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On January 29, 1845, Edgar Allan Poe's poem "Raven" was first published. From the article:
"How Edgar Allan Poe Became a Master of Horror
Edgar Allan Poe's Detailed Philosophy of Death
Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote: "Talent alone cannot make the writer. There must be a man behind the book."
There was a man behind "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Black Cat," and poems like "Annabel Lee," "A Dream Within a Dream," and "The Raven." That man—Edgar Allan Poe—was talented, but he was also eccentric and prone to alcoholism—having experienced more than his share of tragedies. But, what stands out even more prominently than the tragedy of Edgar Allan Poe's life is his philosophy of death.
Early Life
Orphaned at the age of two, Edgar Allan Poe was taken in by John Allan. Although Poe's foster father educated him and provided for him, Allan eventually disinherited him. Poe was left penniless, earning a meager living by writing reviews, stories, literary criticism, and poetry. All of his writing and his editorial work was not enough to bring him and his family above the level of mere subsistence, and his drinking made it difficult for him to hold a job.
Inspiration for Horror
Arising from such a stark background, Poe has become a classical phenomenon, known for the gothic horror he created in "The Fall of the House of Usher" and other works. Who can forget "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Cask of Amontillado"? Every Halloween those stories come to haunt us. On the darkest night, when we sit around the campfire and tell horrible tales, Poe's stories of horror, grotesque death, and madness are told again.
Why did he write about such horrible events? About the calculated and murderous entombment of Fortunato, as he writes, "A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back. For a brief moment—I trembled." Was it disillusionment with life that drove him to these grotesque scenes? Or was it some acceptance that death was inevitable and horrible, that it sneaks up like a thief in the night, leaving madness and tragedy in its wake?
Or, is it something more to do with the last lines of "The Premature Burial"? "There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad Humanity may assume the semblance of a Hell... Alas! The grim legion of sepulchral terrors cannot be regarded as altogether fanciful... they must sleep, or they will devour us—they must be suffered to slumber, or we perish."
Perhaps death offered some answer for Poe. Perhaps escape. Perhaps only more questions—about why he still lived, why his life was so hard, why his genius was so little recognized.
He died as he had lived: a tragic, pointless death. Found in the gutter, apparently the victim of an election gang who used alcoholics to vote for their candidate. Taken to a hospital, Poe died four days later and was buried in a Baltimore cemetery next to his wife.
If he was not well-loved in his time (or at least not as well-appreciated as he might have been), his tales at least have taken on a life of their own. He's recognized as the founder of the detective story (for works like "The Purloined Letter," the best of his detective stories). He has influenced culture and literature; and his figure is placed beside the literary greats in history for his poetry, literary criticism, stories, and other works.
His view of death may have been filled with darkness, foreboding, and disillusionment. But, his works have lasted beyond the horror to become classics."
"How Edgar Allan Poe Became a Master of Horror
Edgar Allan Poe's Detailed Philosophy of Death
Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote: "Talent alone cannot make the writer. There must be a man behind the book."
There was a man behind "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Black Cat," and poems like "Annabel Lee," "A Dream Within a Dream," and "The Raven." That man—Edgar Allan Poe—was talented, but he was also eccentric and prone to alcoholism—having experienced more than his share of tragedies. But, what stands out even more prominently than the tragedy of Edgar Allan Poe's life is his philosophy of death.
Early Life
Orphaned at the age of two, Edgar Allan Poe was taken in by John Allan. Although Poe's foster father educated him and provided for him, Allan eventually disinherited him. Poe was left penniless, earning a meager living by writing reviews, stories, literary criticism, and poetry. All of his writing and his editorial work was not enough to bring him and his family above the level of mere subsistence, and his drinking made it difficult for him to hold a job.
Inspiration for Horror
Arising from such a stark background, Poe has become a classical phenomenon, known for the gothic horror he created in "The Fall of the House of Usher" and other works. Who can forget "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Cask of Amontillado"? Every Halloween those stories come to haunt us. On the darkest night, when we sit around the campfire and tell horrible tales, Poe's stories of horror, grotesque death, and madness are told again.
Why did he write about such horrible events? About the calculated and murderous entombment of Fortunato, as he writes, "A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back. For a brief moment—I trembled." Was it disillusionment with life that drove him to these grotesque scenes? Or was it some acceptance that death was inevitable and horrible, that it sneaks up like a thief in the night, leaving madness and tragedy in its wake?
Or, is it something more to do with the last lines of "The Premature Burial"? "There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad Humanity may assume the semblance of a Hell... Alas! The grim legion of sepulchral terrors cannot be regarded as altogether fanciful... they must sleep, or they will devour us—they must be suffered to slumber, or we perish."
Perhaps death offered some answer for Poe. Perhaps escape. Perhaps only more questions—about why he still lived, why his life was so hard, why his genius was so little recognized.
He died as he had lived: a tragic, pointless death. Found in the gutter, apparently the victim of an election gang who used alcoholics to vote for their candidate. Taken to a hospital, Poe died four days later and was buried in a Baltimore cemetery next to his wife.
If he was not well-loved in his time (or at least not as well-appreciated as he might have been), his tales at least have taken on a life of their own. He's recognized as the founder of the detective story (for works like "The Purloined Letter," the best of his detective stories). He has influenced culture and literature; and his figure is placed beside the literary greats in history for his poetry, literary criticism, stories, and other works.
His view of death may have been filled with darkness, foreboding, and disillusionment. But, his works have lasted beyond the horror to become classics."
How Edgar Allan Poe Became a Master of Horror
Posted from thoughtco.com
American History
Literature
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Poetry
Death
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Edgar Allan Poe: Master of the Macabre (FULL MOVIE)
Fear, paranoia, terror, yearning—such are the themes synonymous with the works of Edgar Allan Poe. But just how did this troubled author known as the “Maste...
Thank you my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us aware that on January 29, 1845, Edgar Allan Poe's poem "Raven" was first published.
Edgar Allan Poe: Master of the Macabre (FULL MOVIE)
Fear, paranoia, terror, yearning—such are the themes synonymous with the works of Edgar Allan Poe. But just how did this troubled author known as the “Master of the Macabre” come to create some of the most terrifying and haunting works of all fiction? What happened in his early childhood that significantly altered the young mind of Poe? Where did the author’s haunting despair and longing for the dead come from? What led him to excessive drinking and opium smoking as a way of escaping reality? And just what were the circumstances behind his mysterious and still unresolved death? These questions and more will be answered in this unique and exciting documentary as we follow in the footsteps of Poe to discover the mystery behind the man who wrote such classics as “The Raven,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Black Cat,” and countless others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS3uaDYfNGw
Images:
1. Traylor Miniature portrait of young Edgar Allan Poe
2. Virginia Clemm Poe first wife of Edgar Allan Poe
3. Edgar Allan Poe Sheet of 20 42 Cent Stamps Scott #4377
4. Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton (1810 – February 11, 1888) was an adolescent sweetheart of Edgar Allan Poe who became engaged to him shortly before his death in 1849
Biographies
1. The Register of Graduates and Former Cadets, 2015
2. poemuseum.org/poes-biography
1. Background from The Register of Graduates and Former Cadets, 2015.
Edgar Allan Poe, born in Massachusetts, admitted from Virginia, booted out and served 1 year enlisted in the U.S. Army. Distinguished American Poet, Critic, Author. Recognized as one of the greatest lyric poets ever to write in the English Language. Publication of poem 'The Raven' in 1845 made him famous. Elected to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in 1900. Dictionary of American Biography. Died Baltimore, Maryland, October 7, 1849.
2. Background from {[https://www.poemuseum.org/poes-biography]}
Biography
The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Raven,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.” This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.
Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination, so too has Poe himself. He is often seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.
The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809, but within three years both of his parents had died. Poe was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia, while his brother and sister went to live with other families. Mr. Allan reared Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe dreamt of emulating his childhood hero, the British poet Lord Byron. The backs of some of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal early poetic verses scrawled in a young Poe’s handwriting and show how little interest Edgar had in the tobacco business.
In 1826 Poe left Richmond to attend the University of Virginia, where he excelled in his classes but accumulated considerable debt. The miserly Allan had sent Poe to college with less than a third of the funds he needed, and Poe soon took up gambling to raise money to pay his expenses. By the end of his first term Poe was so desperately poor that he burned his furniture to keep warm. Humiliated by his poverty and furious with Allan, Poe was forced to drop out of school and return to Richmond. However, matters continued to worsen. He visited the home of his fiancée, Elmira Royster, only to discover that she had become engaged to another man.
The heartbroken Poe’s last few months in the Allan mansion were punctuated with increasing hostility toward Allan until Poe finally stormed out of the home in a quixotic quest to become a great poet and to find adventure. He accomplished the former by publishing his first book Tamerlane when he was only eighteen; to achieve the latter, he enlisted in the United States Army. Two years later he entered the United States Military Academy at West Point while continuing to write and publish poetry. But after only eight months at West Point Poe was thrown out.
Broke and alone, Poe turned to Baltimore—his late father’s home—and called upon relatives in the city. One of Poe’s cousins robbed him in the night but another relative, Poe’s aunt Maria Clemm, became a new mother to him and welcomed him into her home. Clemm’s daughter, Virginia, first acted as a courier to carry letters to Poe’s lady loves but soon became the object of his desire.
While Poe was in Baltimore, John Allan died, leaving Poe out of his will, which did, however, provide for an illegitimate child whom Allan had never seen. By then Poe was living in poverty but had started publishing his short stories, one of which won a contest sponsored by the Saturday Visiter. The connections Poe established through the contest allowed him to publish more stories and to eventually gain an editorial position at the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. It was at this magazine that Poe finally found his life’s work as a magazine writer.
Within a year Poe helped make the Messenger the most popular magazine in the south with his sensational stories and his scathing book reviews. Poe soon developed a reputation as a fearless critic who not only attacked an author’s work but also insulted the author and the northern literary establishment. Poe targeted some of the most famous writers in the country; one of his victims was the anthologist and editor Rufus Griswold.
At the age of twenty-seven, Poe brought Maria and Virginia Clemm to Richmond and married Virginia, who was not yet fourteen. The marriage proved a happy one but money was always tight. Dissatisfied with his low pay and lack of editorial control at the Messenger, Poe moved to New York City and to Philadelphia a year later, where he wrote for a number of different magazines. In spite of his growing fame, Poe was still barely able to make a living. For the publication of his first book of short stories, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, he was paid with twenty-five copies of his book. He would soon become a champion for the cause of higher wages for writers as well as for an international copyright law. To change the face of the magazine industry, he proposed starting his own journal, but he failed to find the necessary funding.
The January 1845 publication of “The Raven” made Poe a household name. He was again living in New York City and was now famous enough to draw large crowds to his lectures—he also began demanding better pay for his work. He published two books that year, and briefly lived his dream of running his own magazine when he bought out the owners of the Broadway Journal. The failure of the venture, his wife’s deteriorating health, and rumors spreading about Poe’s relationship with a married woman, drove him from the city in 1846. At this time he moved to a tiny cottage in the country. It was there, in the winter of 1847, that Virginia died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-four. Her death devastated Poe and left him unable to write for months. His critics assumed he would soon be dead. They were right. Poe only lived another two years and spent much of that time traveling from one city to the next giving lectures and finding backers for his latest proposed magazine project to be called The Stylus.
He returned to Richmond in the summer of 1849 and reconnected with his first fiancée, Elmira Royster Shelton who was now a widow. They became engaged and intended to marry in Richmond after Poe’s return from a trip to Philadelphia and New York. However, on the way to Philadelphia, Poe stopped in Baltimore and disappeared for five days. He was found in the bar room of a public house that was being used as a polling place for an election. The magazine editor Joseph Snodgrass sent Poe to Washington College Hospital, where Poe spent the last days of his life far from home and surrounded by strangers. Neither Poe’s mother-in-law nor his fiancée knew what had become of him until they read about it in the newspapers. Poe died on October 7, 1849 at the age of forty. The exact cause of Poe’s death remains a mystery.
Days after Poe’s death, his literary rival Rufus Griswold wrote a libelous obituary of the author in a misguided attempt at revenge for some of the offensive things Poe had said and written about him. Griswold followed the obituary with a memoir in which he portrayed Poe as a drunken, womanizing madman with no morals and no friends. Griswold’s attacks were meant to cause the public to dismiss Poe and his works, but the biography had exactly the opposite effect and instead drove the sales of Poe’s books higher than they had ever been during the author’s lifetime. Griswold’s distorted image of Poe created the Poe legend that lives to this day while Griswold is only remembered (if at all) as Poe’s first biographer."
FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs SMSgt Lawrence McCarter GySgt Thomas Vick SGT Denny Espinosa LTC (Join to see)Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D. PO1 William "Chip" Nagel PO2 (Join to see) SPC Michael Terrell CSM Charles HaydenSMSgt Tom Burns SP5 Jeannie Carle PO3 Phyllis Maynard PO3 Steven Sherrill LTC Bill Koski CPL Dave Hoover LTC Hillary Luton SSG Diane R.
Edgar Allan Poe: Master of the Macabre (FULL MOVIE)
Fear, paranoia, terror, yearning—such are the themes synonymous with the works of Edgar Allan Poe. But just how did this troubled author known as the “Master of the Macabre” come to create some of the most terrifying and haunting works of all fiction? What happened in his early childhood that significantly altered the young mind of Poe? Where did the author’s haunting despair and longing for the dead come from? What led him to excessive drinking and opium smoking as a way of escaping reality? And just what were the circumstances behind his mysterious and still unresolved death? These questions and more will be answered in this unique and exciting documentary as we follow in the footsteps of Poe to discover the mystery behind the man who wrote such classics as “The Raven,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Black Cat,” and countless others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS3uaDYfNGw
Images:
1. Traylor Miniature portrait of young Edgar Allan Poe
2. Virginia Clemm Poe first wife of Edgar Allan Poe
3. Edgar Allan Poe Sheet of 20 42 Cent Stamps Scott #4377
4. Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton (1810 – February 11, 1888) was an adolescent sweetheart of Edgar Allan Poe who became engaged to him shortly before his death in 1849
Biographies
1. The Register of Graduates and Former Cadets, 2015
2. poemuseum.org/poes-biography
1. Background from The Register of Graduates and Former Cadets, 2015.
Edgar Allan Poe, born in Massachusetts, admitted from Virginia, booted out and served 1 year enlisted in the U.S. Army. Distinguished American Poet, Critic, Author. Recognized as one of the greatest lyric poets ever to write in the English Language. Publication of poem 'The Raven' in 1845 made him famous. Elected to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in 1900. Dictionary of American Biography. Died Baltimore, Maryland, October 7, 1849.
2. Background from {[https://www.poemuseum.org/poes-biography]}
Biography
The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Raven,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.” This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.
Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination, so too has Poe himself. He is often seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.
The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809, but within three years both of his parents had died. Poe was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia, while his brother and sister went to live with other families. Mr. Allan reared Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe dreamt of emulating his childhood hero, the British poet Lord Byron. The backs of some of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal early poetic verses scrawled in a young Poe’s handwriting and show how little interest Edgar had in the tobacco business.
In 1826 Poe left Richmond to attend the University of Virginia, where he excelled in his classes but accumulated considerable debt. The miserly Allan had sent Poe to college with less than a third of the funds he needed, and Poe soon took up gambling to raise money to pay his expenses. By the end of his first term Poe was so desperately poor that he burned his furniture to keep warm. Humiliated by his poverty and furious with Allan, Poe was forced to drop out of school and return to Richmond. However, matters continued to worsen. He visited the home of his fiancée, Elmira Royster, only to discover that she had become engaged to another man.
The heartbroken Poe’s last few months in the Allan mansion were punctuated with increasing hostility toward Allan until Poe finally stormed out of the home in a quixotic quest to become a great poet and to find adventure. He accomplished the former by publishing his first book Tamerlane when he was only eighteen; to achieve the latter, he enlisted in the United States Army. Two years later he entered the United States Military Academy at West Point while continuing to write and publish poetry. But after only eight months at West Point Poe was thrown out.
Broke and alone, Poe turned to Baltimore—his late father’s home—and called upon relatives in the city. One of Poe’s cousins robbed him in the night but another relative, Poe’s aunt Maria Clemm, became a new mother to him and welcomed him into her home. Clemm’s daughter, Virginia, first acted as a courier to carry letters to Poe’s lady loves but soon became the object of his desire.
While Poe was in Baltimore, John Allan died, leaving Poe out of his will, which did, however, provide for an illegitimate child whom Allan had never seen. By then Poe was living in poverty but had started publishing his short stories, one of which won a contest sponsored by the Saturday Visiter. The connections Poe established through the contest allowed him to publish more stories and to eventually gain an editorial position at the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. It was at this magazine that Poe finally found his life’s work as a magazine writer.
Within a year Poe helped make the Messenger the most popular magazine in the south with his sensational stories and his scathing book reviews. Poe soon developed a reputation as a fearless critic who not only attacked an author’s work but also insulted the author and the northern literary establishment. Poe targeted some of the most famous writers in the country; one of his victims was the anthologist and editor Rufus Griswold.
At the age of twenty-seven, Poe brought Maria and Virginia Clemm to Richmond and married Virginia, who was not yet fourteen. The marriage proved a happy one but money was always tight. Dissatisfied with his low pay and lack of editorial control at the Messenger, Poe moved to New York City and to Philadelphia a year later, where he wrote for a number of different magazines. In spite of his growing fame, Poe was still barely able to make a living. For the publication of his first book of short stories, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, he was paid with twenty-five copies of his book. He would soon become a champion for the cause of higher wages for writers as well as for an international copyright law. To change the face of the magazine industry, he proposed starting his own journal, but he failed to find the necessary funding.
The January 1845 publication of “The Raven” made Poe a household name. He was again living in New York City and was now famous enough to draw large crowds to his lectures—he also began demanding better pay for his work. He published two books that year, and briefly lived his dream of running his own magazine when he bought out the owners of the Broadway Journal. The failure of the venture, his wife’s deteriorating health, and rumors spreading about Poe’s relationship with a married woman, drove him from the city in 1846. At this time he moved to a tiny cottage in the country. It was there, in the winter of 1847, that Virginia died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-four. Her death devastated Poe and left him unable to write for months. His critics assumed he would soon be dead. They were right. Poe only lived another two years and spent much of that time traveling from one city to the next giving lectures and finding backers for his latest proposed magazine project to be called The Stylus.
He returned to Richmond in the summer of 1849 and reconnected with his first fiancée, Elmira Royster Shelton who was now a widow. They became engaged and intended to marry in Richmond after Poe’s return from a trip to Philadelphia and New York. However, on the way to Philadelphia, Poe stopped in Baltimore and disappeared for five days. He was found in the bar room of a public house that was being used as a polling place for an election. The magazine editor Joseph Snodgrass sent Poe to Washington College Hospital, where Poe spent the last days of his life far from home and surrounded by strangers. Neither Poe’s mother-in-law nor his fiancée knew what had become of him until they read about it in the newspapers. Poe died on October 7, 1849 at the age of forty. The exact cause of Poe’s death remains a mystery.
Days after Poe’s death, his literary rival Rufus Griswold wrote a libelous obituary of the author in a misguided attempt at revenge for some of the offensive things Poe had said and written about him. Griswold followed the obituary with a memoir in which he portrayed Poe as a drunken, womanizing madman with no morals and no friends. Griswold’s attacks were meant to cause the public to dismiss Poe and his works, but the biography had exactly the opposite effect and instead drove the sales of Poe’s books higher than they had ever been during the author’s lifetime. Griswold’s distorted image of Poe created the Poe legend that lives to this day while Griswold is only remembered (if at all) as Poe’s first biographer."
FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs SMSgt Lawrence McCarter GySgt Thomas Vick SGT Denny Espinosa LTC (Join to see)Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D. PO1 William "Chip" Nagel PO2 (Join to see) SPC Michael Terrell CSM Charles HaydenSMSgt Tom Burns SP5 Jeannie Carle PO3 Phyllis Maynard PO3 Steven Sherrill LTC Bill Koski CPL Dave Hoover LTC Hillary Luton SSG Diane R.
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Poe's Masterpiece - Analysis Of The Raven
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Poe's Masterpiece - Analysis Of The Raven
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7N663YgwxM
Images:
1. The Raven
2. 'The Raven' depicts a mysterious raven's midnight visit to a mourning narrator, as illustrated by John Tenniel (1858).
3. 'Not the least obeisance made he', as illustrated by Paul Gustave Doré (1884).
4. Gustave Doré's illustration of the final lines of the poem accompanies the phrase 'And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor_Shall be lifted—nevermore!.
Background from {[https://poemanalysis.com/edgar-allan-poe/the-raven/]}
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
‘The Raven’ is commonly considered to be Edgar Allan Poe’s poetic masterpiece. It details a harrowing night in the speaker’s life that includes incessant knocking and a talking raven that only says one word–“Nevermore.”
This popular narrative poem is written in the first person. ‘The Raven‘ personifies the feeling of intense grief and loss, while other symbols throughout the poem reinforce a melodramatic mood that emphasizes the main character’s grief and loss. ‘The Raven’ explores the world of emotional wars that individuals face in all walks of life; specifically, the fight one can never ignore, the fight of control over the emotions of grief and loss. These battles are not physical, but leave scarring and bruising just as if they were. Poe has produced a wonderful piece of work that resonates with the feelings and experiences of every reader that comes across this poem.
Throughout the poem, the poet uses repetition to emphasize the mysterious knocking occurring in the speaker’s home in the middle of a cold December evening. The speaker tries to ignore it and convince himself that there’s no one there. But, eventually, he opens the door and looks into the darkness, wondering if it could be his beloved, Lenore, returned to him. No one is there but a raven does fly into his room. It speaks to him, using only the word “Nevermore.” This is its response to everything the speaker asks of it. Finally, the speaker decides that angels have caused the air to fill in density and wonders if they’re there to relieve him of his pain. The bird answers “Nevermore” and it appears the speaker is going to live forever in the shadow of the bust of Pallas above his door.
Themes
In ‘The Raven,’ Poe engages themes which include death and the afterlife. These two are some of the most common themes used throughout Poe’s oeuvre. These themes are accompanied by memory, loss, and the supernatural. throughout the piece, the reader gets the sense that something terrible is about to happen, or has just happened, to the speaker and those around him. These themes are all emphasized by the speaker’s loneliness. He’s alone in his home on a cold evening trying to ignore the “rapping” on his chamber door. By the end, it appears that he will live forever in the shadow of death and sorrow.
Structure and Form
‘The Raven’ by Edgar Allan Poe is a ballad made up of eighteen six-line stanzas. Throughout, the poet uses trochaic octameter, a very distinctive metrical form. He uses the first-person point of view throughout, and a very consistent rhyme scheme of ABCBBB. There are a large number of words that use the same ending, for example, the “ore” in “Lenore” and “Nevermore.” Epistrophe is also present, or the repetition of the same word at the end of multiple lines.
Literary Devices
Poe makes use of several literary devices in ‘The Raven.’ These include but are not limited to repetition, alliteration, and caesura. The latter is a formal device, one that occurs when the poet inserts a pause, whether through meter or punctuation, into the middle of a line. For example, line three of the first stanza. It reads: “While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping.” There are numerous other examples, for instance, line three of the second stanza which reads: “Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow.”
Alliteration is one kind of repetition that’s used in ‘The Raven.’ It occurs when the poet repeats the same consonant sound at the beginning of multiple words. For example, “weak and weary” in the first line of the poem and “soul” and “stronger” in the first line of the fourth stanza.
Throughout, Poe uses repetition more broadly as well. For example, his use of parallelism in line structure and wording, as well as punctuation. He also maintains a very repetitive rhythm throughout the poem with his meter and rhyme scheme.
Analysis of The Raven
First Stanza
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
The opening line of this poem proves to be quite theatrical; initiating with the classic, “once upon a -” and introducing a typical melodramatic, “weak and weary” character who is evidently lost in thought during a particularly boring night. He claims to be thinking and “pondering” over volumes of old traditions of knowledge. As he nods off to sleep while reading, he is interrupted by a tapping sound. It sounds as if someone is “gently” knocking on his “chamber door”. He mutters to himself that it must be a visitor, since what else could it possibly be?
The first stanza of Poe’s The Raven exposes a story that the reader knows will be full of drama. The imagery in just this stanza alone gives the reader a very good idea that the story about to unfold is not a happy one. The scene opens on a “dreary” or boring midnight and a “weak and weary” character. The quiet midnight paints a picture of mystery and suspense for the reader, whilst an already tired out and exhausted character introduces a tired out and emotionally exhausting story – as we later learn that the character has suffered a great deal before this poem even begins. To further highlight the fatigued mood, he is even reading “forgotten lore” which is basically old myths/folklore that were studied by scholars (so we assume the character is a scholar/student of sorts). The words “forgotten” and ‘nothing more’ here sneak in the theme of loss that is prevalent in this poem. We are also introduced to our first symbol: the chamber door; which symbolizes insecurity. The chamber door functions as any door would, it opens the characters’ room/home to the outside world; and we will notice that it is also a representation of the insecurities and weaknesses of the character as he opens them up to the world outside of him. In this stanza, something is coming and “tapping” at his insecurities and weaknesses (the chamber door) due to him pondering and getting lost in thought.
Second Stanza
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Nameless here for evermore.
