Mental Deterioration In The Raven

This excerpt from The Raven is possibly one of the most important segments of the poem, as it is what allows the narrator's seemingly insane behaviour to be explained without relying on the supernatural. The Raven is a somewhat confusing story., but there are a few things that we can tell from reading it the first time. For one, the narrator lost the love of his life, Lenore, and is very distressed. The narrator is also very superstitious and enjoys the idea of the supernatural and the world after life. Lastly, the narrator gets inexplicably mad at the Raven only answering “nevermore” to his questions and statements of whether he will ever see Lenore again. These facts are easy to observe, but it is still hard to explain what exactly is going on in the narrator's mind and why he seemed to go mad. The excerpt can explain exactly that. Before actually starting to analyze the excerpt and explaining what happened, there are a few influences to the narrator's erratic behaviour we should consider, two of which have already been mentioned. The first is his love for Lenore who has passed away, a

We have already determined the reasons behind this, but we should analyze it to further our understanding. The narrator did not ask 'opposite questions' because that would have proved nothing, so he kept asking the same type of questions even though he always got the same answer. This was essentially the narrator fighting a losing battle. If he asked an 'opposite question', that would be his surrender, and he would lose his hope for the answer he wanted, and consequently, in his mind, his hope of ever seeing Lenore again. Not wanting that, the narrator instead kept asking questions where he was slowly crushed by the answer “nevermore”. He lost a fragment of his hope with every question to the Raven, to the point where the scales tipped, and his mental breakdown