The Raven - Poetic Analysis

The narrator is sitting in a room at midnight reading a book. He begins to fall asleep when he hears a knocking at his door. He tells himself it is only a visitor knocking. Because it is December and the fire is dying, he begins to feel sad as he remembers his lost love, Lenore. The rustling of the curtains scares him, and he continues to tell himself that the knocking is merely a visitor as he stands. He feels a burst of courage and speaks in apologetic tones to the visitor as he goes to open the door, but when he opens it, there is no one there. He stands there in fear, staring at the silent darkness, and whispers, “Lenore!” which is responded to by an echo. He then turns back into the room, but soon hears the knocking again, only this time, it is at his window, so he convinces himself it is only the wind. He opens the shutter, and in flies a raven that perches upon the bust of the goddess Athena above his door. The narrator laughs at this, and jokingly asks the bird what its name is, to which the bird replies, “Nevermore.” The narrator is amazed that the bird actually spoke, but he does not think the word means anything. He assumes aloud that the bird will leave him by tomorrow, but the bird replies the same way. The reply startles him so much that he pulls a chair up in front of the bird and sits there to try to figure out what it means by “nevermore.” Suddenly, he asks the bird if he is ever to forget his lost love Lenore, thinking that he might be sent from God. It answers the same. He then asks if he will ever have peace or ever get to hold Lenore in heaven again, to which the bird responds the same. The narrator then demands that the bird leaves, and one last time, it says its phrase, “Nevermore.” The poem ends by saying that the bird and the narrator’s soul never lifted from that place.

There were several important allusions made in this poem. The first of them was a reference to Pallas, which is another name for the goddess Athena. She is the goddess of wisdom and strategic battle, and the positioning of her bust above the narrator’s door also proves important. Also, another allusion made was that in the line “Night’s Plutonian shore.” “Plutonian” refers to Pluto, or Hades, the Greek god of the underworld, so the shore may refer to the River Styx, the waterway that all the souls of the dead had to pass across in order to reach the Underworld. The reference to a “balm in Gilead” refers to a medicinal balm often made in the region of Gilead in Jordan, suggesting that Gilead is a place of healing for the heart. Also, Aidenn is another way of saying Eden, as in the Garden of Eden from the biblical story.

With all of this information in mind, here is what I believe to be the literal meaning of this poem. I believe this poem to be mainly about human nature, seeing as it is a Dark Romanticism piece. The human nature aspect comes from the narrator’s spiraling down into obsession with the raven and its phrase. Repetition causes belief, and so as time goes on, the narrator who once dismissed “nevermore” as just a silly little word sees his entire existence hanging on the thread of that word when he is told that nevermore shall he be happy, and nevermore shall he forget Lenore. I see this poem as a psychological study into obsession and the power of persuasion over the weak-willed human mind since all this bird has to do in order to bring the narrator to his knees is squawk one simple word.