The Raven is an American writer's narrative poem by the famous Edgar Allan Poe who had it published first in 1845 (Frank 21). The poem Raven is notably remembered for its musicality, stylized lingua and atmosphere holding supernaturalism from the environs. It tells much of Ravens' talk of mysterious visits to a lover who is much of distraught, with traces of slow man's falling into madness. The lover in the poem is often called the student thus lamenting so much for his love, Lenore. While sitting on a bust of Pallas, The Raven is seen as further pushing forth his distress with constant word repetition of words like nevermore (Allan 20).
Raven is Poes literature work written in a logical and methodologically aligned stance with intents of creating appeal to both modern tastes and critical ones. In response to reactions culminating from Raven, Poe wrote an essay entitled-The Philosophy of Composition, whereby he holds explanation of his writing styles and his intents for the writing process entitled Unity of effect. In additional to the above utterances, Poe notes that he had believes that most of the lyrical topics in the globe were death thus creating a narrator's madness as he faces with realism on the loss of his life's love, Lenore. Conversely, The Raven poem is written in hopes of appealing to both the critics and the locales with resultants being a spooky poem full of literature work inclusive of various effects of his writings.
As earlier uttered, The Raven is organized with examples as follows:
Line1 where it utters-Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered, weakly and weary, A
Line 2, Over various a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, B
Line 3, while I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there coming a tapping, C
Line 4, As someone gently, rapping, rapping at my chambers door B
Starting with rhyming wordings, the first and the third lines hold rhyming words at the mid and the end of the lines-dreary and weary. The Raven is a ballad of eighteen six-lined stanzas emphatic decidedly on their rhymes and meter (Poe 20). The ballad is nightmarish on its narration to a woman's love by young men. The poem has narrations in the first person viewpoint with the conveyance of dramatic immediacy where the speaker has shifted from weary and sorrowful composition to a nervous collapse while recounting past strange encounter with the ebony bird. There are melancholy environs in the first seven stanzas establishing settings of the narrator plus his emotional status of mind. In verses 12 and the next one 13, there is a settlement on a velvet cushion by the narrator in front of bird and whimsy pondering of the meaning of Raven, associated with the thought of departed woman(Lenore).At this stage, the mourning lover, in anticipation of Raven's mad repetition of the word-Nevermore starts masochistically to frame painful queries.
Conversely, as far as the meter goes, one can start counting the number of syllables with the first and the third lines having sixteen syllables on each of them totaling to eight pairs each. The emphasis on these pairs is on the initial syllable: Once, upon, midnight and dreary thus a trochee.
Since there exist eight-syllabled pairs of wording in a line, octameter is the best name in this scenario with the combination leading to trochaic octameter. In analyzing this poem carefully, there are no chances of resistance in playing with a regular meter. The last line of every stanza is shorter with syllables being only seven in their number. Plus, in case you take a close look, the second, fourth and the fifth lines sum up their syllables to fifteen.
There is also gimmicking by Poe in The Raven poem with intents of trying to make it sound musical, captivating and hypnotic as possible. All this are a sense of a complicated rhyming aiming at drawing the reader more fully into the poetic world. From the above utterance, the reader of this poem ought to pin in their mind the years of the literature work with surety on the talks of that period over 150 years ago. The speaker in the poem gets more melodramatic in his talks seen through his inception of the poem in an emotive level on a nine scale out of ten points. It then heads right via the roofs to fifteen points. The speaker's tone is intense and almost frantic. As a reader, one accrues trait from the speaker which revolves around his super focus of a single moment and later bit spacing out the next focus. From this utterance, it insinuates having a terrible night, with his voice telling all on being wounded pretty tight even without any talks to the birds.
Although the principalities of unification and brevity of impression or their effect to informing on the poem's rest on Allan Poe's theoretical views, there is also a lot of contribution to the above-severed economy of means to histrionic poetic qualities. There is a monolog (dramatic) with a careful arrangement of scenes in Poe's Raven poem. The dramatic juxtaposition is inevitable in this poem where the black bird perched on the Pallas over the door have shadows cast on the narrator at the climax (frenzied).Even the pivotal refrain it keynotes structure contributing to the effect in the theatrical scenario.
The most original poetic device here is the narrator's way of unconsciously arranging his queries with examples of his nonchalant questioning under the influence (hypnotic) driven by both the superstitious thoughts and self-torture after bereavement by a lover. The above nightmarish poetic effect is furthered by relentless rhythms and ballad stanzas arrangement into five octameter lines followed by a refrained tetrameter. The above combination together with alliteration (emphatic) allows for a stronger end and internal rhymes with resultants being a mesmerized syncopation of redundancies. The repetition employs an aural joint between the reader and poem.
Night Plutonian shore has links with beliefs of death culminating from one of the Roman god's of the underworld. In combination with night, it insinuates symbolism for nothingness and dying while shore is representing a vast ocean and the surrounding mysterious inhabitants. Nepenthe as used in the poem hails from old drug consumed to helping in relieving sorrowfulness while mourning which is searched desperately by the narrator (Allan 21). The month of December in the poem concerns winter whereby there exists nothing in the winter season thus a symbol of death. Midnight is a symbol mostly used in a bewitching hour being the darkest part of the night thus more than the number of the clocks thus chosen by Poe as the arrival time for the bird.
Allan, Poe Edgar. "The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe." (2014): 50.
Frank, Anja. "Edgar Allan Poe:Interpretation of His Poem the Raven." (2009): 28.
Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Raven: Tales and Poems." Fiction (2013): 352.
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