The Use Of Mood In Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven

Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, “The Raven” uses poetic devices to create the mood through the use of language, rhyme and repetition, alliteration, as well as through the speaker’s despair. Edgar Allen Poe’s choice of words in his poem “The Raven” create a depressed or forlorn mood. We are shown this in the opening lines of the poem. “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, over many quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore-while I nodded nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping.” Through these lines we are thrown into an atmosphere that is full of grief, hopelessness, and alienation. His choice of the words alone gives us the feeling of gloom. Other words such as “deep into the darkness” and “nevermore” are used to create a feeling of silence and solitude all emphasizing the mood of the poem.

Poe used the rhyme scheme of a, b, a, b, c, c in order to give it a musical quality that creates a lot of emotion in the reader. The use of rhyme can be seen in the quote mentioned in the previous paragraph through the words dreary and weary, and napping and tapping. Through these rhyming words we can tell that the narrator is exhausted and would like to retreat from his thoughts by napping, but something is keeping him from doing so. The use of repetition is also used to emphasize the mood and create the tone of the poem. By repeating “nevermore” the feeling of sadness, grief, hopelessness, and despair are shown and felt by the reader throughout the entire