How Did Poe's Life Influence The Speaker Of The Raven

“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.” This quote by Edgar Allen Poe reflects greatly on the speaker that Poe created for his poem “The Raven”. In “The Raven”, the word that the raven repeats highly influences the speaker because it brings light to a reality that he does not want to face. As far as he knows, he will never be able to see his lover again, and facing this reality drives the speaker into madness (Poe 602-604). When Poe wrote “The Raven”, it can be seen that he greatly related to the speaker of the poem, and that he was writing about experiences and emotions he was facing at that time. Knowing certain aspects of Poe’s life helps readers understand the speaker in the poem.
To understand how Poe’s life influenced the speaker of the poem, it is important to understand the qualities of the speaker. The speaker of “The Raven” is a man who has just lost his lover Lenore to death. He is deeply grieving her death and is going through a lot of issues in dealing with her death. This can be seen in the

beginning of the poem, when the speaker is reading a book as a way to distract himself from feeling the agony that comes with Lenore’s death (Poe 599). Even though the speaker is going through a lot of torment and grief, he is still able to hold himself together before he hears the tapping on the door. It is also seen that the speaker suffers through a lot of paranoia when he forces himself to believe that the tapping on the window “Tis the wind and nothing more!" (Poe 35,6,602). Even though he lead himself to believe that the tapping was just the wind, it was still really hard for him to get the courage to see what was making the noise.
The speaker’s inability to function without the thought of his loss proves that the speaker had obsessive tendencies towards his lover Lenore. When he first hears the tapping at the window, he can’t help but think about his lover as he believes her name is whispered. As a reader, it can be seen that the speaker is looking at anything to remind him of what he once had with Lenore, and he even results to seeing her through the bleakness and darkness of the night. When the raven arrives, the speaker sees it as a noble-like person and at first is thrilled to have the company of the raven. The speaker seems desperate for interaction as he talks to the raven as a person so that he feels that he has not lost everything (Freedman 146). With the loss of Lenore, the speaker feels that the raven is a sense of relief that allows him to be free of the grief he has been feeling.
The speaker begins to look to the raven as a source of wisdom and begins to ask it questions, but the raven can only answer with “Nevermore”. At first the speaker feels that the raven must have only learned that one word from a previous owner, but he slowly becomes obsessed with the word and sees it has having more meaning. When the speaker begins to talk about Lenore, he freaks out when the raven interrupts him by saying “Nevermore” (Poe 602-604). He begins to believe that the raven meant that he will never be with his love again, even though it is clear that “Nevermore” is really the only word that it knows. The fact that the speaker chose to believe that the raven was something sent to him to tell him that he would be alone the rest of his life shows that the speaker has a deep need to feel the pain of being alone the rest of his life (Freedman 146).
The type of character that the speaker was greatly influenced by Poe’s life and experiences, and a lot of the trauma that led to Poe feeling these kinds of emotions came from his childhood.

Even as an infant, Poe’s life was much harder than many others at that time. His parents were very poor, his dad was an alcoholic, and he even had to endure the death of his mother when he was only two years old. It is also said that two year old Poe had to spend an entire night with the corpse of his mother, and even Poe said in his poem “Alone” that this incident along with many others in his childhood had a negative effect on his adulthood (Dhahir 1). Having to accept the death of a love one at such a young age is almost always very influential on that person later in life, and adding the fact that he was left with his mother’s corpse only makes it even harder for Poe, and the speaker, to deal will the death of loved

ones.
Following the death of his mother, Poe was taken in by the childless family of Scottish tobacco merchant John Allen. Allen and his wife provided Poe with everything a parent should provide for their child, including education, but were unable to satisfy his emotional needs (Grubbs 1). Poe’s foster mother was said to be a hypochondriac who was unable to show Poe the love he needed, while his foster father was unable to connect with Poe, which later resulted in him disowning Poe after a heated argument over college debts (Dhahir 1). This disownment brought upon Poe a guilt over not taking care of the people who raised him. This guilt is also shown through the speaker of “The Raven” as he feels guilt over losing his lover Lenore.
There were events in Poe’s adult life that also had a huge impact on him writing this poem. In 1836, Poe married his cousin Virginia Clemm who became a very important part of Poe’s life. At the time of writing “The Raven”, Virginia was diagnosed with Tuberculosis, the same disease that killed his mother, and it was pretty certain that her death was right around the corner (Grubbs 1). It can easily be seen that his wife’s sickness highly influenced Poe’s decision to put the speaker of “The Raven” in that scenario. Poe used “The Raven” to express all of his feeling about the incoming death of his wife, and expressed it through the speaker’s loss of Lenore.
Poe uses “The Raven” in order to reveal to the world emotions that have been eating him alive all his life. Between the horrible events of his childhood and the things he had to deal with as an adult, “The Raven” provided Poe with a way to show the world how he really felt. What makes poetry interesting is that poems like “The Raven” allow the reader to see and feel emotions that the author is expressing, and sometimes allows them to see the world in a whole new way.