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The Raven Thesis

Decent Essays

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer in the 19th century; he typically wrote dark and mysterious poems and short stories. Edgar Allan Poe was the originator of a new type of genre in literature which includes both horror and detective fiction.
The infamous name of Edgar Allan Poe typically brings the image of murders and mysteries to mind. Edgar Allan Poe was one of the first American authors of the 19th century; he was a poet and writer and is acknowledged as the originator of detective fiction and the science fiction genre, and is considered a part of the American Romantic Movement. Poe’s career was as an American literary critic and theoretician; a fellow critic named James Russell Lowell called him "the most discriminating, …show more content…

"The Raven," a poem Poe published in 1845, is considered one of the best-known poems in American literature. The Raven is a narrative about a man who is grieving over the death of the woman he loved, named Lenore. The man is haunted with a recurring raven who taps on his window repeating the word "Nevermore.” The bird symbolizes death; it communicates the message that death becomes a constant reminder in the narrator life. The poem’s overall theme is about a man who is unable to escape his inevitable fate. Poe’s use of repetition with the word "nevermore" unifies the poem and makes every word and line add to the deeper meaning of the poem. “The Raven" made him a literary sensation across every dinner table in America; it is considered one of the best literary works in Poe's career. “The Raven” is often remembered for its lyrical and dramatic characteristics; the overall atmosphere of the poem is gloomy and lonely. “The Tell-Tale Heart” is about a narrator who loves a certain old man who had never done wronged him, however the narrator can’t stand the sight of the old man's eye. The eye frightens him so badly that he decided to kill the man to avoid seeing it any longer. The police arrive and the narrator lacks any suspicious activity, however the narrator hears a constant ringing in his ears which eventually cause him to tell the policemen the truth about the fate of the old man. The irony behind "The Tell-Tale Heart" is the narrator insists that he is sane and creates and executes a perfect plan leaving the police with no suspicions or doubts, yet in the end he is defeated by a noise which was probably the beating of his own heart due to nerves. “The Tell-Tale Heart” gives an example of the capability of the human mind to be so overwhelmed with guilt and grief that deceives itself, which in return leads to its own destruction. “The Pit and The Pendulum” is

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