Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"

Edgar Allen Poe’s poem “The Raven,” portrays a talking Raven’s cryptic midnight visit to a mourning narrator. The raven’s mysterious visit traces the lover’s slow spiral into madness. The lover, who is acknowledged as being a student, is sorrowfully regretting the loss of his love, Lenore. His method of attempting to forget his loss of Lenore, and sooth his pain, is by reading “Forgotten Love.” When the man notices the Raven appear perched on a bust of Pallas, he demands his name. However, the raven only answers with “Nevermore,” and the lover is amazed the raven can talk. As the man goes on distraught, he laments that the raven will soon fly out of his life, just as "other friends have flown before" along with his previous hopes. When the Raven seems to answer with “Nevermore,” the man claims that it is the only word he knows and must have learned it from a previous “unhappy master.” Even so, the narrator pulls his chair directly in front of the raven determined to learn more about it. He ponders for a moment however, and his mind wanders back to his lost love, Lenore. He thinks the air grows deeper and feels the being of angels around him. Flustered, by what this bird might have to do with this, the narrator grows angry, calling the raven a "thing of evil" and a "prophet". As he shouts at the raven it only replies, "Nevermore." Finally, he asks the raven whether he will be reunited with Lenore in Heaven. When the raven responds again with "Nevermore", he yells and commands the raven to go back to the "Plutonian shore,” but it doesn’t budge. The narrator's final stanza is that his soul is confined under the raven's shadow and shall be lifted "Nevermore."

Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven,” had a very eerie feeling to it. From the sorrowful lover lamenting his lost love, to the repetitive and rather annoying raven in the night, “The Raven,” was dark and cold. The narrator experiences a wavering conflict between desire to forget and desire to remember. Although trying to forget, the lover seems to get some pleasure from reminiscing and focusing on his loss. The narrator presumes that the word "Nevermore" is the raven's "only stock and store", and, yet, he continues to ask it questions. My question to Poe would be, why does the narrator continue to do this, knowing what the answer will be? His questions, then, seem purposely self-critical and further provoking of his feelings of loss.