We are quickly jolted from the scene of the stranger knocking at the door into the thoughts of the speaker. Here, he pauses to educate the reader, that this sight was taking place during the “bleak” December when “dying” embers from a fire were casting “ghost” like shadows on the floor. He was wishing for the night to pass faster, desperately trying to escape the sadness of losing Lenore, by busying himself in his books. It becomes very obvious that Lenore was someone important to him, as he describes her as a “rare and radiant maiden”, and it also becomes evident that she had died since she was now “nameless forevermore” in the world.
The air of suspense continues to build as Poe shifts the narrative from the tapping on the door to the thoughts of the character. This could also portray that the character himself is avoiding answering the door. If we look at the door symbolizing his weaknesses and insecurities we can easily understand why he would want to avoid opening up to whatever was tapping on it. The diction in this stanza (bleak, separate, dying, ghost, sought, sorrow, and lost) also emphasizes the theme of loss that unfolds in this poem. We can see that Poe is already hinting to the readers the cause of the characters’ insecurities.
The second line in this stanza also foreshadows the end of the poem as it illustrates dying “embers” casting shadows on the floor, it is portraying how trapped the character will be in the shadows of loss. What exactly has he lost? We find that the character is pining for Lenore, a woman who was very dear to him (a girlfriend or wife perhaps) whom he can no longer be with as she has died and is in the company of angels. She becomes “nameless” (again underlining the theme of loss) to him because she does not exist in his world anymore. For him, she is forever lost.
Third Stanza
And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
This it is and nothing more.”
The movement of the curtains, even seem “sad” and “uncertain” to him. Watching these curtains rustle and listening to the knocking was turning his miserable and quiet mood into one of anxiety and fear. To calm himself and his quickening heartbeat, he repeated to himself that it was just some visitor who had come to see him in these late hours and “nothing more”.
Poe has provided details of the room and its belongings throughout the poem that observably symbolize the feelings of the character. This stanza demonstrates a focus on the emotional state of the character. The purple curtains can easily represent his healing wounds (as purple is the colour of a bruise that is in the beginning stages of recovery); and they are described as sad and uncertain. From this, we can note that the loss of Lenore has left him feeling exactly that: sad and uncertain. This bruise of his “thrilled” him, because it opened the door to thoughts and feelings the character had never ventured before. As he thought about opening the door of insecurities to whatever was knocking at them he becomes excited and terrified at the same time. To calm his fears, he repeats to himself that he’s sure nothing will come out of it.
Fourth Stanza
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;—
Darkness there and nothing more.
The character begins to build some confidence as he draws closer towards the door to see who would come to see him at such an hour. He calls out saying sorry ‘Sir’ or ‘Madame’, he had been napping and the ‘tapping’ at the door was so light that he wasn’t even sure that there was actually someone knocking at the door, at first. As he is saying this, he opens the door only to find nothing but the darkness of the night.
As he prepares himself to open the door of his insecurities and weaknesses to whatever awaits, he really has to push through his hesitation. He calls put saying he wasn’t sure whether there was anything there so he hadn’t bothered to open the door and when he finally did, he found nothing. The suspense is heightened after finding nothing but darkness. The reader understands that the character found nothing but darkness waiting for him through his insecurities and weaknesses; nothing but a black hole. This is not different to what anyone would find when they look internally and finally decide to open up and see through all the things that make them think less of themselves; they find a world of darkness (suffering and difficulty). It is not easy to look into yourself and your uncertainties to recognize your suffering and hardships. The character, does not find it easy either.
Fifth Stanza
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—
Merely this and nothing more.
Finding nothing on the other side of the door leaves him stunned. He stands there staring into the darkness with his mind racing. How could he have heard the clear continuous knocking at the door only to find nothing…physical? Now because he had been pining for Lenore, she quickly comes to mind, so he whispers her name into the empty night ‘Lenore?’ and an echo whispers back ‘Lenore!’.
Poe emphasizes how stunned the character is at looking into the hardships and suffering of his life (the darkness) through the wide-opened door of his insecurity (the chamber door) by stating that he began to doubt himself and his expectations of what he would find. He expected to find a visitor ( sympathy) but instead found empty darkness ( suffering). The character finally makes a bold move he utters from his mouth what facing the suffering forced him to think of: Lenore. To his surprise from his suffering came back a voice saying Lenore and nothing more. This exposes that the sole core of his suffering was truly Lenore and he had to open that door of his self-doubt and weakness to figure it out.
Sixth Stanza
Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—
’Tis the wind and nothing more!”
The narrator finally turns away from the empty doorway, full of fire; he had just heard her name whispered back to him, was he insane? Was any of this real? ‘Soon again’, he hears tapping; this time louder than before and it gives the impression that it was coming from the window this time. Again his heart starts to beat faster, as he moves towards the window wanting to “explore” this mystery. He tells himself that it must be the wind and ‘nothing more’.
The character finally snaps out of his shock and closes the door. He realizes his fears to be true. The one thing that he has no control over is truly the only thing causing him weakness: the loss of Lenore. Then he hears a tapping by the window and this window represents realization for our character. He has now realized his fear through his weaknesses and suffering that he will forever have to live with the fact that he has lost Lenore. He is hesitant to embrace the realization (he hesitates to open the window), but he now wants to explore this newfound awareness.
Seventh Stanza
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
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.
He makes an effort to fling open the window, and with a little commotion, in comes a raven. The narrator describes the raven as one who looked rather royal, and like it belonged in the righteous or impressive times of the past. The raven does not even acknowledge the speaker, and he simply flies in with the airs of an aristocrat and rests on the statue above the chamber door of “Pallas” (also known as Athena the goddess of wisdom). Then, it just sits there doing “nothing more”.
When the character embraces the realization of the cause of his insecurity (opens the window), The raven comes flying in. The raven is the most important symbol in this poem, which explains the title. This raven is signifying the loss that the character has suffered. Through the window of realization, his loss comes flying in to face him. The raven is described to be grand in its demeanor, much like the loss of Lenore that intimidates him. Ge is quite fascinated by it and glorifies it. The interesting thing to note here is that the raven takes a seat on the statue of Pallas (Athena goddess of wisdom) which discloses to the reader that this feeling of loss and grief that the character is feeling is literally sitting on his wisdom. It has overpowered his rational thought.
Eighth Stanza
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“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!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
The entrance of this raven actually puts a smile on the face of the narrator. The bird was so out of place in his chamber but it still “wore” a serious expression as it sat there. The speaker then turns to treat the raven as a noble individual and asks him what his name is in a very dramatic manner. The raven simply replies with ‘nevermore’.
When given the chance to face his loss and grief so directly, it seems amusing to the character. So he speaks to the bird. He asks it’s (the bird/his grief) name, as it looked so grand and uncowardly even though it came from the world of suffering (the dark night). The raven spoke and said “nevermore”. His feelings of grief and loss (the raven) are reminding him of his greatest pain: nevermore. The raven speaks to him clearly and relays to him that what he had the deepest desire for in this life of his, is now strictly nevermore.
Ninth Stanza
Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door—
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as “Nevermore.”
The narrator is very shocked at actually hearing the raven speak as if it were a natural thing for him. He doesn’t understand how “nevermore” answers the question. So he claims that no one alive or dead has ever witnessed the scene that was before him: a raven sitting on a statue of Pallas named “nevermore”.
Here, Poe uncovers for his readers that the character was shocked at the scene of facing his loss and grief only to have it so blatantly speak to him. Call to him the reason for his insecurity and weakness: the finality of “nevermore”. The character claims in this stanza, that no one has ever before been able to have the experience of meeting loss and grief in physical form. He was “blessed” with this opportunity to see his feelings and put a name on it: nevermore. That is the core of his grief and loss, the finality of never living with Lenore again.
Tenth Stanza
But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing farther then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—
Till I scarcely more than muttered “Other friends have flown before—
On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.”
Then the bird said “Nevermore.”
After speaking that one word, the raven did not utter another word. He sat there on the statue very still and quiet. The narrator returns to his grim mood and mutters about having friends who have left him feeling abandoned, just like this bird will likely do. On hearing this, the bird again says: Nevermore.
The character accepts the existence of this raven in his life and says he expects it to leave as others usually do. Signifying the reality of his emotions; that he feels just like all other feelings come and go, so will this feeling of intense grief and loss ( the raven). The raven speaks out and states: nevermore. Highlighting and foreshadowing that it will not leave. It is going to stay with the character forever.
Eleventh Stanza
Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of ‘Never—nevermore’.”
The sudden reply from the raven startles the narrator. He comes to the conclusion that the raven only knows this one word that it has learned from “some unhappy master”. He imagines that the master of this raven must have been through a lot of hardships and so he probably always used the word “nevermore” a great deal, and that is where he believes the bird picked it up.
This stanza is quite interesting as it explores the efforts of the character is trying to ignore the finality of this feeling of grief and loss. He tries to brush it off by hoping that perhaps the previous owner of such feelings was a person who emphasized the finality of such feelings so that is why his grief is responding in such a manner. The thought of having to live with such feelings forever scares the character into denial.
Twelfth Stanza
But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”
The speaker admits that he cannot help but be fascinated by this raven. He basically sets up his chair so that he is seated right in front of the bird, watching it intently. He starts to focus his thoughts on the raven, and what it could possibly mean by repeating the specific word of “nevermore”.
Here, the character is clearly getting irritated by the constant presence of such strong feelings. He knows he cannot turn back now, he is the one who opened the door of his insecurities and weaknesses into his suffering and then opened the window of realization, to allow this intense feeling of loss and grief to enter and literally perch on his rational thinking / wisdom. What he is finding hard to swallow is the concept of “nevermore” why can’t these feelings be temporary or a phase? Must they eat at him forever?
Thirteenth Stanza
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,
But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!
He sits there coming up with theories to explain the raven and its behavior to himself, without actually speaking aloud in the company of this bird. Even so, he felt as though its “fiery eyes” could see through him, straight to his heart. So he continues to ponder and be lost in thought as he reclines on a soft velvet cushion that the lamplight was highlighting in the room. The sight of the cushion gleaming in the lamplight sends him spiraling into the heart-wrenching reminder that Lenore will never get a chance to touch that cushion again, now that she’s gone.
Poe underlines the fact that the character has so much more feeling than what he tackles when he confronts his grief. As he contemplates over the concreteness of the words “nevermore” he relapses into memories of Lenore. The cushion symbolizes his connection to his physical life. As he battles with his emotions, the cushion reminds him that his beloved Lenore will never share his physical space and life again. She will never again, physically be in his company.
Fourteenth Stanza
Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore;
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
Here the narrator seems to start hallucinating, perhaps he is lost too deep in his thoughts. He starts to feel as though the air around him is getting thicker with perfume or a scent. He thinks he is seeing angels there who are bringing this perfume /scent to him. He calls himself a wretch because he feels this is God sending him a message to forget Lenore, comparing the scent to “nepenthe” which is an illusory medicine for sorrow from ancient Greek mythology. He basically yells at himself to drink this medicine and forget the sadness he feels for the loss of Lenore. Almost as if on cue, the raven says: nevermore.
When he comes to the actual realization that he has lost her physical body forever, he begins to panic. He can literally smell the sweetness of freedom from these feelings that he felt God was allowing him. He thought that it was a divine message to forget Lenore and he wants to accept, he wants out and away from his mess of feelings especially from the certainty the grief keeps claiming that it will last forever. He tries to force himself to let it go, but then the raven speaks. His grief overpowers him and still claims that he will never forget her.
Fifteenth Stanza
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
Now things get pretty heated as he starts to scream at the bird, calling it a prophet and a thing of evil. He doesn’t know what to think of the bird, did Satan (the tempter) send this bird his way or did a storm push this bird his way? He continues and describes that even through his shouting the raven is unmoved/unbothered even though it is alone in his company. He calls his home a desert land, haunted and full of horror, and asks the raven if there is possible hope of any good or peace in the future, and of course, the raven says: nevermore.
Things get more serious in this stanza as the character loses his cool and starts to scream at his emotions. He calls them a prophet because they are basically prophesizing his unhappy life, and a thing of evil because of the pain they are causing him. He doesn’t understand where such permanence has come from in his grief and loss. Shouldn’t they be a feeling of phase and pass after some time? Why is his feeling here to stay forever? He asks in his panic; whether there is anything good waiting for him in life, will the intensity of such feelings pass? It seems his feelings of grief and loss are set in stone because it just replies with a “nevermore”.
Sixteenth Stanza
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
He continues to call the raven a prophet and thing of evil as he dramatically keeps accepting the word of the raven as the answer to his questions. He then asks for the raven to tell him if he will ever get to hold Lenore again, and predictably the raven says: nevermore.
