Alliteration In The Raven

“One of the Best Poems of Edgar Poe”

“The Raven” is written by Edgar Allen Poe in 1845. The speaker of the poem is a depressed man who has lost the woman he loved. The author powerfully creates the gloomy atmosphere and depressing mood of the poem when he begins, “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered/weak and weary” (Poe). The use of internal rhyme and alliteration with “dreary” and “weak and weary” is a principal stylistic feature of the poem. One word to describe the tone of this poem would be “mournful.” The stanzas of the poem have almost mesmeric, hypnotic quality with repetition of rhyme words (Edwards). This is one of the best poems of Edgar Poe because he effectively used internal rhyme, repetition, metaphor, personification, and alliteration.

One of the most important characters in the poem is the Raven. The black bird symbolizes death (“Poe’s Composition of Philosophy: Reading and Writing ‘The Raven’”). The most important and well-known phrase of this poem is “Nevermore.” The word “nevermore” is repeated many times throughout the poem. This is the only word that the Raven can speak. Although the phrase “nevermore” is the response of the raven, it becomes the feeling of the speaker himself. For example, the speaker says, “Clasp a rare and

There are many reasons that make the poem very successful, particularly word choice. Poe uses many mythological or Biblical words. For example, “the bust of Pallas in line 11 references to the Greek goddess Athena (Graham). Another reference to mythological is the word “Night's Plutonian shore.” This time the speaker is talking about underworld, home of Hades (Graham). “Nevermore” is another important word choice of Poe, which is repeated 11 times in the entire poem. The phrase “Nevermore” is very important for the poem because the speaker believe that is so distraught he will never see his beloved Lenore