancy of what the raven said because he thought it was answering his question. (Little did he know how relevant it will become once he projects it onto his reality.) He was also able to see the comicality of it by cracking a little joke. But the more time he spent interpreting it the more worried he got- particularly about the sincerity and weight the raven put in his utterance of “Nevermore.” After that we get a little background of the speaker in his one-sided dialogue with the raven, whom he had begun to regard as friend, and was able to obtain a soon-to-be-destroyed slight relief from the state of languishing desolation he had been in before its arrival. This didn’t hinder him from lamenting his galling fate by indicating that all of his hopes