The character is spiraling into more chaos as he realizes he is stuck in this pain and no relief is coming his way. In desperation, he asks whether he will ever hold and embrace his beloved Lenore ever again. The raven crushes him furthermore by saying no. His feeling of loss intensifies as his grief reaffirms for him that the life he had wanted can never ever be his to have and cherish.
Seventeenth Stanza
“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
The raven’s answers throw the narrator into a fit as he is consumed by sorrow. He screams at the raven to leave and go back to the storm it came from and to not even leave a trace of it being present in his chamber. He wants to live in his loneliness without accepting the reality of it. He does not want anything to do with the answers that the bird has given him. He continues to yell at the bird to leave and the raven simply replies with: nevermore (implying that it will not go).
At this point in the story, the character is being consumed by his own emotions and this mental game that he’s playing. He screams and cries for his loneliness to stay unbroken because he realizes that he is no longer alone these emotions and feelings he has unearthed will continue to haunt him and live with him forever. He yells to these feelings to get away from his wisdom and rational thinking. He pleads for this feeling of intense grief and loss to take the sharp pain away that he is feeling, and of course as the reader knows for certain by now, the answer is: nevermore.
Eighteenth Stanza
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!
The speaker ends his story by saying that the raven is still there, sitting on the statue of Pallas; almost demon-like in the way its eyes gleam. The lamplight hits the raven casting a shadow on the floor, and that shadow has trapped his soul within it and he will never be freed from it.
Edgar Allan Poe ends his narrative with a quiet and still character. Quite a change from the last stanzas; it is almost as if he has come to terms with the reality of the situation. As if we are now watching the character from the outside of his head, whilst all the commotion is taking place internally. However, the character lets the reader know that all is not well. The Raven still sits on the statue of Pallas and it looks demon-like whilst casting a shadow that traps him forever.
That is significant because it gives the reader closure. It tells the reader that even though the character welcomed the feelings of loss and grief when he opened the window of realization, he despises them now. These emotions appear to him as demonic. And the shadow the cast over him; meaning the mood that is created from these feelings has a permanent hold on his soul. He has been defeated by his feelings after facing them, and he will find peace: nevermore.
Similar Poetry
Readers who enjoyed ‘The Raven’ should also consider reading some of Poe’s other best-known poems. For example, ‘A Dream within a Dream,‘ ‘Alone,’ and ‘Anabel Lee.’ The latter is a beautiful short piece in which Poe’s speaker describes the death of a young woman, taken into the afterlife by jealous angels. ‘Alone’ is a haunting poem that touches on many of Poe’s favorite themes. It was inspired by the death of Poe’s foster mother. ‘A Dream within a Dream’ was published in 1849 and examines time and our perceptions of it.
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Images:
1. The Raven
2. 'The Raven' depicts a mysterious raven's midnight visit to a mourning narrator, as illustrated by John Tenniel (1858).
3. 'Not the least obeisance made he', as illustrated by Paul Gustave Doré (1884).
4. Gustave Doré's illustration of the final lines of the poem accompanies the phrase 'And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor_Shall be lifted—nevermore!.
Background from {[https://poemanalysis.com/edgar-allan-poe/the-raven/]}
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
‘The Raven’ is commonly considered to be Edgar Allan Poe’s poetic masterpiece. It details a harrowing night in the speaker’s life that includes incessant knocking and a talking raven that only says one word–“Nevermore.”
This popular narrative poem is written in the first person. ‘The Raven‘ personifies the feeling of intense grief and loss, while other symbols throughout the poem reinforce a melodramatic mood that emphasizes the main character’s grief and loss. ‘The Raven’ explores the world of emotional wars that individuals face in all walks of life; specifically, the fight one can never ignore, the fight of control over the emotions of grief and loss. These battles are not physical, but leave scarring and bruising just as if they were. Poe has produced a wonderful piece of work that resonates with the feelings and experiences of every reader that comes across this poem.
Throughout the poem, the poet uses repetition to emphasize the mysterious knocking occurring in the speaker’s home in the middle of a cold December evening. The speaker tries to ignore it and convince himself that there’s no one there. But, eventually, he opens the door and looks into the darkness, wondering if it could be his beloved, Lenore, returned to him. No one is there but a raven does fly into his room. It speaks to him, using only the word “Nevermore.” This is its response to everything the speaker asks of it. Finally, the speaker decides that angels have caused the air to fill in density and wonders if they’re there to relieve him of his pain. The bird answers “Nevermore” and it appears the speaker is going to live forever in the shadow of the bust of Pallas above his door.
Themes
In ‘The Raven,’ Poe engages themes which include death and the afterlife. These two are some of the most common themes used throughout Poe’s oeuvre. These themes are accompanied by memory, loss, and the supernatural. throughout the piece, the reader gets the sense that something terrible is about to happen, or has just happened, to the speaker and those around him. These themes are all emphasized by the speaker’s loneliness. He’s alone in his home on a cold evening trying to ignore the “rapping” on his chamber door. By the end, it appears that he will live forever in the shadow of death and sorrow.
Structure and Form
‘The Raven’ by Edgar Allan Poe is a ballad made up of eighteen six-line stanzas. Throughout, the poet uses trochaic octameter, a very distinctive metrical form. He uses the first-person point of view throughout, and a very consistent rhyme scheme of ABCBBB. There are a large number of words that use the same ending, for example, the “ore” in “Lenore” and “Nevermore.” Epistrophe is also present, or the repetition of the same word at the end of multiple lines.
Literary Devices
Poe makes use of several literary devices in ‘The Raven.’ These include but are not limited to repetition, alliteration, and caesura. The latter is a formal device, one that occurs when the poet inserts a pause, whether through meter or punctuation, into the middle of a line. For example, line three of the first stanza. It reads: “While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping.” There are numerous other examples, for instance, line three of the second stanza which reads: “Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow.”
Alliteration is one kind of repetition that’s used in ‘The Raven.’ It occurs when the poet repeats the same consonant sound at the beginning of multiple words. For example, “weak and weary” in the first line of the poem and “soul” and “stronger” in the first line of the fourth stanza.
Throughout, Poe uses repetition more broadly as well. For example, his use of parallelism in line structure and wording, as well as punctuation. He also maintains a very repetitive rhythm throughout the poem with his meter and rhyme scheme.
Analysis of The Raven
First Stanza
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
The opening line of this poem proves to be quite theatrical; initiating with the classic, “once upon a -” and introducing a typical melodramatic, “weak and weary” character who is evidently lost in thought during a particularly boring night. He claims to be thinking and “pondering” over volumes of old traditions of knowledge. As he nods off to sleep while reading, he is interrupted by a tapping sound. It sounds as if someone is “gently” knocking on his “chamber door”. He mutters to himself that it must be a visitor, since what else could it possibly be?
The first stanza of Poe’s The Raven exposes a story that the reader knows will be full of drama. The imagery in just this stanza alone gives the reader a very good idea that the story about to unfold is not a happy one. The scene opens on a “dreary” or boring midnight and a “weak and weary” character. The quiet midnight paints a picture of mystery and suspense for the reader, whilst an already tired out and exhausted character introduces a tired out and emotionally exhausting story – as we later learn that the character has suffered a great deal before this poem even begins. To further highlight the fatigued mood, he is even reading “forgotten lore” which is basically old myths/folklore that were studied by scholars (so we assume the character is a scholar/student of sorts). The words “forgotten” and ‘nothing more’ here sneak in the theme of loss that is prevalent in this poem. We are also introduced to our first symbol: the chamber door; which symbolizes insecurity. The chamber door functions as any door would, it opens the characters’ room/home to the outside world; and we will notice that it is also a representation of the insecurities and weaknesses of the character as he opens them up to the world outside of him. In this stanza, something is coming and “tapping” at his insecurities and weaknesses (the chamber door) due to him pondering and getting lost in thought.
Second Stanza
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Nameless here for evermore.
We are quickly jolted from the scene of the stranger knocking at the door into the thoughts of the speaker. Here, he pauses to educate the reader, that this sight was taking place during the “bleak” December when “dying” embers from a fire were casting “ghost” like shadows on the floor. He was wishing for the night to pass faster, desperately trying to escape the sadness of losing Lenore, by busying himself in his books. It becomes very obvious that Lenore was someone important to him, as he describes her as a “rare and radiant maiden”, and it also becomes evident that she had died since she was now “nameless forevermore” in the world.
The air of suspense continues to build as Poe shifts the narrative from the tapping on the door to the thoughts of the character. This could also portray that the character himself is avoiding answering the door. If we look at the door symbolizing his weaknesses and insecurities we can easily understand why he would want to avoid opening up to whatever was tapping on it. The diction in this stanza (bleak, separate, dying, ghost, sought, sorrow, and lost) also emphasizes the theme of loss that unfolds in this poem. We can see that Poe is already hinting to the readers the cause of the characters’ insecurities.
The second line in this stanza also foreshadows the end of the poem as it illustrates dying “embers” casting shadows on the floor, it is portraying how trapped the character will be in the shadows of loss. What exactly has he lost? We find that the character is pining for Lenore, a woman who was very dear to him (a girlfriend or wife perhaps) whom he can no longer be with as she has died and is in the company of angels. She becomes “nameless” (again underlining the theme of loss) to him because she does not exist in his world anymore. For him, she is forever lost.
Third Stanza
And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
This it is and nothing more.”
The movement of the curtains, even seem “sad” and “uncertain” to him. Watching these curtains rustle and listening to the knocking was turning his miserable and quiet mood into one of anxiety and fear. To calm himself and his quickening heartbeat, he repeated to himself that it was just some visitor who had come to see him in these late hours and “nothing more”.
Poe has provided details of the room and its belongings throughout the poem that observably symbolize the feelings of the character. This stanza demonstrates a focus on the emotional state of the character. The purple curtains can easily represent his healing wounds (as purple is the colour of a bruise that is in the beginning stages of recovery); and they are described as sad and uncertain. From this, we can note that the loss of Lenore has left him feeling exactly that: sad and uncertain. This bruise of his “thrilled” him, because it opened the door to thoughts and feelings the character had never ventured before. As he thought about opening the door of insecurities to whatever was knocking at them he becomes excited and terrified at the same time. To calm his fears, he repeats to himself that he’s sure nothing will come out of it.
Fourth Stanza
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;—
Darkness there and nothing more.
The character begins to build some confidence as he draws closer towards the door to see who would come to see him at such an hour. He calls out saying sorry ‘Sir’ or ‘Madame’, he had been napping and the ‘tapping’ at the door was so light that he wasn’t even sure that there was actually someone knocking at the door, at first. As he is saying this, he opens the door only to find nothing but the darkness of the night.
As he prepares himself to open the door of his insecurities and weaknesses to whatever awaits, he really has to push through his hesitation. He calls put saying he wasn’t sure whether there was anything there so he hadn’t bothered to open the door and when he finally did, he found nothing. The suspense is heightened after finding nothing but darkness. The reader understands that the character found nothing but darkness waiting for him through his insecurities and weaknesses; nothing but a black hole. This is not different to what anyone would find when they look internally and finally decide to open up and see through all the things that make them think less of themselves; they find a world of darkness (suffering and difficulty). It is not easy to look into yourself and your uncertainties to recognize your suffering and hardships. The character, does not find it easy either.
Fifth Stanza
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—
Merely this and nothing more.
Finding nothing on the other side of the door leaves him stunned. He stands there staring into the darkness with his mind racing. How could he have heard the clear continuous knocking at the door only to find nothing…physical? Now because he had been pining for Lenore, she quickly comes to mind, so he whispers her name into the empty night ‘Lenore?’ and an echo whispers back ‘Lenore!’.
Poe emphasizes how stunned the character is at looking into the hardships and suffering of his life (the darkness) through the wide-opened door of his insecurity (the chamber door) by stating that he began to doubt himself and his expectations of what he would find. He expected to find a visitor ( sympathy) but instead found empty darkness ( suffering). The character finally makes a bold move he utters from his mouth what facing the suffering forced him to think of: Lenore. To his surprise from his suffering came back a voice saying Lenore and nothing more. This exposes that the sole core of his suffering was truly Lenore and he had to open that door of his self-doubt and weakness to figure it out.
Sixth Stanza
Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—
’Tis the wind and nothing more!”
The narrator finally turns away from the empty doorway, full of fire; he had just heard her name whispered back to him, was he insane? Was any of this real? ‘Soon again’, he hears tapping; this time louder than before and it gives the impression that it was coming from the window this time. Again his heart starts to beat faster, as he moves towards the window wanting to “explore” this mystery. He tells himself that it must be the wind and ‘nothing more’.
The character finally snaps out of his shock and closes the door. He realizes his fears to be true. The one thing that he has no control over is truly the only thing causing him weakness: the loss of Lenore. Then he hears a tapping by the window and this window represents realization for our character. He has now realized his fear through his weaknesses and suffering that he will forever have to live with the fact that he has lost Lenore. He is hesitant to embrace the realization (he hesitates to open the window), but he now wants to explore this newfound awareness.
