Edgar Allan Poe's Response To The Raven

In the narrative poem, The Raven, the author, Edgar Allan Poe, compares a raven to a human’s negative emotions. During the beginning of the poem, the narrator establishes the setting as midnight and dreary, and he is awake with sorrow from losing his significant other, Lenore. As the poem progresses, the narrator starts to think of unnatural happenings and loneliness. These thoughts start when he opens a his door that he thought someone was making noise at. These noises then continued at his window. However, when the raven flew in, the narrator describes, “Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door- Perched, and sat, and nothing more” (Poe n.pag.). To the narrator’s view, the raven is currently dominating him and his ability to reason because it is perched above him. The narrator is able to maintain reason until

As the narrator’s intuition changed from being reasonable to never rebuking the raven’s only response of “nevermore”, the narrator continues to ask it questions although he should have known to stop whenever the only reply was “nevermore”. Due to this continuation of questioning, the narrator finds himself in a hopeless state whenever he realizes there was no chance he will ever see Lenore again. The narrator states, “ And my soul from out that shadow lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted- nevermore!” ( Poe n.pag.). Although the narrator is living in loneliness and sorrow, he exclaims that he will leave himself on the ground in the shadows. In the way that the narrator is sitting, his shadow is still below the raven, Pallas, and himself. This setup is interpreted as an order to continue on in life. But to do that, the narrator needs to clear out his depression and emotions in order to regain his ability to reason, which will allow him to be back to himself and normal state of