In “The Raven,” the narrator’s emotional status changes during the poem by becoming increasingly angry and desperate while contemplating eternity without his lost Lenore. As the poem starts, the narrator seems “tired,” while at ease and comfortable enough to almost fall asleep, when he hears a knock at the door. He opens the door to find only darkness, pondering whether Lenore has come back to him. The narrator’s rationality and doubt are on display. He hears the knock again on the window, and he opens it. The raven flies into the house, and the narrator’s anger grows. The narrator begins questioning the raven asking it if he will ever find relief from the pain of losing Lenore, and the raven only replies with one word, “Nevermore” (Edgar Allan Poe “The Raven”).
The narrator being curious grabs a chair and sat directly in front of the bird, trying to understand what the word “Nevermore” means. He proceeds to question the raven, including whether or not he and Lenore will get back together in heaven. He takes the raven’s repeated “Nevermore” replies as an indication that all his gloomy musings as being truthful. The narrator ultimately grows enraged and he screams at the raven, terming it a devil and vile. The poem concludes with the raven perched on Pallas’ bust, while the narrator, overcome by his despair and madness, declares that his conscience shall “Nevermore” rise.
The loss of Lenore led the narrator into madness and depression. Beginning with the first stanza of the poem, the narrator states that he is exhausted and hears a gentle tapping as he nods in a somnolent condition; however, he first concludes that the knocking on the door is inconsequential. Nevertheless, as the poem proceeds, the remarks change from “nothing more” to “evermore” to “nevermore,” words that give rise to the sensibility of the mysterious. Madness is exhibited as the narrator ponders the raven accessing his room at midnight in December. He then proceeds to lose his mind as he converses with the raven only to get the reply “Nevermore.” (Watzlawik 11). His psychological breakdown of speaking with the bird could also be a result of emotional despair.
The repetitive mention of his love, Lenore, shows how depressed the narrator is. He attempts to forget the pain by reading books but in vain. When he hears a knock on the door, he opens the door, hoping to find his lost love, Lenore. The narrator can accept the reality of his loss. He can move on at some point but is also very depressed by reality. The death of Lenore causes the narrator to fear the thought of being alone. It is normal to mourn after the death of someone close. However, the narrator’s feeling of grief is too much. This makes the narrator appear insane by his intense emotions about the death of Lenore. Death cannot be fixed or reversed, and the narrator’s feelings of sadness are overrated so much that it makes him seem mad when he asks the raven if he will join Lenore in heaven.
With the loss of the narrator’s love, loneliness comes in. The feeling of loneliness in a small room at night may have even attributed to actions that led to his madness. Loneliness is evident when the narrator says, “other friends have flown before, tomorrow he will leave me as my hopes have flown before” (Watzlawik 12). As the poem ends, we can see that the narrator is upset by the raven’s response and goes into a fit of anger. The anger is a result of the grief that he is experiencing. He is very depressed because he knows deep down the raven is speaking the truth. In the poem, Poe states that the raven itself was a sign of grief, especially representing “mournful” and never-ending memories. Grief was caused by loneliness and separation from the narrator’s love. The raven stands as a symbol of the narrator’s loss, whose heart yearns for his lover Lenore.
The raven represents evil and death. Poe picks the raven over the parrot as he figured a raven suited the poem’s dark tone better. The narrator himself refers to the raven as coming from “Night’s Plutonian shore” or, either way, the underworld (Watzlawik 10). The raven’s constant response “nevermore,” reminds the narrator of the absence of Lenore, that he will never see her again, whether in this life or the next and the impossibility of forgetting her. When the narrator describes the raven’s shadow as hanging over his soul, he simply refers to how his grief shadows his existence (Watzlawik 20).
In conclusion, Poe echoes in “The Raven” that a loved one dying leaves behind everlasting distress. He accomplishes this in a lot of ways, for example, from the word “nevermore,” to the meaning of what the raven actually embodies. At the conclusion of the poem, the narrator can draw the reader’s mind with his death interpretation. The narrator wants to erase the ghastly spirit, but every time he looks at Pallas’ bust, it reminds him of his pain.
Works Cited
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Raven” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation.
Watzlawik, Meike. “A liaison of Poetry and Tattoos: The Multivoicedness in Edgar Allan Poe’s Poem “The Raven.” Poetry and imagined worlds. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2017. 3-22.