Prepare Writing Analysis of The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe (Essay Sample)

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An Analysis of “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allen Poe was born on NineteenthJanuary, the year eighteen hundred and nine in Boston, Massachusetts and died on seventhOctober, eighteen hundred and forty-nine at Baltimore Maryland. He was a writer and a poetfamous for his imagination and storytellingcovering horror and mystery. This paper seeks to analyze “The Raven” one of Poe’s best work published in the year 1845 by the New York evening mirror through reviewing its structure, theme and stylistic features. The poem shadows an unnamed narrator who sits reading a book in thedreary night in December by a dying fire. The narrator is trying to forget his beloved Lenore when a speaking raven visits him.
The raven is an eighteen stanza poem,and Poe tries to make it as musical, hypotonic and captivating as possible. The poem is well organized but features a complicated rhyming trochaic octameter that makes the reader more completely drawn into the poet world. For Instance, looking at the first stanza,rhyme is present on alternating initial and third line both at the middle and at the end:weary’ and ‘dreary,’ ‘napping’ and ‘tapping’ create an internal rhyme that enhances the beauty of the poem. The fourth line follows the rhyme of the third line through the word ‘rapping.’Notably, two-thirds of the lines follow the rhyme scheme ABCBBB because they end with the same sound. Except the initial and third line all the other four sentences in each stanza end with an ‘or’ for example (nevermore, lore, Lenore, door and floor). The first and third syllables have eight pairs of syllables each,and the emphasis is put in the first syllable hence the trochaic octameter.
Poe makes uses of several features of style in the poem such as imagery, symbolism, wordplay and even Irony ( shmoop editorial team) like in line 11 where he employs alliteration by beginning the opening sounds of two words with the same sound as in ‘rare and radiant.’Lenore turns out to be something more than a real person as we can see the narrator being a little too much in love with her. He describes her with words such as ‘sainted,’ ‘rare’ and ‘radiant’ which leaves the reader concluding that Lenore is just a symbol of the narrator’s perfect and untouchable woman. The reader can also image the presence of the raven all through the poem from its big entrance. We capture the image of a queen entering a throne room where Poe mentions that the raven is ‘stately’ and ‘Mien.’ (Line 38-40). In line 105 the poets proceeds to depict the bird as a slumbering demon having burning eyes hence reflecting a wicked being that causes terror.Poe injects some irony in line 77-78. Ideally, persons remember their laughed ones by the way they talked, walked, laughed or smiled but ironically the grieved narrator remembers his lover by the way she pressed her butt on a chair. Poe uses refrain when he repeats the line ‘Quoth the Raven, Nevermore.’
Like any other commendable poem, the tone of the raven changes as the poem advances, however, the leadingsound is a melancholic one expressing the pensive sadness due to the loss of Lenore. The tone begins as a distractive one as we see the narrator digging into his studies as a form of distraction before he is also distracted by thesound. The mood grows into a curious one when the narrator explores the sound then into an annoyed tone by the sound’s insistence and finally into resigning one when the narrator finds out that Lenore is completely gone and never to return. The melancholy/ sad tone connects to the idea that the narrator finally concludes that his life will never be the same again without Lenore.
Poe brings about several themes in this poem. First, as the poem progresses, we see the narrator growing from a st...