The Power Of Perception In Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven

There are many different signs and symbolism in the poem “The Raven”. The curtains in the house are purple and could possibly  represent royalty and the upper class. Also when he was reading his book it separates him from reality causing a destruction from losing his loved one Lenore. Lenore doesn 't have a description but could represent joy, hope peace, love, and the trust in the world. It could also signify to make a better world.

In his soliloquy, Romeo states that Juliet is “ a snowy dove trooping with crows”( 1.5.46). Doves are a symbol of light,peace, and beauty while crows symbolize death and darkness. Shakespeare compares Juliet’s beauty to a dove and crows to show that her beauty will overpower everyone else’s. However, Juliet’s beauty was not enough to overcome the darkness that will leave her powerless in the end. Romeo also describes Juliet as a “rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear”(1.5.44).

Poe uses analogies and irony in “The Raven” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” to compose effective and suspenseful short stories and poems(Thesis). Poe’s utilization of analogies, comparisons between two unlike things, help make “The Raven” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” more exciting and full of surprises. In the poem, “The Raven,” a raven flies into the narrator’s room, giving hope to the narrator that he will soon see his lost love, Lenore, again. However, it is hard for the narrator to find trust in the raven, as the raven’s “eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming” (104). As demons are generally associated with evil and cruelty, the comparison of the raven’s eyes with a demon’s eye suggests the actually devious nature of the raven.

The raven represents evil and death. The author states “The ebony bird beguiling my sad face into smiling”. Edgar knows that it could mean that Lenore could be trying to send him a message. He thinks that it’s one of his angels. The raven is causing Edgar to have a connection and wants it to stay because it reminds him.

Literary Journal: “The Raven” The main theme in Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, “The Raven” is that a person who griefs can cause his own self-destruction. Unreliable narrator, revenge, and American Gothic are the most dominant American Gothic elements in this poem. Poe executes this fairly well by having a first-person narrator who is delusional of the environment around him and a bird who has one purpose. Poe never really revealed the true purpose or the origin of the bird, even the narrator questioned the bird’s origin. The two most important words in the poem is “Lenore” and “Nevermore.” Both of these words represent the reasons why the narrator was led to his self-destruction.

“Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy . . . but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.” In the novel, it seems to mention so many metaphors between mockingbirds and the characters.

The narrator tells the bird, “Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore” (Poe 86). The author is referring to the devil. In biblical stories, the devil is usually tempting people to be on evil’s side. This explains why he is referred as the “Tempter” in the poem. Furthermore, the devil is rarely ever a representation of "good," instead it represents something that is grim and malicious.

The quote, "character is what you are in the dark", by Dwight Lyman Moody, can be interpreted as darkness and troubled times shows your true nature. Dwight Lyman Moody's quote relates to "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe through the narrator's true nature which is shown when he encounters the raven. The narrator shows his true nature when he gets angry at the raven for saying he'll never see Lenore again. His true nature also appears in his longing for Lenore, he uses Lenore to calm himself in darkness. And again his true nature appears when he shows his fear of no longer seeing

By the reason that this animal tries that the main character recognizes his own feelings and emotions about the loss of his old love, Leonor. The untamed bird attempts this with a simple dialogue, by his part, between him and the protagonist. In view of the subconscious is defined by the oxford dictionary as: “Of or concerning the part of the mind of which one is not fully aware but which influences one’s actions and feelings”. So, with this description it can be asserted that the protagonist has conflicts to know what it is happening in this deep part of his mind, so he confront all this pain and sorrow with the assistance of this “ebony bird” that came in his life. In addition, this can be support with a quotation of the poem that says: “But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door/ Perched upon a bust of/ Pallas, just above my chamber door/ Perched, and sat, and nothing more.” It can deduce that when the writer refers to Pallas, he wants to allude to Athena, the old Greek goddess of wisdom, because Pallas is another name for Athena, in consideration of this, it can believe that the raven could know something, that might be true and the main character doesn’t know at first sight,

Stephen King in his The Stand makes a crow the emissary for Satan . Earlier in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven we have a species of crow seducing us into evil . The crow then is the archetype for evil in Western literature. Yet we should never lose sight of the fact that in Friedrich Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals we have the Kantian categorical imperatives good and bad blur. Yet the distinction of the morally good and the morally reprehensible are never annihilated.