The Raven By Edgar Allan Poe

The first short story to be summarized is “The Black Cat”. In the beginning of the story, we learn that the unnamed narrator is in jail and going to die the very next day and wants to set his story straight. From the day he was born, he loved animals and has lots of them. He expresses that taking care of his animals and hanging out with them is his favorite thing to do. He gets married and finds out that his wife loves animals just as much as he does. Out of all the different animals he has, his favorite is an all-black and extremely smart cat named Pluto. The narrator has a drinking problem and one night when he came home drunk, he turns on the cat. He thinks that the cat is trying to avoid him and he grabs the cat and cuts out one of his
eyes with a pen knife. The next day he is overcome with a stubborn impulse and ends up hanging the cat. That night, the narrators house burns down and they lose everything in the house. The next day he goes to the house to only notice that there was one wall left standing with many other people standing around it. On that wall there was the image of the cat being hung. A couple days after that, the narrator was out drinking and was sitting looking at a barrel when all of a sudden he saw the image of a cat that looked very similar to Pluto. He loved on the cat and the cat followed him home that night. As the days went by, he noticed that the cat had a missing eye just like Pluto’s. The narrator started to then hate the cat. One day, he and his wife were making their way down to the cellar of their new home when the cat tripped the narrator and made him fall down the steps. This angered the narrator very much and he took out an axe and aimed to kill the cat. His wife loved the cat and got in the way of the axe and he accidently killed his wife. The narrator conceals the body in in a space behind the cellar wall. That night, the cat is nowhere to be found. The next day the police show up at the house, the narrator made it no big deal. The police come back later on and search the house, especially the cellar and when they are in the cellar they hear a lousd cry coming from the cellar wall. They take down the wall and find the body with the cat sitting on top of its head. The narrator had accidently shut the cat up I the wall with the body. This is why the narrator is in jail and he is sentenced to death by hanging.
The second story to be summarized is “The Raven”.
The poem starts out on a dreary December night when the unnamed narrator is reading an old book. While the narrator is reading this old book, he hears a tapping at the door to his room. He tells himself that it is just a visitor and that he waits for tomorrow because he cannot find any ease in his sorrow over the death of Lenore. He is frightened by the curtains rustling and decides that it must be a late visitor. As he heads to the door he asks for forgiveness of the visitor because he had been napping. However, when he opened the door, he sees no one, hears no one, except for the word “Lenore” an echo of his own words. When he goes back to his room, he again hears a tapping and he tells himself that it must be the wind outside his window. When he opens the window, a raven enters and perches “upon a bust of Pallas” above the door. The narrator asks for its name and the raven replies, “Nevermore”. The narrator tells the raven to leave him until tomorrow like the rest of his friends due to being in such deep sorrow and the raven again replies, “Nevermore”. The narrator is startled by this and he says that the raven must have learned this word from someone whose luck was not so good and it caused him to repeat the word over and over. The narrator then sits in front of the raven and ponders about the meaning of the word, while the raven sits and stares at him sitting in the chair Lenore used to always sit in. He starts to ask
the raven questions. One particular question that he asks was if he will see Lenore again in Heaven and the raven replies, “Nevermore”. In rage, the narrator demands that the raven go back outside and leave him alone, but the raven replies once again, “Nevermore”, and doesn’t leave the bust of the Pallas. The narrator feels that his soul will “nevermore” leave the raven’s shadow.
The third story to be summarized is “The Sphinx”.
This story takes place in New York around the cholera epidemic in the summer of 1832. During this summer, the narrator decides to take a trip for two weeks to the Hudson River, to visit a relative. There, the two men observe the enormous devastation that the epidemic has caused. They hear the news that one of their friends has died from this terrible illness. The narrator’s host tries to cheer up his friend. The host is a very rational person and he doesn’t let his fears get the best of him. He also is a very calming force in the narrator’s life as he is very upset because of the epidemic. One day during the visit, the narrator is reading a book near the window that is looking out upon the Hudson River. His attention was focused on the cholera epidemic, and then he looks up from his book and sees a frightening sight in the distant hills. He sees an enormous creature that is larger than anything that he had ever seen. Its trunk was about seventy feet long, and has two tusks surrounded by a huge bulk of black hair. The creature also had two pairs of wings that are nearly one hundred yards in length and all covered in thick metal scales. The frightening monster opened its jaws and locks them shut, roaring loud as it disappears at the bottom of the hill. The narrator fears that this monster is coming to claim his life. Later on that evening, the narrator really wants to tell his relative about him seeing the monster, but he
decides not to because he is afraid of what he will think. A few days later however, the two men are sitting together in the same room in which the narrator saw the monster out of the window, and he then decides to tell him what he witnessed. His relative listens carefully and then laughs at what the narrator has told him. The narrator becomes paranoid and thinks that his relative thinks that he is crazy. Soon after that, the narrator again sees the monster outside the window, crawling down the hill. The relative doesn’t see anything and he went on to say that people often underrate or overvalue the importance of the object. The relative asks the narrator to sit on the sofa so that he could sit in the chair by the window. The host reads from the book discussing the type of creature of the genius Sphinx. He then goes on to read the description of the creature as portrayed in the science book. The narrator listens very carefully to what his relative is saying about the creature and he looks out of the window again In search of the monster. His relative tells him that there is no way that it is as big as what he said it was. Then, the narrators fear of death has consumed him, and he thought that a tiny insect that was nearby was the enormous monster that was very far away . his relative tells him that because of reading the book and what the book said, he made himself think that the enormous monster was in fact real. Rather than being thought of as insane, the narrator is now taken to be a fool for making such a mistake as to be frightened by this tiny insect. His wise relative is the only source of comfort to the narrator. He saves the narrator from drowning in his own false fears.