Analyzing Edgar Alan Poe's The Raven

“The Raven” by Edgar Alan Poe is a relatively long poem, and is one of my personal favorites. This poem, like all of Poe’s other works, speaks of madness and that is, perhaps, why I find it so enjoyable. In this poem an unnamed narrator, having just lost his mistress, seems to be losing his sanity as he indulges in a conversation with a raven who may only say “Nevermore.” The narrator seems to compulsively construct self-destructive meaning around the raven’s repetition of the word “Nevermore,” until he finally despairs of being reunited with his beloved Lenore in another world after his death. This poem is narrated from the first-person point of view, and conveys the speaker’s shift from weary, sorrowful composure to a state of nervous
The physical setting of the poem is a reflection of the characters inner emotions. The poem begins at midnight, sometime in December which is the last month of the year. It symbolizes a time of death and decay which is even reflected in the “dying” fireplace embers. The narrator, “weak and weary”, seems trapped in his richly furnished prison, a typically Gothic setting of bleak, loneliness . The characters and imagery are divided into conflicting worlds of both light and dark. Light and dark also represent life and death, and the narrator’s vain hope of an after-life with Lenore verses the terrifying idea of eternal nothingness. Weak and worn out with grief, the narrator had sought distraction by reading. Awakened at midnight from his “nap” by a sound somewhere outside his chamber, he opens the door, believing it may be a visitor, to find only darkness. Since it is after midnight, he is a little frightened, so he tries to reassure himself by saying it was just the wind hitting the window. When the tapping persists moments later, he goes to check the window where he finds a raven, which, unlike a normal bird simply perches itself on a statue of Pallas Athena, the goddess of