Seventh Stanza
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
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.
He makes an effort to fling open the window, and with a little commotion, in comes a raven. The narrator describes the raven as one who looked rather royal, and like it belonged in the righteous or impressive times of the past. The raven does not even acknowledge the speaker, and he simply flies in with the airs of an aristocrat and rests on the statue above the chamber door of “Pallas” (also known as Athena the goddess of wisdom). Then, it just sits there doing “nothing more”.
When the character embraces the realization of the cause of his insecurity (opens the window), The raven comes flying in. The raven is the most important symbol in this poem, which explains the title. This raven is signifying the loss that the character has suffered. Through the window of realization, his loss comes flying in to face him. The raven is described to be grand in its demeanor, much like the loss of Lenore that intimidates him. Ge is quite fascinated by it and glorifies it. The interesting thing to note here is that the raven takes a seat on the statue of Pallas (Athena goddess of wisdom) which discloses to the reader that this feeling of loss and grief that the character is feeling is literally sitting on his wisdom. It has overpowered his rational thought.
Eighth Stanza
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“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!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
The entrance of this raven actually puts a smile on the face of the narrator. The bird was so out of place in his chamber but it still “wore” a serious expression as it sat there. The speaker then turns to treat the raven as a noble individual and asks him what his name is in a very dramatic manner. The raven simply replies with ‘nevermore’.
When given the chance to face his loss and grief so directly, it seems amusing to the character. So he speaks to the bird. He asks it’s (the bird/his grief) name, as it looked so grand and uncowardly even though it came from the world of suffering (the dark night). The raven spoke and said “nevermore”. His feelings of grief and loss (the raven) are reminding him of his greatest pain: nevermore. The raven speaks to him clearly and relays to him that what he had the deepest desire for in this life of his, is now strictly nevermore.
Ninth Stanza
Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door—
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as “Nevermore.”
The narrator is very shocked at actually hearing the raven speak as if it were a natural thing for him. He doesn’t understand how “nevermore” answers the question. So he claims that no one alive or dead has ever witnessed the scene that was before him: a raven sitting on a statue of Pallas named “nevermore”.
Here, Poe uncovers for his readers that the character was shocked at the scene of facing his loss and grief only to have it so blatantly speak to him. Call to him the reason for his insecurity and weakness: the finality of “nevermore”. The character claims in this stanza, that no one has ever before been able to have the experience of meeting loss and grief in physical form. He was “blessed” with this opportunity to see his feelings and put a name on it: nevermore. That is the core of his grief and loss, the finality of never living with Lenore again.
Tenth Stanza
But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing farther then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—
Till I scarcely more than muttered “Other friends have flown before—
On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.”
Then the bird said “Nevermore.”
After speaking that one word, the raven did not utter another word. He sat there on the statue very still and quiet. The narrator returns to his grim mood and mutters about having friends who have left him feeling abandoned, just like this bird will likely do. On hearing this, the bird again says: Nevermore.
The character accepts the existence of this raven in his life and says he expects it to leave as others usually do. Signifying the reality of his emotions; that he feels just like all other feelings come and go, so will this feeling of intense grief and loss ( the raven). The raven speaks out and states: nevermore. Highlighting and foreshadowing that it will not leave. It is going to stay with the character forever.
Eleventh Stanza
Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of ‘Never—nevermore’.”
The sudden reply from the raven startles the narrator. He comes to the conclusion that the raven only knows this one word that it has learned from “some unhappy master”. He imagines that the master of this raven must have been through a lot of hardships and so he probably always used the word “nevermore” a great deal, and that is where he believes the bird picked it up.
This stanza is quite interesting as it explores the efforts of the character is trying to ignore the finality of this feeling of grief and loss. He tries to brush it off by hoping that perhaps the previous owner of such feelings was a person who emphasized the finality of such feelings so that is why his grief is responding in such a manner. The thought of having to live with such feelings forever scares the character into denial.
Twelfth Stanza
But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”
The speaker admits that he cannot help but be fascinated by this raven. He basically sets up his chair so that he is seated right in front of the bird, watching it intently. He starts to focus his thoughts on the raven, and what it could possibly mean by repeating the specific word of “nevermore”.
Here, the character is clearly getting irritated by the constant presence of such strong feelings. He knows he cannot turn back now, he is the one who opened the door of his insecurities and weaknesses into his suffering and then opened the window of realization, to allow this intense feeling of loss and grief to enter and literally perch on his rational thinking / wisdom. What he is finding hard to swallow is the concept of “nevermore” why can’t these feelings be temporary or a phase? Must they eat at him forever?
Thirteenth Stanza
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,
But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!
He sits there coming up with theories to explain the raven and its behavior to himself, without actually speaking aloud in the company of this bird. Even so, he felt as though its “fiery eyes” could see through him, straight to his heart. So he continues to ponder and be lost in thought as he reclines on a soft velvet cushion that the lamplight was highlighting in the room. The sight of the cushion gleaming in the lamplight sends him spiraling into the heart-wrenching reminder that Lenore will never get a chance to touch that cushion again, now that she’s gone.
Poe underlines the fact that the character has so much more feeling than what he tackles when he confronts his grief. As he contemplates over the concreteness of the words “nevermore” he relapses into memories of Lenore. The cushion symbolizes his connection to his physical life. As he battles with his emotions, the cushion reminds him that his beloved Lenore will never share his physical space and life again. She will never again, physically be in his company.
Fourteenth Stanza
Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore;
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
Here the narrator seems to start hallucinating, perhaps he is lost too deep in his thoughts. He starts to feel as though the air around him is getting thicker with perfume or a scent. He thinks he is seeing angels there who are bringing this perfume /scent to him. He calls himself a wretch because he feels this is God sending him a message to forget Lenore, comparing the scent to “nepenthe” which is an illusory medicine for sorrow from ancient Greek mythology. He basically yells at himself to drink this medicine and forget the sadness he feels for the loss of Lenore. Almost as if on cue, the raven says: nevermore.
When he comes to the actual realization that he has lost her physical body forever, he begins to panic. He can literally smell the sweetness of freedom from these feelings that he felt God was allowing him. He thought that it was a divine message to forget Lenore and he wants to accept, he wants out and away from his mess of feelings especially from the certainty the grief keeps claiming that it will last forever. He tries to force himself to let it go, but then the raven speaks. His grief overpowers him and still claims that he will never forget her.
Fifteenth Stanza
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
Now things get pretty heated as he starts to scream at the bird, calling it a prophet and a thing of evil. He doesn’t know what to think of the bird, did Satan (the tempter) send this bird his way or did a storm push this bird his way? He continues and describes that even through his shouting the raven is unmoved/unbothered even though it is alone in his company. He calls his home a desert land, haunted and full of horror, and asks the raven if there is possible hope of any good or peace in the future, and of course, the raven says: nevermore.
Things get more serious in this stanza as the character loses his cool and starts to scream at his emotions. He calls them a prophet because they are basically prophesizing his unhappy life, and a thing of evil because of the pain they are causing him. He doesn’t understand where such permanence has come from in his grief and loss. Shouldn’t they be a feeling of phase and pass after some time? Why is his feeling here to stay forever? He asks in his panic; whether there is anything good waiting for him in life, will the intensity of such feelings pass? It seems his feelings of grief and loss are set in stone because it just replies with a “nevermore”.
Sixteenth Stanza
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
He continues to call the raven a prophet and thing of evil as he dramatically keeps accepting the word of the raven as the answer to his questions. He then asks for the raven to tell him if he will ever get to hold Lenore again, and predictably the raven says: nevermore.
The character is spiraling into more chaos as he realizes he is stuck in this pain and no relief is coming his way. In desperation, he asks whether he will ever hold and embrace his beloved Lenore ever again. The raven crushes him furthermore by saying no. His feeling of loss intensifies as his grief reaffirms for him that the life he had wanted can never ever be his to have and cherish.
Seventeenth Stanza
“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
The raven’s answers throw the narrator into a fit as he is consumed by sorrow. He screams at the raven to leave and go back to the storm it came from and to not even leave a trace of it being present in his chamber. He wants to live in his loneliness without accepting the reality of it. He does not want anything to do with the answers that the bird has given him. He continues to yell at the bird to leave and the raven simply replies with: nevermore (implying that it will not go).
At this point in the story, the character is being consumed by his own emotions and this mental game that he’s playing. He screams and cries for his loneliness to stay unbroken because he realizes that he is no longer alone these emotions and feelings he has unearthed will continue to haunt him and live with him forever. He yells to these feelings to get away from his wisdom and rational thinking. He pleads for this feeling of intense grief and loss to take the sharp pain away that he is feeling, and of course as the reader knows for certain by now, the answer is: nevermore.
Eighteenth Stanza
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!
The speaker ends his story by saying that the raven is still there, sitting on the statue of Pallas; almost demon-like in the way its eyes gleam. The lamplight hits the raven casting a shadow on the floor, and that shadow has trapped his soul within it and he will never be freed from it.
Edgar Allan Poe ends his narrative with a quiet and still character. Quite a change from the last stanzas; it is almost as if he has come to terms with the reality of the situation. As if we are now watching the character from the outside of his head, whilst all the commotion is taking place internally. However, the character lets the reader know that all is not well. The Raven still sits on the statue of Pallas and it looks demon-like whilst casting a shadow that traps him forever.
That is significant because it gives the reader closure. It tells the reader that even though the character welcomed the feelings of loss and grief when he opened the window of realization, he despises them now. These emotions appear to him as demonic. And the shadow the cast over him; meaning the mood that is created from these feelings has a permanent hold on his soul. He has been defeated by his feelings after facing them, and he will find peace: nevermore.
Similar Poetry
Readers who enjoyed ‘The Raven’ should also consider reading some of Poe’s other best-known poems. For example, ‘A Dream within a Dream,‘ ‘Alone,’ and ‘Anabel Lee.’ The latter is a beautiful short piece in which Poe’s speaker describes the death of a young woman, taken into the afterlife by jealous angels. ‘Alone’ is a haunting poem that touches on many of Poe’s favorite themes. It was inspired by the death of Poe’s foster mother. ‘A Dream within a Dream’ was published in 1849 and examines time and our perceptions of it.
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Edgar Allan Poe-The Raven- Read by James Earl Jones
The Raven written by Edgar Allan Poe. Read by James earl Jones. Effects and music added, as well as images related to the raven. A fan video made by a fellow...
Edgar Allan Poe-The Raven- Read by James Earl Jones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcqPQXqQXzI
Images
1. The Raven and Other Poems, Wiley and Putnam, New York, 1845
2. An illustration by Édouard Manet, from Mallarmé's translation, depicting the first two lines of the poem.
3. Raven perches on a bust of Pallas Athena,meant to imply the narrator is wise, Illustration by Édouard Manet for Stéphane Mallarmé's translation, Le Corbeau (1875)
4. Elmira Royster Shelton Oval black & white
Background from {[https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/poes-short-stories/edgar-allan-poe-biography]}
Edgar Allan Poe Biography
Edgar Allan Poe was born January 19, 1809, and died October 7, 1849; he lived only forty years, but during his brief lifetime, he made a permanent place for himself in American literature and also in world literature. A few facts about Poe's life are indisputable, but, unfortunately, almost everything else about Poe's life has been falsified, romanticized, slanderously distorted, or subjected to grotesque Freudian interpretations. Poe, it has been said at various times, was a manic depressive, a dope addict, an epileptic, and an alcoholic; moreover, it has been whispered that he was syphilitic, that he was impotent, and that he fathered at least one illegitimate child. Hardly any of Poe's biographers have been content to write a straight account of his life. This was particularly true of his early biographers, and only recently have those early studies been refuted. Intrigued with the horror and mystery of Poe's stories and by the dark romanticism of his poetry, his early critics and biographers often embroidered on the facts of his past in order to create their own imaginative vision of what kind of man produced these "strange" tales and poems. Thus Poe's true genius was neglected for a long time. Indeed, probably more fiction has been written about this American literary master than he himself produced; finally, however, fair and unbiased evaluations of his writings and of his life are available to us, and we can judge for ourselves what kind of a man Poe was. Yet, because the facts are scarce, Poe's claim to being America's first authentic neurotic genius will probably remain, and it is possible that Poe would be delighted.
Both of Poe's parents were professional actors, and this fact in itself has fueled many of the melodramatic myths that surround Poe. Poe's mother was a teenage widow when she married David Poe, and Edgar was their second son. Poe's father had a fairly good reputation as an actor, but he had an even wider reputation as an alcoholic. He deserted the family a year after Poe was born, and the following year, Poe's mother died while she was acting in Richmond, Virginia.
