Which Is The Most Plausible Theme In The Raven

Who Wrote "The Raven"

Edgar Allen Poe

What is the Ravens only word?

"Nevermore"

Historical Context of The Raven

1. Edgar Allen Poe wrote "The Raven" while his wife, Virginia, was ill with tuberculosis, a disease that had already robbed him of three family members.

2. Critics consider the character of Lenore, presumably the narrator's lost beloved, to be a representation of Virginia.

Characters in the Raven

1. The Narrator
-Poe's unnamed narrator is a scholar who is mourning the death of his beloved, Lenore. He is alone in his house on a cold December midnight, trying to distract himself from his thoughts of her by reading old books. The narrator is a scholar, learned and reasonable, yet his logic and knowledge do not much help him to recover from the impact of Lenore's death or to escape his desperate hope to see her again. His desperation leads him to emotional extremes, from depression to near euphoria and finally to depression once the Raven pronounces that he and Lenore will be apart forever. It is never made clear whether a supernatural Raven actually visits him and drives him to an ultimate despair, or whether his own obsessive doubts lead him to imagine the Raven, but in either case the Raven overthrows the narrator's rational mind.

2. Lenore
-Critics consider Lenore, the narrator's lost love, to be a representation of Poe's own deceased wife Virginia. While Lenore never actually appears in the poem and nothing is revealed about her other than her status as the narrator's beloved, her presence looms over the text, as the narrator cannot prevent himself grieving her passing and wondering if he might be able to see her again.

3. The Raven
-The Raven is a bird that enters the narrator's house, while the narrator is grieving over his lost love in the middle of the night, and lands upon the narrator's bust of Pallas. To everything the narrator says, the Raven responds with just one word: "Nevermore." The bird acts in no other way, neither attacking the narrator nor seeming to wish him harm, but the narrator views it as at best supernatural and at worst demonic. Further, the narrator interprets the Raven's repeated "Nevermore" as a refusal of all his desires to be reunited with Lenore. At the end of the poem, the narrator observes that the Raven is still perched atop the bust of Pallas and will likely remain there forever, and that he will spend the rest of his life living under its evil influence. Whether the Raven is a supernatural being or a product of the narrator's imagination is unclear, and in this way the poem creates a connection, typical of Gothic literature, between the subconscious and the supernatural

The Raven

1. Much of the melancholy of the Raven Arises from alliteration
-Melancholy: Sadness (in literature poetic beauty in sadness)
-Alliteration: Repetition of initial consonant sounds, "doubting dreaming dreams" (Poe/"The Raven")

2. Assonance occurs in 'The Raven' by Edgar Allen Poe in several lines,
-Assonance: Assonance is the repetition of vowels (a, e, I, o, u and sometimes y) in poems;

3. The main themes of Edgar Allan Poe's narrative poem "The Raven" are undying devotion, loss and the lingering grief that cannot be diminished.

4. "The Raven" is an example of Gothic literature, a genre that originated in 18th century England.

5."The Raven" contains many elements that point to the narrative's Gothic nature: a lonely character in a state of deep emotion on cold and dark night around midnight in December.

6. The Raven represents Established mourning which is when someone close to you dies but you can't move past it

Narrator saying "Nothing more" and the Raven only saying "Nevermore"

1. Note how similar the bird's "nevermore" is to the narrator's earlier "nothing more," except that he used "nothing more" to assert rationality, while the bird's "nevermore" will do exactly the opposite.

2. The Narrator at first explains the knock rationally, using "nothing more" to assure himself the knocking has a rational origin, though the fact that he has to assure himself at all indicates his uncertainty.
-As his fear increases, the narrator again asserts his rationality, using "nothing more" to deny the knocking could be supernatural

3. "Nevermore" is a painful reference to the fact that the narrator will never again be reunited with his beloved Lenore.

The main themes of Edgar Allan Poe's narrative poem "The Raven" are undying devotion, loss and the lingering grief that cannot be diminished.

-Summary

1. The poem's narratoris mourning the death of his lover, Lenore

2. and Despite his attempts to lessen his grief through his studies and his pondering he is wrenched back to his sorrow by a talking raven who repeatedly utters the famous refrain "nevermore,"

3. "Nevermore" is a painful reference to the fact that the narrator will never again be reunited with his beloved Lenore.

Assonance occurs in the poem 'The Raven' by Edgar Allen Poe in several lines, including

1. "while I pondered weak and weary."
-the repetition of the vowels "ea" in the words "weak" and "weary" is assonance.

2."over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore."
-In that passage, the vowel "o" repeats in "over" "forgotten" and "lore," giving a long vowel sound.

