How Did Poe Use The Allegory Of Light And Dark In The Raven

Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, “The Raven” uses the allegory of light and dark to express his themes. Some interpretations of the themes can be interpreted differently depending on the critic. One critic in particular, Betsy Erkkila believed that the use of light and dark stemmed from a racial stand point. Arguably, the themes speak more strongly of his loss of love rather than the prejudice and condemnation of race. In Betsy Erkkila’s essay “The Poetics of Whiteness: Poe and the Racial Imaginary,” she asserts that Poe’s work, “The Raven” had racial undertones with his descriptive adjectives, black and white and light and dark. Erkkila bases her critique and the social climate during the time Poe had published his work. She argues that in a time of “heightening... racial struggles of the United States in the 1840s, for a dead white woman to come back as an ominous and ambiguously sexed black bird” (Erkkila, 341) evokes and encourages connotations of black coinciding with fear and

The narrator attempts to excuse the Raven’s message and appearance, avoiding the fact of his statement, he is refusing the dark reality of the Raven in hopes of keeping what little light he has of Lenore. The Raven’s “fiery eyes... burned into [his] bosom’s core” (Poe, 67), finally piercing through the last shreds of light and forcing the narrator into the true depth of his loss. Still, he begs for “whom the angels named Lenore” while “Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore’” (Poe, 89). As hard as the narrator tries, he cannot shake the Raven, who remains “never flitting,” (Poe, 96) and “Shall be lifted - Nevermore!” (Poe, 101). Finally, the narrator assents to the Raven’s presence and releases his light,