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The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe: A Personal Reflection
Edgar allan poe poem raven essay
The raven by edgar allan poe essay
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?The Raven? by Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe?s ?The Raven? is a dark reflection on lost love, death, and loss of hope. The poem examines the emotions of a young man who has lost his lover to death and who tries unsuccessfully to distract himself from his sadness through books. Books, however, prove to be of little help, as his night becomes a nightmare and his solitude is shattered by a single visitor, the raven. Through this poem, Poe uses symbolism, imagery and tone, as well as a variety of poetic elements to enforce his theme of sadness and death of the one he loves.
Within the poem Poe divides the characters and imagery into two conflicting aspects of light and dark. Almost everything in the poem reflects one world or the other. For example, Lenore, who is repeatedly described as ?radiant? epitomizes the world of light along with the angels she has joined. Another image of light would be the lamplight the character uses to light his chamber, his refuge from the darkness of the outside. However, The Raven, as well as the dreary December night shows signs of darkness. These images of light and darkness go even further to represent life and death, the man?s hope of an afterlife with Lenore and his fear of everlasting loneliness.
The poem consists of an undeniable narrative structure. Told from the third person, Poe also uses symbolism to create a strong melancholy tone. For instance, both midnight and December symbolize an end of something and the hope of something new to happen. Another example is the chamber in which the narrator is placed, this is used to show the loneliness of the man.
Along with imagery and symbolism, Poe incorporates many poetic elements to express his feeling. These include assonance, alliteration, and rhyme. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds. For example ?For the race and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore.? This repeats the vowel sound of ?a?. Poe also used a lot of alliteration. For example, ?Doubting dreaming dreams no mortal level, dared to dream before?. Notice the repetition of the ?d? sound. One last element used in ?The Raven? is rhyme.
In,”The Raven”, Poe utilizes diction, syntax, and rhymes to convey his theme of depression towards his lost love, Lenore. The raven flew into Poe’s home uninvited and stayed perched on his chamber door. In the story, the raven symbolizes the undying grief he has for Lenore.
Alliteration is the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words. Poe uses this literary device to describe the in bird in line 71 he says, “What grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore.” It gives the line a rhythm and tone that is easily understood and read. This use of alliteration tell the reader how dark, and evil the narrator felt around this bird. In line three he uses alliteration again by saying, “While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping...” Gives a flow to the line that is not
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” follows the story of a young man who is sadden by the death of a woman named Leonore. As the reader advance through the poem, the main character is getting more and more emotionally unstable. He is clearly suffering from some kind of mental illness most likely depression. The narrator is in first person, we are living the poem through the eyes of the main character. (He compulsorily constructs self-destructive meaning around a raven’s repetition of the word 'Nevermore ', until he finally despairs of being reunited with his beloved Lenore in another world. Just because of the nightmarish effect, the poem cannot be called an elegy.) Poe use vivid details to describe how the narrator is gradually losing his mind.
Edgar Allen Poe was one of the greatest writers of the nineteenth century. Perhaps he is best know for is ominous short stories. One of my personal favorites was called The Raven. Throughout his works Poe used coherent connections between symbols to encourage the reader to dig deep and find the real meaning of his writing. Poe's work is much like a puzzle, when u first see it its intact, but take apart and find there is much more to the story than you thought. The Raven, written in 1845, is a perfect example of Poe at his craziest. Poe's calculated use of symbolism is at his best in this story as each symbol coincides with the others. In The Raven, Poe explains a morbid fear of loneliness and the end of something through symbols. The symbols not only tell the story of the narrator in the poem, they also tell the true story of Poe's own loneliness in life and the hardships he faced. Connected together through imagery they tell a story of a dark world only Poe Knows exists.
Many literary critics have observed and noted the use of single effect in Edgar Allan Poe’s works. In “The Raven,” Poe chooses single effect as a dominant attribute to the poem as a whole. Edgar Allan Poe is widely recognized for his use of darkness in many of his works. In “The Raven,” the darkness in the poem encourages the namelessness of Lenore and the despair of the speaker. The darkness the speaker sees beyond his door is actually Lenore. However, his beloved is still absent. The darkness the speaker sees is not only Lenore but it is also the dreaded raven. A shadow, which haunts his soul, is hidden in the darkness beyond his door. In the fifth stanza, it is no more a darkness but the word “Lenore” being echoed. In the sixth stanza, the haunting echo transforms into the wind and “nothing more!” In stanza 7, all the forms become a raven that speaks “Nevermore.” Poe also uses darkness in an effort to achieve clarity. The effort to differe...
Some of his writings were much more personal for Poe such as “The Raven” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Even through both poems, reflect his personal life in some way “The Raven” portrays his own personal experiences. The death of his wife was one of the most influential deaths he had to deal with. Her death led to a period of hard drinking and staying up all hours to watch over her grave, sometimes even sleeping on her grave to be closer to her. During this period of hopelessness led to the writing of “The Raven.” The poem “The Raven” is about a man and his sorrow over the death of Lenore. The raven, which may symbolize the devil, forever hunting him and a living reminder of the death of his wife. In the poem, he shows the world of his pain of having his wife taken away from him and compares death to the raven. This shows us how the raven reminds him of what he suffered after the death of his wife. The Raven” gives us an idea of what Poe was dealing with during this time of depression. Poe knew this direct and individual experience well, unlike his other works. “The Raven” was a more personal experience to Poe because it talked about something that touched him deeply and affected his. “The Raven” was a poem about his own actual life. In this way “The Raven” is a prime example of the true Poe and how his life affected his
Poe uses apostrophe, alliteration, personification, repetition, and symbolism. Apostrophe is completely obvious in this poem. The man references Lenore multiple times, who has passed away and is no longer there for him. EXAMPLE. Alliteration is also present when he says "grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt" and "And the silken, sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain..."
