Edgar Allan Poe The Raven
Poe's famous poem, "The Raven," to most readers is a straightforward yet haunting, chilling tale of the loss of someone loved, and the troubling emotions and inner sensations that go along with a loss, no matter how the loss occurred. In this case, the "rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore..." is the one lost. Why did an angel name Lenore, one has to wonder? Is there something associated with death or the afterlife in this image?In fact Poe builds up the beauty of "lost Lenore" in sharp contrast to him saying that it was a "bleak December," and "each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor" and adds that when he awoke from his nap, and looked out his chamber door, there was only darkness "and nothing more." So the poet is giving a narrator's identity as a person who hears a tapping first, then sees nothing but darkness, and hears an eerie echo of his own voice saying "Lenore!" The reader knows that the narrator is kind of weird, when a raven, a symbol of a scavenger and death makes him happy ("this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling"), but later in the poem the bird is a "thin
In the first request for the bird's name ("Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!") he asks "tell me"; in the second request ("Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!"); and the third time the poet asks and is given the same "Nevermore" ("By that Heaven that bends above us...by that God we both adore...Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore"), he is actually invoking God and Heaven, and even saying the bird adores God (therefore he couldn't be a devil). All the raven ever says is "nevermore," even though he is asked several questions. Is that what the raven's previous owner taught him to say? Was that the raven's name ("we cannot help but agreeing that no living human being....with such a name as "Nevermore." He is begging the bird to "tell me," "Tell this soul," and "tell me truly," and so with all that begging and the bird still saying "nevermore," could be not so much a reply as a mocking of the question or maybe the bird is the narrator's imagination and he is toying with his o
Some common words found in the essay are:
, God Heaven, Nevermore Heaven, Night's Plutonian, maiden angels, tell tell, name lenore, begging bird, chamber door, loss loved,
Approximate Word count = 759
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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