The children were parceled out, and young Poe was taken in as a foster-child by John Allan, a rich southern merchant. Allan never legally adopted Poe, but he did try to give him a good home and a good education.
When Poe was six years old, the Allans moved to England, and for five years Poe attended the Manor House School, conducted by a man who was a good deal like the schoolmaster in "William Wilson." When the Allans returned to America, Poe began using his legal name for the first time.
Poe and his foster-father often quarreled during his adolescence and as soon as he was able to leave home, Poe enrolled at the University of Virginia. While he was there, he earned a good academic record, but Mr. Allan never allowed him the means to live in the style his social status demanded. When Poe tried to keep up with his high-living classmates, he incurred so many gambling debts that the parsimonious Mr. Allan prevented his returning for a second year of study.
Unhappy at home, Poe got money somehow (probably from Mrs. Allan) and went to Boston, where he arranged for publication of his first volume of poetry, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827). He then joined the army. Two years later, when he was a sergeant-major, he received a discharge to enter West Point, to which he was admitted with Mr. Allan's help. Again, however, he felt frustrated because of the paltry allowance which his foster-father doled out to him, so he arranged to be court-martialed and dismissed.
Poe's next four years were spent in Baltimore, where he lived with an aunt, Maria Clemm; these were years of poverty. When Mr. Allan died in 1834, Poe hoped that he would receive some of his foster-father's fortune, but he was disappointed. Allan left him not a cent. For that reason, Poe turned from writing poetry, which he was deeply fond of — despite the fact that he knew he could never live off his earnings — and turned to writing stories, for which there was a market. He published five tales in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier in 1832, and because of his talent and certain influential friends, he became an editorial assistant at the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond in December 1835.
The editor of the Messenger recognized Poe's genius and published several of his stories, but he despaired at Poe's tendency to "sip the juice." Nevertheless, Poe's drinking does not seem to have interfered with his duties at the magazine; its circulation grew, Poe continued producing stories, and while he was advancing the reputation of the Messenger, he created a reputation of his own — not only as a fine writer, but also as a keen critic.
Poe married his cousin, Virginia Clemm, in 1836, when she was fourteen years old. He left the Messenger the following year and took his aunt and wife to New York City. There, Poe barely eked out a living for two years as a free-lance writer. He did, however, finish a short novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, and sold it to the Messenger, where it was published in two installments. Harper's bought out the magazine in 1838, but Poe never realized any more money from the novel because his former boss had recorded that the Narrative was only "edited" by Poe.
From New York City, the Poes moved to Baltimore, and for two years, the young family lived in even more dire poverty than they had in New York City. Poe continued writing, however, and finally in May 1839, he was hired as a co-editor of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine. He held this position for a year, during which he published some of his best fiction, including "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "William Wilson."
Because of his drinking, Poe lost his job the following year. This was unfortunate because his Tales of the Grotesque, which had been published several months earlier, was not selling well. Once again, Poe and his wife found themselves on the edge of poverty, but Poe's former employer recommended Poe to the publisher of Graham's, and once again Poe found work as an editor while he worked on his own fiction and poetry.
In January 1842, Poe suffered yet another setback. His wife, Virginia, burst a blood vessel in her throat. She did recover, but Poe's restlessness began to grow, as did the frequency of his drinking bouts, and he left Graham's under unpleasant circumstances. He attempted to found his own magazine and failed; he worked on cheap weeklies for awhile and, in a moment of despair, he went to Washington to seek out President Tyler. According to several accounts, he was so drunk when he called on the President that he wore his cloak inside out.
Shortly afterward, Poe moved his family to New York City and began working for the Sunday Times. The following year was a good one: James Russell Lowell praised Poe's talent and genius in an article, and Poe's poem "The Raven" was published and received rave reviews. Seemingly, Poe had "made it"; "The Raven" was the sensation of the literary season. Poe began lecturing about this time and, shortly afterward, a new collection of his short stories appeared, as well as a collection of his poetry.
Most biographers agree that Poe died of alcoholism — officially, "congestion of the brain." However, in 1996, cardiologist R. Michael Benitez, after conducting a blind clinical pathologic diagnosis of the symptoms of a patient described only as "E.P., a writer from Richmond," concluded that Poe died not from alcoholic poisoning, but from rabies. According to Dr. Benitez, Poe had become so hypersensitive to alcohol in his later years that he became ill for days after only one glass of wine. Benitez also refutes the myth that Poe died in a gutter, stating that he died at Washington College Hospital after four days of hallucinating and shouting at imaginary people.
About Poe's Short Stories
The Gothic Story: Introduction to "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "Ligeia"
These stories represent the highest achievements in the literary genre of the gothic horror story. By gothic, one means that the author emphasizes the grotesque, the mysterious, the desolate, the horrible, the ghostly, and, ultimately, the abject fear that can be aroused in either the reader or in the viewer. Almost everyone is familiar with such characters as Dr. Frankenstein's monster and Count Dracula, two of today's pop culture horror characters who evolve from the gothic tradition, and it is probably not an exaggeration to say that most adults in the Western world have been exposed to some type of gothic tale or ghost story. We all know that a gothic story or a ghost story will often have a setting that will be in an old, decaying mansion far out in a desolate countryside; the castle will be filled with cobwebs, strange noises, bats, and an abundance of secret panels and corridors, down which persecuted virgins might be running and screaming in terror. This is standard fare; we have either read about such places or seen them in the movies or on TV. The haunted castle is a classic setting of the gothic story. The author uses every literary trick possible to give us eerie sensations or to make us jump if we hear an unexpected noise. The shadows seem menacing in these stories, there are trap doors to swallow us up, and the underground passages are smelly, slimy, and foul — all these effects are created for one reason: to give us a sense of the ghostly and the supernatural.
Both "Ligeia" and "The Fall of the House of Usher" utilize many of these aspects of the gothic and are considered by critics to be not just among Poe's best short stories, but also among the finest examples of the gothic genre in all of literature.
Not surprisingly, both stories have many qualities in common: (1) In addition to the gothic elements, there is also a sense of remoteness and a sense of indefiniteness — that is, we are never told where "The Fall of the House of Usher" takes place in terms of setting; it could be in Ireland, Virginia, Scotland, Germany, or even Transylvania. The story could, in fact, take place anywhere as long as the area is remote to the reader, removed from his everyday environment. Likewise, "Ligeia"is set in an old castle on the Rhine or else in an abbey in the "most remote part of England." In both stories also, the time (the century) is set somewhere in the indefinite past. Clearly, it is not in an old castle in the present era.
(2) One of the primary aims of both stories is to create the single effect of an eerie and ghostly atmosphere and to do so, both stories emphasize the physical aspects of the various structures — the deep caverns or vaults where the Lady Madeline is buried and the weird room where the Lady Rowena died among various types of black sarcophagi. (3) In both stories, a super-sensitive hero is presented, a man who could not function well in the "normal" world. Roderick Usher and the narrator of "Ligeia" share a super-sensitivity to the point of maladjustment — due to the narrator's opium addiction in "Ligeia," and due to an undefined illness in Roderick Usher. (4) Often in the gothic story, the characters seem to possess some sort of psychic communication; this usually occurs between a member of the living world and a "living" corpse. In both stories, we see this kind of communication between, first, Roderick Usher and his twin sister and, again, between the narrator and his beloved, Ligeia. (5) One of the stock elements of the gothic story concerns the possibility of returning to life after one is dead and, moreover, inhabiting one's own corpse. Poe uses this effect to its very best effect in these two stories; both of them climax with just such an incident: To this purpose Poe created the return of the entombed and living corpse of the Lady Madeleine, as well as the slow re-emergence into life by the enshrouded Lady Ligeia. (6) In addition to the above features of the gothic story, Poe also stressed another similar element; he placed a strong emphasis on the life of the mind after the death of the body. This is also true of the stories associated with the Dracula legends, where the focus is upon the continuation of the life of the mind after the body has become a living corpse. The central concern of the Lady Ligeia is the continuation of the mind after physical death; Poe's emphasis here additionally stresses that one does not yield oneself to death except through a weakness of the will. Both in the Lady Madeline and in the Lady Ligeia, there is a superhuman strength to live — even after death. Both women overcome the most impossible barriers of the mortal world in order to live.
Tales of Ratiocination, or Detective Fiction: Introduction to "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter"
Part of the genius of Edgar Allan Poe is that he exceeded in a number of different types of endeavors. In addition to his reputation as a poet, his originality in his literary criticisms, and the perfection he achieved in creating gothic tales of terror and science fiction, he is also acknowledged as the originator of detective fiction. Poe invented the term "Tale of Ratiocination." The ratiocination, however, is not just for the detective; Poe does not allow the reader to sit back and merely observe; the process of ratiocination which he sets up is also intended for the reader, as well as for the detective. In fact, the story becomes one in which the reader must also accompany the detective toward the solution and apply his own powers of logic and deduction alongside those of the detective. This idea becomes very important in all subsequent works of detective fiction. That is, in all such fiction, all of the clues are available for the reader, as well as the detective, to solve the crime (usually murder), and at the end of the story, the reader should be able to look back on the clues and realize that he could have solved the mystery. A detective story in which the solution is suddenly revealed to the reader is considered bad form. Poe, then, introduces one of the basic elements of the detective story — the presentation of clues for his readers, and in addition to the above, Poe is also credited with introducing and developing many other of the standard features of modern detective fiction.
For example, M. Auguste Dupin is the forerunner of a long line of fictional detectives who are eccentric and brilliant. His unnamed friend, who is a devoted admirer of the detective's methods, is less brilliant but, at times, he is perhaps more rational and analytical than Dupin is. He never, however, has the flashes of genius that the detective exhibits; instead, he begins the tradition of the chronicler of the famous detective's exploits — that is, he mediates between reader and detective, presenting what information he has to the reader, while allowing the detective to keep certain information and interpretations to himself. This technique has since been employed by numerous writers of detective fiction, the most famous being the Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson combination. Almost as popular are the well-known novels of Rex Stout, dealing with the eccentric Nero Wolfe and his sidekick, Archie Goodwin, further examples of Poe's methodology. In all the cases that these detectives attempt to solve, the eccentric detective has a certain disdain, or contempt, for the police and their methods, and this has also become a standard feature of many detective stories, along with the fact that the head of the police force feels, as he does in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," that this amateur detective, while solving the murder, is a meddler.
Poe is clearly responsible for and should be given credit for giving literature these basics of the detective story as a foundation for an entirely new genre of fiction: (1) the eccentric but brilliant amateur sleuth; (2) the sidekick, or listener, or worker for the clever detective; (3) the simple clues; (4) the stupidity or ineptitude of the police; (5) the resentment of the police for the amateur's interference; and (6) the simple but careful solution of the problem through logic and intuition.
Stories of the Psychotic Personality: Introduction to "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat"
Many of Poe's short stories treat the same type of phenomena, yet in fact, part of Poe's greatness lies in the diversity of his creativity, and everything he wrote carries with it the distinctive trademark that would identify it as being a work by Edgar Allan Poe. The stories in this section, likewise, are Poe's best examples of another type of story; these are tales of the psychotic personality, one who tries to give a rational explanation for his irrational and compulsive acts. In both stories treated here, the criminal is so completely occupied with his own mental state and in justifying his horrifying actions that the reader is not nearly as aghast at the horrors that the criminal perpetrates, as he is at the bizarre mental state of the criminal. The cruel acts performed by the criminal in both stories are de-emphasized in order to examine the mind of the criminal. In other stories, Poe creates a feeling of horror in the reader's mind by certain acts of cruelty: Here, the reverse is true; for example, the narrator's murder of his wife in "The Black Cat" occurs so suddenly that we hardly notice the horrible cruelty of the act. Instead, we note the mental state of the psychotic killer.
Poe made one assumption throughout his writings that is very important in understanding both of these stories. Poe assumed that any man, at any given moment, is capable of performing the most irrational and horrible act imaginable; every mind, he believed, is capable of falling into madness at any given moment. Thus, these stories deal with those subconscious mental activities which cause a person who leads a so-called normal existence to suddenly change and perform drastic, horrible deeds. Unlike some commentators who thought that Poe was trying to determine exactly what constitutes madness, Poe was more accurately concerned with the conditions and the various stages which lead a person to commit acts of madness, particularly when that madness manifests itself in an otherwise normal person. Both narrators in these stories are — just prior to their atrocities — considered to be normal, average, commonplace men. Yet without warning, each of them loses his sanity momentarily. Poe's emphasis in these stories, particularly in "The Black Cat," is on the fact that the narrator is sometimes aware that he is going mad. Yet even with this self-knowledge, he can do nothing about his terrifying, changing mental state.