"One upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, Weak and Weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,"

Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven

1. Use of assonance:
-repetition of the vowels "ea" in the words "weak" and "weary" is assonance.
- vowel "o" repeats in "over" "forgotten" and "lore," giving a long vowel sound.

2. The cold night and book of "forgotten lore" establish the gothic mood

3. This is the very first line of the raven.

4. Poe was very conscious of the rhythm of his lines and this one of the things that made him popular. -"One upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, Weak and Weary" (the way he breaks up the lines)

5. The narrator is studying "quaint," "curious" and "forgotten" books in an effort to forget his misery over losing Lenore.

"And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?" This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" Merely this, and nothing more"

Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven

1. As the narrator stands searching for the cause of the knock on his door, he whispers "Lenore" into the darkness, and receives only an echo back in return.

2.Knowing full well that Lenore has passed away, he nevertheless allows himself to imagine that, should he speak her name, through some miracle he might receive a response.

3. In saying "Lenore" out loud, the narrator continues to erode his earlier commitment to thinking rationally about the knocks at his door.

4. he can't escape the memories of his lost love, and desperately wants her to return, even if it's as a ghost.

"Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!

Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven

1. The narrator is amused upon first encountering the Raven, and speaks to it candidly before he realizes it has the ability to respond.

2.The Narrator treats the raven like a distinguished guest, and asks it for its name on the "Night's Plutonian shore"

3. Plutonian refers to Pluto, the Roman god of the underworld—jokingly accusing the bird of having emerged from hell or the world of the dead.

4. Amusement fuels this question, but the narrator's subsequent interactions with the Raven stem from anxiety and desperation.

5.By the close of the poem, the narrator shouts at the bird to return to the "Night's Plutonian shore," having realized that his nightmarish jest has actually come to pass.

"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store"...

Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven

1. While interacting with the Raven for the first time, the narrator does a fair bit of muttering to himself as though the bird cannot hear.

2. When, to his surprise, he hears the bird replying "Nevermore" to his side comments, he tries to interpret the anomaly with reason

3. Here, he presumes that "Nevermore" is something the bird might have picked up from an especially pessimistic former master, and not, as he comes to assume later, a fatalistic pronouncement signaling the end of his hopes and dreams to be reunited with his dearest Lenore.

"Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy unto fancy...

1. The narrator sits down in a velvet chair and resolves to study the bird and explain to himself its mysterious ability to speak, and the meaning of its repeated word "Nevermore"

2. Poe's use of "fancy" helps to blur the line between what is reality and what is the product of the narrator's imagination, implying that what the narrator is seeing in the Raven might be entirely a result of his subconscious playing tricks on him while he grieves for Lenore.

"Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"

1. In Homer's Odyssey, "nepenthe" is a drug that erases memories.

2. The narrator, citing Homer, evokes the opening scene in which he is poring over "forgotten" lore, potentially in search of some ancient cure for his devastation.

3. While here he desires to simply ingest something and wipe Lenore from his memory, this wish is at odds with his other desire to see Lenore again, whether in some supernatural form on earth or in the afterlife.

5. Ultimately, the narrator can neither forget Lenore nor accept that he and she will never cross paths again.

"Is there—is there balm in Gilead?"

1. The "balm in Gilead" is a reference to the Bible, in which the prophet Jeremiah asks "Is there no balm in Gilead?", with "Gilead" here being a stand-in for heaven.

2.As there seems to be no hope of seeing Lenore again on earth, the narrator, in his desperation, asks the Raven if heaven might allow him to see Lenore once more.

3. this balm might be in the form of forgetting, but just as probable is that the narrator hopes to see Lenore once more after he himself has entered the afterlife.

4. But to this, too, the Raven says only "Nevermore." and the narrator is unnerved when he hears "Nevermore" again.

"And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door..."

1. The narrator has screamed at the bird to leave, but to no avail: the Raven sits and sits upon the bust of Pallas, continuing to haunt the narrator.

2. In lingering on the bust, the Raven indicates the triumph of dark supernatural forces over those of cool, calm, and collected rationality.

3. Like the narrator's memories of Lenore, the Raven refuses to leave the plagued narrator's mind, causing him misery until the bitter end.

"And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted—nevermore!"

1. With the Raven and thoughts of Lenore looming over the Narrator for some time, the narrator imagines that his soul will never be lifted, that he will never be cheerful, again.

2. Tightening the relationship between man and bird is the fact that "Nevermore," the Raven's refrain, has now made its way into the narrator's vocabulary.
-Having internalized the Raven's refusal of all his hopes, the narrator now inflicts the word on himself, closing the poem on an appropriately dark and pessimistic note.

3. Last Line in the Raven