Close Reading Of Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven

Close Reading of “The Raven” “The Raven” was written by Edgar Allan Poe and originally published in January 1845. It is a narrative poem about a man sitting in his room and falling asleep while reading, wanting to forget his lost love named Lenore. All of a sudden his attention is grabbed by a knock at his door. He goes to open the door only to find there is no one there. Then, there is a knock at his window. This time a raven swoops into the man’s room. This raven first interests the man, but then ends up tormenting him at the end of the poem. While readers may think this man is just a sad a lonely fellow, there may be more to him than they think. Throughout the poem, the speaker goes through several different emotions very quickly. Instead …show more content…
He mentions in the beginning he is reading books: “ From my books surcease of sorrow” (Poe 10). Readers can assume he studies quite a good bit from the amount of allusions he makes. He references the Bible several times along with Roman mythology, Greek mythology, and even Homer’s Odyssey. Not only that, but he speaks in intelligent diction using words like quaint, wrought, yore, etc. With that being said, readers could question why the speaker would murder someone if he was smart enough to know the consequences. Well, there are two ways to look at the situation. It is possible the speaker killed Lenore purposefully and easily hid the evidence; however, he began to fear others around him would find out and developed paranoia from this thought. Or, the speaker could have a mental disability of some sort and he accidently killed …show more content…
He becomes startled by a sudden knock on the door. Right after this knock, in the second stanza, he begins to reminisce: “Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; / And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.” (Poe 7-8). Later in the second stanza, he says “…sorrow for the lost Lenore—” (Poe 10). Assuming that the knock on the door invoked some kind of past memory, the speaker becomes depressed but hopeful with “fantastic terrors” (Poe 14). Part of him is hoping to see his lost Lenore which is why he whispers her name into the darkness after opening the door and finding nothing there. However, another part of him knows it is not possible for Lenore to be there and thus he returns inside only to be greeted by another tapping coming from the window. From here, the speaker’s unstable mental state becomes clearer as he lets in the raven. He personifies the raven, almost to it as if it were a person: “‘Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,’ I said, ‘art sure no craven, / Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore— / Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!’” (Poe 45-47). He also has the delusion that the raven actually speaks back to him. Assuming this poem is not one of fantasy, birds normally do not speak. For the narrator to treat this bird as if were human means he most definitely was losing his