Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven: Summary and Analysis
This video introduces Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven.’ Through Poe’s use of poetic devices and dark Romantic characteristics, he is able to achieve the ‘unity of effect’ to appeal to critics and the masses both during his time and even still today.
Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’
Honestly, if you haven’t at least heard of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven,’ then you have likely been living under a rock. This famous poem, which was written in 1845, making him extremely popular even in his own time, has been referenced and parodied countless times over the 150 years since it was written. Even during Poe’s time people were reciting the poem, almost like we would sing along to some LMFAO. We might just sing the lyrics at first, but eventually we’d start creating our own, playing off the original.
The narrator receives a visit from a talking raven at night.
Raven Flying in Window
So how popular is Poe? Like I said, countless allusions to and parodies of Poe’s ‘The Raven’ exist today. His raven and lyrics have made it into books, movies, television shows, magazines, cartoons, and even professional wrestling. Yes, professional wrestling. Have you heard of Scott Levy, also known as The Raven? Or did you know that Poe was from Baltimore? Guess where they got the name for the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens. Poe’s raven shows up in multiple Stephen King novels. The Joker in 1989’s Batman quotes the narrator of the poem. The Gilmore Girls, Calvin & Hobbs, and Mad Magazine pay homage to the Dark Romantic poet. Even The Simpsons, on their first ever ‘Treehouse of Horror’ episode, provides us with their version of ‘The Raven,’ complete with a lovesick Homer and Bart-headed raven.
The Poem
Even if you are familiar with the haunting black bird and his taunting ‘Nevermore,’ you may not know the poem itself. The poem begins after midnight on a cold December evening. A man, the narrator, sits alone by the fire dozing off as he reads a book, hoping to forget about Lenore, his lost love.
While he sits, he hears a knocking at the door. He gets up to answer, apologizing in the process, only to open the door and find absolutely nothing there. With it being after midnight, he’s a little creeped out, so he tries to tell himself that it’s just the wind hitting the window. When he goes to the window to remedy the problem, however, what should swoop in, but the Raven.
Unlike a normal bird that would probably fly around the room scared, the Raven just perches itself on a statue of Athena, the goddess of wisdom, above the door. Rather unnaturally, the narrator begins to talk to it, asking for its name. And while you wouldn’t expect a raven to be able to answer, he does respond with, ‘Nevermore.’
This work by Poe explained his writing process and language usage.
The Philosophy of Composition
Of course, this is alarming for a couple of reasons. One, the Raven is actually talking. Two, the only thing he ever says has such a foreboding connotation that the narrator can’t help but be unnerved. In fact, he is so rattled that he just keeps asking questions to which the Raven continues to respond with the same answer. And sadly, that is the last answer the narrator wants to hear. By the end of the poem, the narrator has lost his mind, giving in to the sorrow of losing his lost love Lenore and knowing that she will return ‘nevermore.’
Style: Poe’s Recipe for Success
In 1846, Edgar Allan Poe wrote an essay called ‘The Philosophy of Composition’ where he explains his writing method and how intentional each part of the writing process must be, something he called the unity of effect. Additionally, Poe believed, that ‘the most poetical topic in the world’ was ‘the death…of a beautiful woman,’ which is no doubt why he chose to develop our narrator’s madness as he is faced with the reality that his long lost love Lenore is gone forever. According to an essay, Poe wrote ‘The Raven’ in hopes of appealing to both critics and commoners, and the result is a spooky poem chock-full of symbolism and literary effects.
Symbolism: The Raven
A symbol is something that represents something else. In literature a symbol can be subtle or obvious. In ‘The Raven’ the symbol is obvious. Poe himself meant the Raven to symbolize ‘mournful, never-ending remembrance.’ Our narrator’s sorrow for his lost, perfect maiden Lenore is the driving force behind his conversation with the Raven. In turn, the Raven, even through his limited vocabulary, forces the narrator to face the reality that Lenore will return ‘nevermore,’ a fact that the narrator does not want to acknowledge. As a result, by the poem’s conclusion the Raven has the eyes ‘of a demon’s’ and its shadow hangs over the narrator’s soul. For the poem’s speaker, the Raven has moved beyond mournful, never-ending remembrance to an embodiment of evil.
Poetic Devices
The meter for the first line of the poem
The Raven First Line Meter
Poetic devices are the techniques a poet uses to write a poem. The meter of a poem is the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. The rhythm is then the measured flow of words that is established through the stressed and unstressed syllables. Now that probably sounds like the same definition for both words, right? Well, it’s a subtle difference, but a difference nonetheless. To find the meter, we have to look at each syllable in the foot to determine if it is stressed or unstressed. The effect of the meter is the rhythm. Let’s look at the first line of the poem.
‘Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,’
If we read the line with an over emphasis on the stressed syllables, we can mark which are and are not stressed. When doing this for poetry, we mark the stressed syllables with a line ( / ) and the unstressed with sort of a ‘u.’
Once we mark the stressed and unstressed syllables, then we can figure out the meter. To determine the meter we have to look at two things: the stressed/unstressed pattern and the foot count in each line. The first line starts with a stressed syllable, followed by an unstressed syllable, and the pattern continues. This pattern of stressed followed by unstressed is called trochee. Then we can count each foot in the line. There are eight, which is called octameter. So, the meter for this line of the poem is trochaic octameter.
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