Final Output in Stylistics-

Literary Analysis of the

poem, “The Raven”

SHEENA VILLAMIL
 The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

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.” 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. 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.” 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. Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals 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

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon again I heard a tapping something 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.” 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. 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.”
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.” But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke
only That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour. Nothing further 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.” 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.’ ”

But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul 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.” 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! 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.” “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.” “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.” “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.”

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 Literary Analysis

Summary of 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. It 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.

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.
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.

Themes

 Death and the Afterlife

As with many other of Poe’s works, “The Raven” explores death. More specifically, this poem explores the effects of death on
the living, such as grief, mourning, and memories of the deceased, as well as a question that so often torments those who have lost
loved ones to death: whether there is an afterlife in which they will be reunited with the dead.

Memory and Loss

Often, memories of the dead are presented as purely positive – as a way for the departed to continue to exist in the hearts and
minds of those who remember them, and as a source of comfort for those who are still alive. “The Raven” flips this notion on its head,
envisioning memories of a deceased loved one as a sorrowful, inescapable burden.

The Supernatural and the Subconscious

“The Raven” is an example of Gothic literature, a genre that originated in 18th century England. Hallmarks of Gothic works
include horror, death, the supernatural, and occasionally romance. Their characters are often highly emotional and secluded from
society, living in dark, gloomy, medieval-like homes surrounded by wild natural landscapes.

Rationality and Irrationality

In an essay titled “The Philosophy of Composition,” in which Poe explained his writing of “The Raven,” he describes the
narrator as a scholar, a learned person devoted to rational investigation. It is therefore natural for the speaker to attempt to escape his
obsessive memories of his wife by reading “ancient lore,” and when he senses Lenore’s presence he comforts himself with the words
“Nothing more”.

Ancient Influences
Throughout the poem, Poe makes repeated references to classical mythology and the Bible — “ancient lore” such as what the
narrator might have been studying at the beginning of the text. “Pallas,” the bust on which the Raven perches, is a reference to “Pallas
Athena,” the Greek goddess of wisdom. Like Pallas Athena, the Raven hails from “the saintly days of yore.”

Symbols
Pallas
“Pallas” refers to Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. The bust of Pallas in the  narrator’s chamber represents his
interest in learning and scholarship, and also can be taken as representing rationality in general and his own rational, sane mind in
particular. The Raven, by landing on the bust when it flies into the room, signifies a threat to the narrator’s reason and the ability of
rationality to analyze and understand the reasons (if any) behind the Raven’s coming and its message. That the Raven stays on top of
the bust of Pallas at the end of the poem, never flitting, suggests the dominance of irrationality and fear over reason in general, and,
more particularly, that irrationality has taken up a permanent home in the narrator’s formerly rational mind.

Raven
Ravens are commonly viewed as symbols for evil, death, and supernatural forces. The narrator comes to see the Raven, which
visits when the narrator is in deepest mourning over the death of his beloved Lenore, in exactly these terms: as a kind of supernatural
emissary that has come to crush his hopes of ever being reunited with Lenore in heaven. The narrator sees the Raven not just as
symbolizing death, but as symbolizing a specific kind of death: a death without heaven, a death that is simply the end.
All of that said, what the Raven symbolizes in the poem is not exactly the same as what it symbolizes to the narrator. First, a reading
of the poem in which the narrator actually falls asleep and then dreams the rest of the events shifts the meaning of the Raven from a
supernatural messenger about death to an embodiment of the grief-stricken narrator’s own doubts and fears about what happens after
death. Further, regardless of whether the narrator is awake or asleep, it is possible to interpret the Raven as symbolizing not a
meaningless death but rather irrationality and unknowability. After all, the Raven never actually says anything other than
“nevermore,” and it never says that word except in response to a question from the narrator. The Raven’s “nevermore” never quite
makes actual sense, but the narrator interprets it to be a message of death without an afterlife. In this view, the Raven symbolizes the
unknowable mystery that the narrator (and human beings more generally) frantically try to use their reason to understand because the
unknowable (like what happens after death) is scary. But reason fails, just as the narrator does, in figuring out the unknowable. The
Raven perching forevermore on the bust of Pallas Athena, goddess of wisdom and reason, indicates the triumph of the irrational and
unknowable over any rational attempt to figure it out.