Aside from the general patterns and concerns that are present in both stories, there are even more basic similarities: Both stories, for example, begin with (1) a first-person narrator who (2) begins his story by asserting that he is not mad ("Why will you say I am mad" and "Yet, mad am I not"); (3) in addition, both narrators are seemingly average people at the beginning of their chronological narratives; and (4) both perform crimes that are both irrational and intensely personal; (5) both love their victims deeply (the narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart" loves the old man he murders, and the narrator of "The Black Cat" loves and adores his wife, and, therefore, ironically (6) the murderers' love for their victims makes their crimes even more irrational; (7) both narrators consider dismembering the corpses of the victims; this is actually done in "The Tell-Tale Heart," and in "The Black Cat" it is considered before the narrator finally decides to entomb the corpse in the chimney; (8) in both cases, the narrator's over-confidence in the superiority of his concealment of the body leads directly to the discovery of the body. There are other similarities in the two stories, but these basic correlatives suffice to show how Poe uses similar techniques to achieve the desired effects in each story.
In conclusion, in both of these stories, the narrator attempts a rational examination and explanation for his impulsive and irrational actions. He attempts to bring reason into the picture to explain a completely irrational act. Both stories attempt to present an exterior view of the interior disintegration of the narrator. Both narrators begin their stories at a moment when they are sane and rational, and throughout the story, we observe their changing mental states. These tales are perhaps Poe's most thorough investigations of the capacity of the human mind to deceive itself and then to speculate on the nature of its own destruction.
Tales of the Evil (Or Double) Personality: Introduction to "The Cask of Amontillado" and "William Wilson"
These are two of Poe's greatest short stories; in fact, for some critics, "The Cask of Amontillado"is often used as an example of the perfect short story (see, for example, the critics Alternbrand and Lewis: Introduction to Literature: The Short Story). In these two stories of Poe's, which are in fact so great that they almost escape classification, there is a strong kinship to the psychotic criminal as seen in "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat." Yet there are significant differences: (1) These stories are among the very few stories that Poe wrote where the narrator of the story is given a name. In "The Cask of Amontillado," however, the other character (Fortunato) addresses the narrator as Montresor, thus allowing the reader to know the narrator's name. In "William Wilson," the narrator announces that he is assuming this name since his real name would shock us — why we don't know. But in the latter story, which in fact deals with a double, the name is not the important issue; consequently, an assumed name is as good as any. (2) In both stories, the main character's motive in telling about his horrible and heinous crime is never revealed. In each case, the reader must wonder why the narrator chose to reveal such a horrible deed about himself. In the stories of the psychotic criminal, each narrator of those stories is trying to convince his readers through his logical method of narration that he is not mad, and yet each succeeds only in convincing the reader that he is indeed mad. In contrast, Montresor and William Wilson seem to have other reasons for telling about their heinous deeds. (3) And in each case, we must note that the story is narrated some time after the horrible deed was performed. For example, in "The Cask of Amontillado, "the entombed body of Fortunato has gone for fifty years without being detected; thus we know that the entombment occurred at least fifty years ago. Also in both cases, the narrator comes from a highly respected family, in contrast to the highly disreputable deed he commits. (4) In both stories, the setting is some time in the past, in some foreign country (or countries), in order to make the evil seem both more alien and more horrible. In both stories, also, there is an emphasis upon the labyrinthine cellars of the school and the long underground vaults of the Montresor mansion. (5) Finally, in both stories, there is a perverse, well-wrought plan conceived in order to wreak vengeance upon an unsuspecting victim. In "William Wilson," the plan against the gambling opponent, Glendinning, is not the main aspect of the story, but it conforms in principle to Montresor's vengeance against Fortunato.
Thus, these two masterpieces, while quite different in their ultimate aim, do share many qualities in common and do, like so many of Poe's stories, show the perverse mind of the narrator operating in a seemingly rational manner.
The Horror Story: Introduction to "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "The Masque of the Red Death"
Some critics have described such tales as "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "The Masque of the Red Death" as unrelieved "horror" stories. The success of this type of story (and it is one of Poe's most successful approaches to the short story) relies upon the completeness with which he is able to communicate a terrible sense of horror and torture and fear. That is, the success of the story depends not only on the fact that the narrator undergoes suspense, horror, and mental torture, but that we, the readers, are also forced to undergo the same feelings. Poe designated such effects and responses as the "ideal," or as being in the "realm of ideality." By this, he intended the reader to understand that when an author used certain calculated effects, he could make the reader's reading experience (and emotions) identical to those of the protagonist (or narrator), thus achieving a perfect empathy between reader and main character. In "The Pit and the Pendulum," we are exposed to a series of suspenses, terrors, and horrors and, ultimately, we feel in the actual presence of those horrors. Likewise, in "The Masque of the Red Death," Poe carefully chooses every word and every description to make us feel the utter fear and horror of the presence of the dreaded "Red Death."
PO3 Lynn SpaldingLT John StevensSGM Major Stroupe
CSM Bruce TregoSP5 Geoffrey Vannerson SPC John WaismanSFC Bernard WalkoCWO3 Randy WestonSPC Daniel RankinMSG (Join to see)SSG Byron HewettSFC Don VanceSGT Ed MatyjasikSGT Jim Ramge, MBA
1SG Mark Rudoplh LTC Ken ConnollyCMDCM John F. "Doc" BradshawSGT (Join to see)Linda LawrenceSSG Bill McCoy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcqPQXqQXzI
Images
1. The Raven and Other Poems, Wiley and Putnam, New York, 1845
2. An illustration by Édouard Manet, from Mallarmé's translation, depicting the first two lines of the poem.
3. Raven perches on a bust of Pallas Athena,meant to imply the narrator is wise, Illustration by Édouard Manet for Stéphane Mallarmé's translation, Le Corbeau (1875)
4. Elmira Royster Shelton Oval black & white
Background from {[https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/poes-short-stories/edgar-allan-poe-biography]}
Edgar Allan Poe Biography
Edgar Allan Poe was born January 19, 1809, and died October 7, 1849; he lived only forty years, but during his brief lifetime, he made a permanent place for himself in American literature and also in world literature. A few facts about Poe's life are indisputable, but, unfortunately, almost everything else about Poe's life has been falsified, romanticized, slanderously distorted, or subjected to grotesque Freudian interpretations. Poe, it has been said at various times, was a manic depressive, a dope addict, an epileptic, and an alcoholic; moreover, it has been whispered that he was syphilitic, that he was impotent, and that he fathered at least one illegitimate child. Hardly any of Poe's biographers have been content to write a straight account of his life. This was particularly true of his early biographers, and only recently have those early studies been refuted. Intrigued with the horror and mystery of Poe's stories and by the dark romanticism of his poetry, his early critics and biographers often embroidered on the facts of his past in order to create their own imaginative vision of what kind of man produced these "strange" tales and poems. Thus Poe's true genius was neglected for a long time. Indeed, probably more fiction has been written about this American literary master than he himself produced; finally, however, fair and unbiased evaluations of his writings and of his life are available to us, and we can judge for ourselves what kind of a man Poe was. Yet, because the facts are scarce, Poe's claim to being America's first authentic neurotic genius will probably remain, and it is possible that Poe would be delighted.
Both of Poe's parents were professional actors, and this fact in itself has fueled many of the melodramatic myths that surround Poe. Poe's mother was a teenage widow when she married David Poe, and Edgar was their second son. Poe's father had a fairly good reputation as an actor, but he had an even wider reputation as an alcoholic. He deserted the family a year after Poe was born, and the following year, Poe's mother died while she was acting in Richmond, Virginia.
The children were parceled out, and young Poe was taken in as a foster-child by John Allan, a rich southern merchant. Allan never legally adopted Poe, but he did try to give him a good home and a good education.
When Poe was six years old, the Allans moved to England, and for five years Poe attended the Manor House School, conducted by a man who was a good deal like the schoolmaster in "William Wilson." When the Allans returned to America, Poe began using his legal name for the first time.
Poe and his foster-father often quarreled during his adolescence and as soon as he was able to leave home, Poe enrolled at the University of Virginia. While he was there, he earned a good academic record, but Mr. Allan never allowed him the means to live in the style his social status demanded. When Poe tried to keep up with his high-living classmates, he incurred so many gambling debts that the parsimonious Mr. Allan prevented his returning for a second year of study.
Unhappy at home, Poe got money somehow (probably from Mrs. Allan) and went to Boston, where he arranged for publication of his first volume of poetry, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827). He then joined the army. Two years later, when he was a sergeant-major, he received a discharge to enter West Point, to which he was admitted with Mr. Allan's help. Again, however, he felt frustrated because of the paltry allowance which his foster-father doled out to him, so he arranged to be court-martialed and dismissed.
Poe's next four years were spent in Baltimore, where he lived with an aunt, Maria Clemm; these were years of poverty. When Mr. Allan died in 1834, Poe hoped that he would receive some of his foster-father's fortune, but he was disappointed. Allan left him not a cent. For that reason, Poe turned from writing poetry, which he was deeply fond of — despite the fact that he knew he could never live off his earnings — and turned to writing stories, for which there was a market. He published five tales in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier in 1832, and because of his talent and certain influential friends, he became an editorial assistant at the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond in December 1835.
The editor of the Messenger recognized Poe's genius and published several of his stories, but he despaired at Poe's tendency to "sip the juice." Nevertheless, Poe's drinking does not seem to have interfered with his duties at the magazine; its circulation grew, Poe continued producing stories, and while he was advancing the reputation of the Messenger, he created a reputation of his own — not only as a fine writer, but also as a keen critic.
Poe married his cousin, Virginia Clemm, in 1836, when she was fourteen years old. He left the Messenger the following year and took his aunt and wife to New York City. There, Poe barely eked out a living for two years as a free-lance writer. He did, however, finish a short novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, and sold it to the Messenger, where it was published in two installments. Harper's bought out the magazine in 1838, but Poe never realized any more money from the novel because his former boss had recorded that the Narrative was only "edited" by Poe.
From New York City, the Poes moved to Baltimore, and for two years, the young family lived in even more dire poverty than they had in New York City. Poe continued writing, however, and finally in May 1839, he was hired as a co-editor of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine. He held this position for a year, during which he published some of his best fiction, including "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "William Wilson."
Because of his drinking, Poe lost his job the following year. This was unfortunate because his Tales of the Grotesque, which had been published several months earlier, was not selling well. Once again, Poe and his wife found themselves on the edge of poverty, but Poe's former employer recommended Poe to the publisher of Graham's, and once again Poe found work as an editor while he worked on his own fiction and poetry.
In January 1842, Poe suffered yet another setback. His wife, Virginia, burst a blood vessel in her throat. She did recover, but Poe's restlessness began to grow, as did the frequency of his drinking bouts, and he left Graham's under unpleasant circumstances. He attempted to found his own magazine and failed; he worked on cheap weeklies for awhile and, in a moment of despair, he went to Washington to seek out President Tyler. According to several accounts, he was so drunk when he called on the President that he wore his cloak inside out.
Shortly afterward, Poe moved his family to New York City and began working for the Sunday Times. The following year was a good one: James Russell Lowell praised Poe's talent and genius in an article, and Poe's poem "The Raven" was published and received rave reviews. Seemingly, Poe had "made it"; "The Raven" was the sensation of the literary season. Poe began lecturing about this time and, shortly afterward, a new collection of his short stories appeared, as well as a collection of his poetry.
Most biographers agree that Poe died of alcoholism — officially, "congestion of the brain." However, in 1996, cardiologist R. Michael Benitez, after conducting a blind clinical pathologic diagnosis of the symptoms of a patient described only as "E.P., a writer from Richmond," concluded that Poe died not from alcoholic poisoning, but from rabies. According to Dr. Benitez, Poe had become so hypersensitive to alcohol in his later years that he became ill for days after only one glass of wine. Benitez also refutes the myth that Poe died in a gutter, stating that he died at Washington College Hospital after four days of hallucinating and shouting at imaginary people.
About Poe's Short Stories
The Gothic Story: Introduction to "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "Ligeia"
These stories represent the highest achievements in the literary genre of the gothic horror story. By gothic, one means that the author emphasizes the grotesque, the mysterious, the desolate, the horrible, the ghostly, and, ultimately, the abject fear that can be aroused in either the reader or in the viewer. Almost everyone is familiar with such characters as Dr. Frankenstein's monster and Count Dracula, two of today's pop culture horror characters who evolve from the gothic tradition, and it is probably not an exaggeration to say that most adults in the Western world have been exposed to some type of gothic tale or ghost story. We all know that a gothic story or a ghost story will often have a setting that will be in an old, decaying mansion far out in a desolate countryside; the castle will be filled with cobwebs, strange noises, bats, and an abundance of secret panels and corridors, down which persecuted virgins might be running and screaming in terror. This is standard fare; we have either read about such places or seen them in the movies or on TV. The haunted castle is a classic setting of the gothic story. The author uses every literary trick possible to give us eerie sensations or to make us jump if we hear an unexpected noise. The shadows seem menacing in these stories, there are trap doors to swallow us up, and the underground passages are smelly, slimy, and foul — all these effects are created for one reason: to give us a sense of the ghostly and the supernatural.
