Raven Roberson Stephanie Tschetter English Comp II 15 March 2018 The Raven The poem “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe is a dark, loving, twisty, and beautiful piece. The author uses many adjectives along with telling a story in his work. Poe had more poems he created, but “The Raven” is a poem well known by many. This piece is not just sad and glum, there is beauty in every seemingly dark word. Famous for the word “nevermore”, the poem is the tale of a night of thinking and tells tales of love as well as fear of past and present. In the first stanza of the poem, Poe talks about the middle of the night. It is a dull and cheerless night. The person in the poem is thinking while fragile and fatigued.
It is like a night where you just cannot fall asleep. You lay there exhausted and you’re tired, but you don’t know how to calm down. He or she is thinking of a forgotten wisdom or experience. They were almost asleep when all of a sudden there was something hitting, grazing at the chamber door.
This is where the person is jolted awake after slowly drifting off into sleep. Sadly he thought it was just a visitor. It is considered alright to sense a bit of depression and isolation in the first chunk of this poem. The person in the poem wanted something more clearly because the stanza ends with “Only this and nothing more” (6).
This poem just from the first chunk, may be about being alone and hopeless. It is easy to think we are alone most times, but are we really? A wind blowing through the trees at night can cause anyone to think that someone is out there lurking and watching them. While examining how the poem is written, many will notice that each line is full of description. The third stanza has a consistency of the same vowel sound. Words in this stanza include: thrilled and filled, silken and curtain, and more and door. It is appealing to have the same sound over and over since it makes the atmosphere to be more understood.
This stanza has a part that repeats itself in lines 16 and 17. Perhaps this is the person in the poem trying to calm himself down after being startled by the “tapping” at the chamber door. Often times, people do become anxious when they hear something “rustle” and this is where it can be interpreted that the speaker feels anxious. “But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, and so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you-here I opened wide the door-Darkness there, and nothing more” (21-24). The speaker said he was napping well when all of sudden, the visitor came faintly tapping on the door. However, when the door was opened, he could not see anything because he did not know who to look for. This is just a basic thought of what Poe had in mind. The vision seems to be crystal clear in many opinions.
The structure of this poem gives it a full look. Each stanza has six lines. Almost every stanza has a hyphenation in it somewhere. Many of the words in the poem rhyme and flow together perfectly.
Towards the end of the piece, the word “Nevermore” is mentioned many times. Repetition is used frequently while reading through. Just the way that the poem is written, it is felt that maybe this is just another love story.
Words used throughout the poem are some that most readers or listeners would have to look up to better understand. Perhaps to another person reading the poem thinks each word giving description is meant to be dark and have no life to it? This poem will never have a certain way of being interpreted. It is only about what each reader or listener thinks after going over it. Edgar Allen Poe was an amazing person in may people’s opinions. This poem is just another piece of evidence to that.
Works Cited “The Raven – Poem by Edgar Allan Poe.” Back to Main Page, www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/edgar_allan_poe/poems/18848.