Plutonian
“Plutonian” is a reference to Pluto, the Roman god of the underworld. The narrator, upon first encountering the  Raven, is
amused by its stately comportment, and jokingly accuses it of having emerged from the “Night’s Plutonian shore”— the border
between the worlds of the living and the dead. At the close of the poem, the narrator, no longer amused and convinced that the bird
means him ill, repeats the phrase with conviction, suggesting that the Raven is a messenger of death, but not a death in which souls
travel up to a heavenly paradise where they are reunited with the other departed, but instead a death of blackness and despair.

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 Literary Devices in “The Raven”

Literary devices are used to bring richness and clarity to the texts. Edgar Allan Poe has also used various literary devices to make his
poem extraordinary and to help readers interpret the poem. Here is the analysis of some of the devices used in “The Raven.”

 Metaphor: The first metaphor used in this poem is the thirteenth stanza “To the fowl those fiery eyes now burned into my
bosom’s core.” The second is used in the last stanza “And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming.” The
poet here compares Raven’s eyes with fire and demon.
 Personification: Personification is a device that gives human attributes to non-living things or animals such as “Quoth the
Raven “Nevermore” where the Raven is given the ability to speak.
 Allusion: Allusion is a brief and indirect reference to important texts, events, and For example, “Perched upon a bust of
Pallas” shows the reference to Pallas which is one of the names given to an ancient Greek Goddess Athena, a goddess of
wisdom, handicraft, and warfare.
 Simile: The simile used in this poem is “On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before” here the poet
compares his hope to a birds flight. It is often misunderstood as the Raven’s flight.
 Imagery: Poe has skillfully used imagery to create images of the feeling of pain, horror, and grief while reading the poem. The
following phrases “the silken”, “sad”, “uncertain” and “rustling of each curtain” are the best examples of imagery.
 Alliteration: Alliteration is used to create musical effects in a literary piece. It is the repetition of the same consonant sounds in
the same line such as /s/ in “from my books surcease the last sorrow- sorrow for the lost Lenore”, /w/ and /n/ sounds in “Once
upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary.”
 Assonance: Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds occurring closely in the same line such as the sound of /e/ in “dreary,
weak and weary” and the sound of /o/ and /ee/ in “dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”
 Consonance: It refers to the repetition of consonant sounds that come in quick occurrence in the same line such as /p/ and /d/
sounds in “I nodded nearly napping suddenly come a tapping” and /o/ sound in “On this home by Horror haunted—tell me
truly, I implore.”

 Analysis of Poetic Devices in “The Raven”

Poetic and literary devices are the same, but a few are used only in poetry. Here is the analysis of some of the poetic devices used in
this poem.

 Stanza: A stanza is a poetic form of different numbers of lines. There are 18 stanzas in this poem, and each stanza has six
lines.
 Rhyme Scheme: The whole poem follows the ABCBBB rhyme scheme and AA, B, CC, CB, B, B for internal rhyme patterns.
Examples of internal rhyme are the use of word “dreary” and “weary” in the same line. The use of “lore, door and again door”
at the end of the second, fourth and fifth lines is end rhyme pattern.
 Trochaic Octameter: It means to have eight trochaic material feet in a line which means there is a stressed syllable and is
followed by unstressed such as “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and wear.”
 Stressed and Unstressed Syllables: These two types of syllables are used in trochee such as the first is stressed and second is
unstressed syllable in “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary”. This pattern continues throughout
the poem.
 Repetition: There is a repetition of the line, “Quoth the Raven “Nevermore” in the text which has enhanced the musical quality
of the poem.
 Refrain: The lines that are repeated at some distance in the poems are called a refrain. The line “Quoth the Raven,
“Nevermore” is repeated in the same words. Therefore, it has achieved the status of a refrain of this poem.

Conclusion
In conclusion, Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven” was about a young man who mourned the death of his wife. But what really
made this poem stand out was the use of setting. By using winter as the tone of the beginning setting and using bleak December as a
use of a setting. Poe really knew how to use such vivid settings using time and place to interpret death. When you put all those things
together, it makes this poem so twisted but yet fascinating leaving “The Raven” as one of the most read and known poems of all time.
And in “To live in the Borderlands means You” Gloria Anzaluda illustrated the conflicts the borderlands faced while dealing with the
politics, race, culture and identity one who lives on the Mexico and United States each and every day. Both are poems that use setting
in a different ways, one used it representing death and the other used it as everyday life struggle.