Alexis Franzen
Poetry Essay
November 3, 2015
Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” in nature
Edgar Allen Poe shows a strong sense of man vs. nature in his poem “The Raven” by giving several instances of natural conflicts such as: outside supernatural sense, the wind, and the raven.
As we, the readers, know, in the beginning the narrator, who may be Poe the poem is not specifically clear, is sitting in his chamber. He is thinking of his lost love, Lenore, “From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore— / For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—” (2, 10-11). I believe most of this paranoia could be derived from a deep sense of sorrow that the narrator is having due to the loss of his love.
The narrator seems to have
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finally found rest when someone comes “gently rapping, rapping” at his chamber door when he comes to answer it there is no one or no thing there which sets the tone by giving it a spooky, eerie feel (1, 4). Just as the knocking with no apparent source behind it the wind also helps play out the uncanny strangeness that follow the narrator throughout the entire poem. The rustling of the curtains could make a reader think that there are potential elements of the supernatural realm that making a slight appearance in Poe’s poem. Are these things really happening or is this a dream or a hallucination the narrator has struck up in his sorrowful state of mourning Lenore? After all, whoever our nameless narrator is he is finding a frightful thrill in the rustling of these curtains “And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain / Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before” (3, 13-14). This thrill he speaks of gives the impression that he may be looking for something to help him feel again. When Poe’s narrator hears the tapping on his chamber door he seems to be reassuring himself that there is no possible way there could be anything supernatural happing ““Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—only this and nothing more.”” (1, 5-6). His shock is evident when he opens the door and find only “Darkness there, and thing more.” (4, 24). The narrator starts to slightly freak out when starts he begins “doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before; / But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,” he can only be coming to the realization that if no one is there either he is dreaming out losing his mind especially when from the darkness the only thing to be heard is “Lenore” (5, 16-18).
The wind is the next element introduced in the poem that has a deeper meaning than just simply being the blowing of air throughout the earth. When the tapping returns Poe’s narrator tries to find comfort by ensuring himself that there is surely something tangible tapping at his window’s lattice. Although he has already made up in his mind that there is something out there the character exhibits the need for evidence when he still can’t resist letting himself “see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore— / let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore / ‘Tis the wind and nothing more!” (6, 36-37).
The wind seems to be a symbol of hope. Hope that he has entrusted in the form of nature. A hope that maybe he can trust that there is no such thing as a ghost that is lurking around tapping on his widows and chamber doors. The narrator looks for a way to make the wind the source of his problems instead of the potential cause that he is having repercussions from a broken
heart. When the raven enters the scene, it is not only a symbol of nature but it carries an oar of death with it. The raven could be a figment of Poe’s narrator’s imagination or it could be just a raven that he is imagining to be talking. Its obviously a clever bird since it is not only speaking but it knows exactly what to say to provoke the narrator to be driven to madness “Quoth the raven “Nevermore.”” (8, 48). The more our narrator speaks to the bird the angrier he seems to become. This is because he could be gong insane because he is giving life to things that might not even be there. The narrator finally accepts the face that there could be something supernatural going on when he says ““Prophet!” said I. “thing of evil!”—prophet still, if bird or devil! —”” it seems that he is finally accepting the possibility that something else could be on the rise. The raven is still taunting Poe’s narrator at the end of the poem, “And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting / On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;” this has the main character/narrator so distraught all the way to the last word of the poem “nevermore!” (18, 103-104).
In the poem “The Raven” he narrator is mourning over a person he loved named Lenore. Being lost in his thoughts, he is suddenly startled when he hears a tapping at his door. When he goes to the door there is no one there. He goes back into his room and then he hears tapping on his window. He opens his window and a Raven steps into his room. The narrator has been on an emotional roller coaster throughout the whole entire poem; talking to this Raven makes him feel even worse. In the poem Edgar Poe uses many literary devices. For example he uses alliteration, internal rhyme, and allusion.
Edgar Allen Poe wrote “The Raven” about the narrator is because he misses a woman named Lenore. It also talks about why the raven is so important in the poem. It talks about what the raven stands for and what everything it does mean. It also talks about how the narrator thought that God had sent the raven. The narrator thought that God had sent Lenore as well. It tells about how the narrator thinks that God had sent the raven to replace Lenore because the narrator was dwelling all the time about the loss of the woman named Lenore. This paper lastly talks about how the narrator works so hard to show the reader how God had sent him a replacement for the woman that he had lost.
The narrator wants relief from the pain of the loss of Lenore. Oddly, he looks towards his books to “surcease [the] sorrow.” Furthermore, Poe’s italicization of “here” emits hope for the narrator. He suggests that his “rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore” will not be with him in this world, but is waiting for him elsewhere and this gives him aspiration (2- 11). As the night proceeds, the darkness and silence of the room frightens the narrator.
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.
Edgar Allen Poe’s catharsis to love seems to be an allusion to his very life. Lenore is merely a proxy-name for love, while the other disturbances are the various doubts he feels. The sounds of the rapping at the door are merely there to distract him from his thoughts of Lenore, almost as a reminder that to think of her would only doom her to the fate of his previous loved ones, while the Raven is the sign of hope that beckons him to continue in his fantasy with the assurance the distractions are merely environmental and nothing
In his poem, The Raven, Edgar Allen Poe utilizes figurative language to create a suspenseful and
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...
Image a family. Now imagine the parents divorcing and never see the father again. Then imagine the mother dying and leaving three kids behind. All of which get taken in by someone. The two year old is given to a family, with a loving mother and caring father. Edgar Alan Poe did not have to imagine this, this was his childhood. Poe’s difficult youth was a heavy contributor to his perspective that pain is beautiful. Poe illustrates many things in “The Raven”, one of his most well-known pieces. “The Raven” is about a depressed man who lost his lover Lenore. The speaker states “’Tis the wind and nothing more!” (Line 36) in his delusional state to help himself cope with his loss. In “The Raven” Poe uses irony and complex diction. This helps Poe create his theme of the human tendency to lie to one self to feel better.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Raven” Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Seventh Edition. Eds. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell, Boston: Wadsworth, 2010 385-390. Print
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.
Poe, Edgar A. “The Raven.” Elements of Literature. Fifth Course Literature of the United States
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.
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-…” already it’s clear that it is late at night and a man is weak and tired trying to ease his sorrow by reading old books of “forgotten lore” (DiYanni 1173). Then the poem goes on to tell that there is a tapping at his chamber door. When he opens the door he is surprised to find, “Darkness there and nothing more” (1173). He whispers into the darkness “Lenore,” hoping that his lost love had returned, but all that was heard was, “an echo [that] murmured back the word, ‘Lenore!’”(1173). Angered and perplexed, he turns back into his chamber, suddenly there is a loud tapping at the window lattice. H...
...e opens the door. When he found himself opening the door, he saw nothing but darkness. And this is the point where he figures that there is nothing out there. I think the reason Poe was so afraid, reflects back on Lenore. I understood Lenore to be Poe’s love at some point in his life. He’s been so depressed, that all he thinks about is her, but then again, he is also trying to forget about her at the same time. And when he first heard the sounds of rustling, he might of thought it could be the spirit of Lenore. I think this was the reason for him to have been so afraid. Poe drew a lot of his ideas and images into his own imagination. And the images he had of Lenore, was not making him feel any better. I think that most of Poe’s thoughts and feelings all came from his mind, and not his heart.