Poe, in The Raven, creates a similar sense of dynamic drama. He employs consonance, writing "the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain," and the repeated sounds reflect the ssshing sound curtains make. This consonance creates the eerie atmosphere that perturbs the narrator. Through internal rhyme and polysyndeton, Poe creates an impression of intensifying and rising action. For example, he writes, "but the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token/
In Poe’s own life no durg could ever fully numb him to the pain of all his loses. His only true solace from his despair was in literature and his writings. Poe believed that visual art allowed the spirit to transcend the plane of reality to which it was stuck. In the Raven the narrator closely resembles Poe in this aspect. The narrator spends many a night reading long forgotten literature in an attempt to forget his own troubles after his loss. This is explained beautifully by Poe with the line “Eagerly I wished the morrow;- vainly I had tried to borrow, / From my books surcease of sorrow- sorrow for the lost Lenore.” (Poe 9-10) No matter how hard he tries; however he can shake the crushing despair that has a firm grip on his emotions. One dreary night the narrator gained an unsuspecting visitor. This visitor came in the form of a raven that flew into his window. The raven torments the man reminding him of his insecurities, his flaws, and his loss. The raven accomplishes all these things by rhythmically answering his pleas with but one word, to quote the raven “nevermore.” Just like the narrator will nevermore see the face of his dead love, he too will never be free from his despair. For as long as the man lives much like Poe he
Poe utilises the device of trochaic octameter meaning that the trochee begins with a syllable that is stressed followed by a weak (unstressed) syllable (Study Institution, 2013). The overall aim of using trochaic octameter is to exaggerate the stressed words, creating hyperbole. Using the first two lines of the first stanza as an example, “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore…” it is evident that every pair of words is a trochee, a set of stressed and unstressed syllables (Dictionary.com, 2015). When hyperbole is apparent, it also allows the alliteration to be enhanced. In the fourteenth stanza, the first two lines exhibit these two devices working together, “Then methought the air grew denser, perfume from an unseen censer, Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted
Humans are incredibly complex creatures with a plethora of aspects and qualities. During the rise of Dark Romanticism, writers examined one such characteristic: a human’s capacity for evil. Edgar Allan Poe, a Dark Romanticist writer, attempted to explore the dark side of human nature in his literature. In his poem “The Raven,” a Raven flies into a man’s chamber as he is grieving for his dead lover, Lenore. The Raven refuses to leave and aggravates the man through its constant repetition of the word ‘nevermore’, triggering his spiral into madness. Poe’s excellent word choice, figurative language, and use of rhyme and diction in the second stanza contribute to the dark, melancholy tone of the poem and express the grief of the narrator.
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.
In the Poem, “The Raven”, Poe chooses the theme of morbidity and grief to depict a story that reflects depression. In order to exemplify the story through depression and morbidity, Poe uses symbolism to really have the reader understand his twisted mentality. For example, Poe uses the word Pluto in numerous of his poems and tales; the word Pluto, is derived from a Roman Greek god Hades. This symbolic meaning should right away warn the reader that grief and agony is yet to arrive. Moreover, by mentioning “night” and “midnight” throughout the poem shows the Poe is using that word as a symbol for death. When beginning the poem, Edgar created a background in which a man is sitting and pondering in his library. After hearing a sudden knock on the door, the man approaches the door and realizes there is no there to greet him. However, a shiny black raven shows up at the men’s window and inflicts feelings of negativity, agony, and grief that later on in the poem overcame the narra...
Poe utilizes a gradual change in diction as the poem progresses. Initially, he begins the poem with melancholic diction when the narrator is falling asleep: “while I pondered, weak and weary,” “nodded, nearly napping,” and “of someone gently rapping” (1-4). The utilization of alliteration in these lines supply a song-like rhythm, which is soothing to the reader. This usage of diction conveys a mellow tone. Further into the poem, when the increasingly agitated narrator becomes vexed at the raven, he lashes out at the bird. Here, he states, “Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore! / Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! / Leave my loneliness unbroken!--quit the bust above my door! / Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!” (98-101). Here, his uses archaic words and phrases such as “thee,” “Night’s Plutonian shore,” and “thy soul hath”. This usage of unorthodox language creates a theatrical, dramatic, and climactic effect, which leads to an impassioned tone. By presenting both tones, Poe is able to show the contrast between the two. This transformation from a tone that is mellow to one of frustration and anxiety represents the spiraling downward of the narrator’s mental state.
The mysterious mood it conveys and deep meaning take you beyond the text into an almost nightmare-like illusion. Poe claimed that the poem was inspired by a talking raven in Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty by Charles Dickens. It is also noted that Poe used the intricate rhythm and meter of Elizabeth Barrett’s poem “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship” in making the internal rhyme as well as alliteration. What really makes the poem so powerful are the elements Poe uses. First he sets the scene, “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore-.”