The Analysis of Raven

Introduction

The Raven is the most famous poetic composition by Edgar Allan Poe. It was written in the year 1845. The poet describes the anguish it caused to him because of the death of his beloved, which he called “Lenore”. That anguish embodies a black crow (raven), after being questioned, answered again and again, never again, nevermore. This is an obsessive rhythmic poem in which anxiety is gripping the reader in full of internal rhyme, alliteration. The creative process of the poem is described by Poe in his essay Philosophy of Composition, which explains step by step the methodology used by the author for the realization of the poem. The Raven as a metaphor of Grief

Throughout our history, birds have been considered to be examples of the flight of souls and they are said to have powers to act as the intermediates between heaven and earth. Poets and writers have been long been using the examples of birds in their works and the exemplification of birds has been used according to the characteristics which are found in the works of writers who watch the birds, for instance, the lark's song, the crow's blackness, and the peacock's plumage. When a poem is analyzed on the whole, it is revealed that the whenever the poet is using a bird, it is a metaphor to depict the personal preferences and circumstances of life of the poet, or the general condition of humans which the poet represents by referring to a bird. In the poem, “the raven”, the character of the crow is mysterious as well as tormenting, but it represents itself as a symbol of grief. (Robisch, pp.23)

Composed over eighteen six-line stanzas, “The Raven” has an exclamatory and rhyming meter which makes it melancholy as well as engaging. The bird is metaphorically used as a symbol of grief because the ballad depicts a frightening narrative of a young man's mourning over the death of his beloved woman, which he calls “Lenore”. The poet obsessively builds self-destructive significance around the bird's repetition of the word “nevermore”.

In the 8th to 11th stanzas, the poet narrates the bewitched and nonsensical image of a black bird in his rooms, which keeps repeating the phrase “Nevermore” when the poet asks the bird about his deceased beloved, Lenore. Although the word "Nevermore" apparently has little relevance in any recognizable sense, the narrator sobered and saddened by ...