Lingering Grief In Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven

The Theme of a Lingering Grief in Edgar Allen Poe’s, The Raven

Have you ever experienced distress or misery throughout your lifetime? The poem, The Raven, by Edgar Allen Poe describes an event experienced by a young man who has just lost his girlfriend, Lenore, whom of which he deeply loved, and encounters a raven, who offers insight into his afterlife that he refuses to accept due to the sorrow he feels after this traumatic event. The author’s use of imagery, word choice, and figurative language throughout this popular literary work is effectively used to convey the theme of a lingering grief that cannot be overcome in several ways presented throughout the text.

The author’s use of imagery throughout the poem is one useful component the author uses to portray this particular theme. In stanza seven of The Raven, Edgar Allen Poe uses descriptions such as, “Perched above my bust of Pallas just above my chamber door” to provide various kinds of visual descriptions to allow the reader to picture the situation. Information such as where the raven is perched and where the raven is located are also relevant to the theme. The, “bust of Pallas” represents Athena, the Greek goddess of war and wisdom, according to Greek mythology, and the notable visual detail that the raven is perched

here signifies the raven may contain wisdom of some kind. This includes wisdom such as how the narrator’s grief is ongoing, and cannot be overcome, based on the information that the raven remains perched here even after the narrator demands him to leave in stanza eighteen.
The author’s word choice is used to develop and support the theme of a lingering grief that cannot be diminished in several ways.

In stanza seventeen, the narrator shrieks, “Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!” Within this line of the poem, the narrator displays how he is so overcome with sorrow and grief he cannot accept how he will not be with Lenore in heaven. To display this overall mood of the narrator, the author uses words such as ‘black plume,” instead of feather, because the word plume possesses a darker and more mysterious connotation. This is just one of the examples of evidence conveying the narrator’s lingering grief through the author’s word

choice.
The author efficiently uses figurative language within the poem to express and present the theme of a lingering grief that cannot be overcome several times throughout his literary work. In the eighteenth stanza of The Raven, the narrator states, “And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,” this particular piece of dialogue containing figurative language. This particular quote states a metaphor, where the narrator compares the raven to a demon. During this point in time, the raven is also acting as a symbol as well as reminder of the narrator’s grief by refusing to leave when he is commanded to do so. This metaphor is just one example of figurative language relevant to this particular theme, as there are several others.
The author uses various forms of narrative elements throughout The Raven, to develop and sustain the substantial theme of a state of grief the narrator will never conquer, and will continue to face eternally. The woman the narrator was mourning, Lenore, seemed to have made a significant impact on his life, and her death, whether by natural or deliberate causes, has left the narrator in a strong state of misery and sorrow. From this, we can conclude that when the raven provided the narrator with future insight, he slipped into a condition of denial for this reason.