Both "Ligeia" and "The Fall of the House of Usher" utilize many of these aspects of the gothic and are considered by critics to be not just among Poe's best short stories, but also among the finest examples of the gothic genre in all of literature.
Not surprisingly, both stories have many qualities in common: (1) In addition to the gothic elements, there is also a sense of remoteness and a sense of indefiniteness — that is, we are never told where "The Fall of the House of Usher" takes place in terms of setting; it could be in Ireland, Virginia, Scotland, Germany, or even Transylvania. The story could, in fact, take place anywhere as long as the area is remote to the reader, removed from his everyday environment. Likewise, "Ligeia"is set in an old castle on the Rhine or else in an abbey in the "most remote part of England." In both stories also, the time (the century) is set somewhere in the indefinite past. Clearly, it is not in an old castle in the present era.
(2) One of the primary aims of both stories is to create the single effect of an eerie and ghostly atmosphere and to do so, both stories emphasize the physical aspects of the various structures — the deep caverns or vaults where the Lady Madeline is buried and the weird room where the Lady Rowena died among various types of black sarcophagi. (3) In both stories, a super-sensitive hero is presented, a man who could not function well in the "normal" world. Roderick Usher and the narrator of "Ligeia" share a super-sensitivity to the point of maladjustment — due to the narrator's opium addiction in "Ligeia," and due to an undefined illness in Roderick Usher. (4) Often in the gothic story, the characters seem to possess some sort of psychic communication; this usually occurs between a member of the living world and a "living" corpse. In both stories, we see this kind of communication between, first, Roderick Usher and his twin sister and, again, between the narrator and his beloved, Ligeia. (5) One of the stock elements of the gothic story concerns the possibility of returning to life after one is dead and, moreover, inhabiting one's own corpse. Poe uses this effect to its very best effect in these two stories; both of them climax with just such an incident: To this purpose Poe created the return of the entombed and living corpse of the Lady Madeleine, as well as the slow re-emergence into life by the enshrouded Lady Ligeia. (6) In addition to the above features of the gothic story, Poe also stressed another similar element; he placed a strong emphasis on the life of the mind after the death of the body. This is also true of the stories associated with the Dracula legends, where the focus is upon the continuation of the life of the mind after the body has become a living corpse. The central concern of the Lady Ligeia is the continuation of the mind after physical death; Poe's emphasis here additionally stresses that one does not yield oneself to death except through a weakness of the will. Both in the Lady Madeline and in the Lady Ligeia, there is a superhuman strength to live — even after death. Both women overcome the most impossible barriers of the mortal world in order to live.
Tales of Ratiocination, or Detective Fiction: Introduction to "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter"
Part of the genius of Edgar Allan Poe is that he exceeded in a number of different types of endeavors. In addition to his reputation as a poet, his originality in his literary criticisms, and the perfection he achieved in creating gothic tales of terror and science fiction, he is also acknowledged as the originator of detective fiction. Poe invented the term "Tale of Ratiocination." The ratiocination, however, is not just for the detective; Poe does not allow the reader to sit back and merely observe; the process of ratiocination which he sets up is also intended for the reader, as well as for the detective. In fact, the story becomes one in which the reader must also accompany the detective toward the solution and apply his own powers of logic and deduction alongside those of the detective. This idea becomes very important in all subsequent works of detective fiction. That is, in all such fiction, all of the clues are available for the reader, as well as the detective, to solve the crime (usually murder), and at the end of the story, the reader should be able to look back on the clues and realize that he could have solved the mystery. A detective story in which the solution is suddenly revealed to the reader is considered bad form. Poe, then, introduces one of the basic elements of the detective story — the presentation of clues for his readers, and in addition to the above, Poe is also credited with introducing and developing many other of the standard features of modern detective fiction.
For example, M. Auguste Dupin is the forerunner of a long line of fictional detectives who are eccentric and brilliant. His unnamed friend, who is a devoted admirer of the detective's methods, is less brilliant but, at times, he is perhaps more rational and analytical than Dupin is. He never, however, has the flashes of genius that the detective exhibits; instead, he begins the tradition of the chronicler of the famous detective's exploits — that is, he mediates between reader and detective, presenting what information he has to the reader, while allowing the detective to keep certain information and interpretations to himself. This technique has since been employed by numerous writers of detective fiction, the most famous being the Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson combination. Almost as popular are the well-known novels of Rex Stout, dealing with the eccentric Nero Wolfe and his sidekick, Archie Goodwin, further examples of Poe's methodology. In all the cases that these detectives attempt to solve, the eccentric detective has a certain disdain, or contempt, for the police and their methods, and this has also become a standard feature of many detective stories, along with the fact that the head of the police force feels, as he does in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," that this amateur detective, while solving the murder, is a meddler.
Poe is clearly responsible for and should be given credit for giving literature these basics of the detective story as a foundation for an entirely new genre of fiction: (1) the eccentric but brilliant amateur sleuth; (2) the sidekick, or listener, or worker for the clever detective; (3) the simple clues; (4) the stupidity or ineptitude of the police; (5) the resentment of the police for the amateur's interference; and (6) the simple but careful solution of the problem through logic and intuition.
Stories of the Psychotic Personality: Introduction to "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat"
Many of Poe's short stories treat the same type of phenomena, yet in fact, part of Poe's greatness lies in the diversity of his creativity, and everything he wrote carries with it the distinctive trademark that would identify it as being a work by Edgar Allan Poe. The stories in this section, likewise, are Poe's best examples of another type of story; these are tales of the psychotic personality, one who tries to give a rational explanation for his irrational and compulsive acts. In both stories treated here, the criminal is so completely occupied with his own mental state and in justifying his horrifying actions that the reader is not nearly as aghast at the horrors that the criminal perpetrates, as he is at the bizarre mental state of the criminal. The cruel acts performed by the criminal in both stories are de-emphasized in order to examine the mind of the criminal. In other stories, Poe creates a feeling of horror in the reader's mind by certain acts of cruelty: Here, the reverse is true; for example, the narrator's murder of his wife in "The Black Cat" occurs so suddenly that we hardly notice the horrible cruelty of the act. Instead, we note the mental state of the psychotic killer.
Poe made one assumption throughout his writings that is very important in understanding both of these stories. Poe assumed that any man, at any given moment, is capable of performing the most irrational and horrible act imaginable; every mind, he believed, is capable of falling into madness at any given moment. Thus, these stories deal with those subconscious mental activities which cause a person who leads a so-called normal existence to suddenly change and perform drastic, horrible deeds. Unlike some commentators who thought that Poe was trying to determine exactly what constitutes madness, Poe was more accurately concerned with the conditions and the various stages which lead a person to commit acts of madness, particularly when that madness manifests itself in an otherwise normal person. Both narrators in these stories are — just prior to their atrocities — considered to be normal, average, commonplace men. Yet without warning, each of them loses his sanity momentarily. Poe's emphasis in these stories, particularly in "The Black Cat," is on the fact that the narrator is sometimes aware that he is going mad. Yet even with this self-knowledge, he can do nothing about his terrifying, changing mental state.
Aside from the general patterns and concerns that are present in both stories, there are even more basic similarities: Both stories, for example, begin with (1) a first-person narrator who (2) begins his story by asserting that he is not mad ("Why will you say I am mad" and "Yet, mad am I not"); (3) in addition, both narrators are seemingly average people at the beginning of their chronological narratives; and (4) both perform crimes that are both irrational and intensely personal; (5) both love their victims deeply (the narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart" loves the old man he murders, and the narrator of "The Black Cat" loves and adores his wife, and, therefore, ironically (6) the murderers' love for their victims makes their crimes even more irrational; (7) both narrators consider dismembering the corpses of the victims; this is actually done in "The Tell-Tale Heart," and in "The Black Cat" it is considered before the narrator finally decides to entomb the corpse in the chimney; (8) in both cases, the narrator's over-confidence in the superiority of his concealment of the body leads directly to the discovery of the body. There are other similarities in the two stories, but these basic correlatives suffice to show how Poe uses similar techniques to achieve the desired effects in each story.
In conclusion, in both of these stories, the narrator attempts a rational examination and explanation for his impulsive and irrational actions. He attempts to bring reason into the picture to explain a completely irrational act. Both stories attempt to present an exterior view of the interior disintegration of the narrator. Both narrators begin their stories at a moment when they are sane and rational, and throughout the story, we observe their changing mental states. These tales are perhaps Poe's most thorough investigations of the capacity of the human mind to deceive itself and then to speculate on the nature of its own destruction.
Tales of the Evil (Or Double) Personality: Introduction to "The Cask of Amontillado" and "William Wilson"
These are two of Poe's greatest short stories; in fact, for some critics, "The Cask of Amontillado"is often used as an example of the perfect short story (see, for example, the critics Alternbrand and Lewis: Introduction to Literature: The Short Story). In these two stories of Poe's, which are in fact so great that they almost escape classification, there is a strong kinship to the psychotic criminal as seen in "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat." Yet there are significant differences: (1) These stories are among the very few stories that Poe wrote where the narrator of the story is given a name. In "The Cask of Amontillado," however, the other character (Fortunato) addresses the narrator as Montresor, thus allowing the reader to know the narrator's name. In "William Wilson," the narrator announces that he is assuming this name since his real name would shock us — why we don't know. But in the latter story, which in fact deals with a double, the name is not the important issue; consequently, an assumed name is as good as any. (2) In both stories, the main character's motive in telling about his horrible and heinous crime is never revealed. In each case, the reader must wonder why the narrator chose to reveal such a horrible deed about himself. In the stories of the psychotic criminal, each narrator of those stories is trying to convince his readers through his logical method of narration that he is not mad, and yet each succeeds only in convincing the reader that he is indeed mad. In contrast, Montresor and William Wilson seem to have other reasons for telling about their heinous deeds. (3) And in each case, we must note that the story is narrated some time after the horrible deed was performed. For example, in "The Cask of Amontillado, "the entombed body of Fortunato has gone for fifty years without being detected; thus we know that the entombment occurred at least fifty years ago. Also in both cases, the narrator comes from a highly respected family, in contrast to the highly disreputable deed he commits. (4) In both stories, the setting is some time in the past, in some foreign country (or countries), in order to make the evil seem both more alien and more horrible. In both stories, also, there is an emphasis upon the labyrinthine cellars of the school and the long underground vaults of the Montresor mansion. (5) Finally, in both stories, there is a perverse, well-wrought plan conceived in order to wreak vengeance upon an unsuspecting victim. In "William Wilson," the plan against the gambling opponent, Glendinning, is not the main aspect of the story, but it conforms in principle to Montresor's vengeance against Fortunato.
Thus, these two masterpieces, while quite different in their ultimate aim, do share many qualities in common and do, like so many of Poe's stories, show the perverse mind of the narrator operating in a seemingly rational manner.
The Horror Story: Introduction to "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "The Masque of the Red Death"
Some critics have described such tales as "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "The Masque of the Red Death" as unrelieved "horror" stories. The success of this type of story (and it is one of Poe's most successful approaches to the short story) relies upon the completeness with which he is able to communicate a terrible sense of horror and torture and fear. That is, the success of the story depends not only on the fact that the narrator undergoes suspense, horror, and mental torture, but that we, the readers, are also forced to undergo the same feelings. Poe designated such effects and responses as the "ideal," or as being in the "realm of ideality." By this, he intended the reader to understand that when an author used certain calculated effects, he could make the reader's reading experience (and emotions) identical to those of the protagonist (or narrator), thus achieving a perfect empathy between reader and main character. In "The Pit and the Pendulum," we are exposed to a series of suspenses, terrors, and horrors and, ultimately, we feel in the actual presence of those horrors. Likewise, in "The Masque of the Red Death," Poe carefully chooses every word and every description to make us feel the utter fear and horror of the presence of the dreaded "Red Death."
PO3 Lynn SpaldingLT John StevensSGM Major Stroupe
CSM Bruce TregoSP5 Geoffrey Vannerson SPC John WaismanSFC Bernard WalkoCWO3 Randy WestonSPC Daniel RankinMSG (Join to see)SSG Byron HewettSFC Don VanceSGT Ed MatyjasikSGT Jim Ramge, MBA
1SG Mark Rudoplh LTC Ken ConnollyCMDCM John F. "Doc" BradshawSGT (Join to see)Linda LawrenceSSG Bill McCoy
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Another one who gained fame after death. I well remember everything of his that I read. Some give you nightmares
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SP5 Jeannie Carle
Yessss, Ma'am - some certainly do! MY favorite author, Ray Bradbury, took the "Fall of the House of Usher" and ran with it :-)
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