Isolation In The Raven

Once upon a midnight dreary, a man by the name of Edgar Allan Poe wrote “ The Raven”, a timelessly classic narrative poem that gives a popular image to the term gothic literature. His poem includes elements of suspense, the supernatural, and isolation that give the readers feelings of fear and eeriness, so commonly associated with the modern day horror story. It brings to life the story of a man isolated in his grief to the point of what some consider insanity. The narrator is surprised by an unexpected visitor; a raven. As the poem goes on, the man begins to think of the bird as a message from some omnipotent being that his grief will never end. Many people theorize that the narrator is a representation of Poe himself, but what the story

He starts to wonder if the raven is a sign sent from either God or the Devil, and begins to wonder what the raven’s presence means and what it knows concerning the whereabouts of his lost love Lenore. He begins to inquire of the raven what has happened to his lost love, where she is, and what she’s doing. But as the raven only repeats it’s one worded response “Nevermore”, the narrator grows angry and frustrated with the bird. His grief begins to grow and he cries out to the raven, shouting, “Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore…” (line 82), practically begging for peace from his misery, but, “Quoth the raven ‘Nevermore’” (line 84). As the narrator begins to realize how much the bird is saddening him, he begins to wonder if he will ever get over his grief and pain, and the raven basically tells him he never will. This is such an accurate portrayal of the narrator’s grief, because the more he becomes acquainted with his sorrow, the more he realizes it’s only making things worse. He wonders if his soul will ever find peace from the tragedy but his grief tells him he will never recover from the loss of his love Lenore. This, in essence, can be correlated to Poe’s own grief after the loss of his own wife, Virginia, who died of Tuberculosis at the age of 25, not even ten years after their