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What Is The Theme Of The Raven

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The Raven
S. T. Coleridge's “The Raven” was published in Morning Post and Gazetteer on the 10th of March in1798. Its subtitle A Christmas Tale, Told by a Schoolboy to his Little Brothers and Sisters suggests innocence and something appropriate to the Christmas season. This poem tells the story of a raven, who flies far and gathers much knowledge. On his return to his favourite tree he sets up a house with a female raven but one day a woodman chops the tree down killing the raven’s wife and chicks. The harmonious life of the birds is destroyed by the woodman. The wood is used as timbers for the building of a ship. When the ship is launched it sinks in an uncanny storm and the raven is avenged. As the raven flies back to land, he meets death …show more content…

T. Coleridge's “The Raven” was written against the background of the collapse of the poet's hopes for the improvement of mankind by political action and the ultimate failure of the French Revolution. There is the theme of politics, death and love in The Raven which is pictured via symbolic devices. To make the effect even more powerful, the poet contrasts the particular symbols in dialectical pairs, such as the rose and the raven, sun and moon, or day and night. The dialectics create a certain tension and the tension is the fate to the realms of wonder.
Coleridge loved experiments with words, symbols and metaphors. Relating the poem to the social context of the time, the raven, the woodman, the oak tree and other symbols show Coleridge’s disappointment and fear of the French Revolution of 1789. The time and circumstances of writing the poem is also political as it was published in 1798, during the French Revolution. Coleridge wishes that one day virtue, joy, life and love win against vice, despair, hatred and death in this poem.
The poem is introduced as a Christmas tale. It invites the reader to enter the spirit of times of wonder and to let the imagination flourish. Just as the poem begins, the first circle of life is

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