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How Does Edgar Allan Poe React To The Raven

Decent Essays

Colby Austin
Honors English 11
Mr. Smith
Poe Paper
"The Raven" is a famous poem by Edgar Allan Poe that was first published in January 1845. The poem is famous for its language and supernatural elements. It narrates the story of a talking raven that visits a hysterical lover and traces the events that led to is lethargic fall into madness. The narrator is grieving the loss of his great love Lenore. As the raven sits on a bust of Pallas, it searches deeper and harder to be able to agitate the narrator with its repetitive use of “Nevermore”. The Raven utilizes numerous classical and folk references.
Poe stated that he wrote the poem with logic and careful for planning, wanting to create a poem that would serve to the interests of both critical …show more content…

The poem was not protected by copyright so a lot of other people made their own version of it and sold it for their profit before Poe had a chance to. "The Raven" follows an unknown narrator on a gloomy night in December who reads old stories to get his mind off of his late lover. A "rapping at chamber door" A similar rapping, slightly louder, is heard at his window. As soon as he starts to inquire about it a raven comes into hi chamber. The raven seemingly does not see the narrator and perches on a bust of Pallas above the door.
The raven impresses the man with its blend of comedy and being serious. The only answer the Raven gives back is "Nevermore". Finally, he asks the raven whether he will be reunited with Lenore in Heaven. The repetitive response "Nevermore" makes the man very angry. He starts to call the bird a liar, and demands the bird to return to the "Plutonian shore". The narrator undergoes an intense conflict between the want to forget and the want to remember. He seems to get some pleasure from focusing on loss. The narrator makes the assumption that the word "Nevermore" is the raven's "only stock and store", but continues to ask questions even though he already has the knowledge to know what the answer will be. The narrator then does this so he can make himself feel bad for himself. Poe never leaves a concrete answer to …show more content…

Poe makes no direct reference tot his fact in the poem, but instead brings it up in "The Philosophy of Composition". The fact that the narrator reads books of “lore” and has a bust Pallus, the Greek goddess of wisdom, also feeds into that idea. The narrator amplifies the prescience of devil imagery because he believes the raven is “from the Night’s Plutonian shore”, or more simply a reference to being a messenger from Pluto, The Roman god of the underworld.. Poe said the raven is supposed to show "Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance". He was also inspired by the raven Grip, in Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty Charles Dickens. The scene at the end of the fifth chapter of Dickens's novel is very similar to “The Raven.” Grip makes a noise and someone says, "What was that – him tapping at the door?" The response is, "'Tis someone knocking softly at the shutter." Dickens's grip had the ability to communicate very and possessed a lot of comedic elements in how he conducted himself, including the popping of a champagne cork, but Poe focused more the bird's more theatrical qualities. He wrote a review of Barnaby Rudge for Graham's Magazine stating that, among other things, the raven should have yielded a more symbolic and prophetic

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