The Raven

Study Guide by Course Hero

TENSE
What's Inside "The Raven" is told primarily in the past tense as the speaker
recounts his experience with the raven, but the tense
occasionally moves into the speaker's present, most notably at
j Book Basics ................................................................................................. 1 the poem's close.

d In Context ..................................................................................................... 1 ABOUT THE TITLE

The title "The Raven" refers to the raven that visits and vexes
a Author Biography ..................................................................................... 2
the speaker on a winter's night.
h Characters .................................................................................................. 3

k Plot Summary ............................................................................................. 5

c Plot Analysis ............................................................................................... 6

d In Context
g Quotes ........................................................................................................... 8

l Symbols ...................................................................................................... 10
Gothic Literature
m Themes ........................................................................................................ 11 Gothic literature explores the dark side of the human condition:
death, loss, loneliness, nightmare, alienation, and the
e Suggested Reading ............................................................................... 12 supernatural. Many of Poe's poems and short stories deal with
one or several of these themes. His speakers and narrators
veer into melancholy or outright insanity, and they are usually
loners or outcasts living on the fringes of society. Much of his
j Book Basics work focuses on death or murder, presented with a creeping,
ominous mood of inescapability. Gothic literature generally
AUTHOR includes the following characteristics:
Edgar Allan Poe
Mysterious or supernatural plot elements
YEAR PUBLISHED Ominous and personified architectural settings
1845 Intense emotion and drama
Isolated, moody heroes
GENRE
Drama, Horror In "The Raven," a lonely scholar obsesses over his dead lover
until he's visited by a strange raven that speaks only one
PERSPECTIVE AND NARRATOR ominous word: "Nevermore." Poe uses the setting—midnight on
"The Raven" is narrated in the first person by an unnamed, a bleak December night—and the speaker's weak and weary
unreliable speaker. He is grief-stricken over the loss of his love, mindset, along with intensely sensual language describing
Lenore, and his mental state deteriorates over the course of death, ghosts, and angels, to evoke a mood of despair,
the poem. darkness, and slowly encroaching madness.
The Raven Study Guide
Poetic Elements
Poe uses alliteration, or the repetition of initial sounds at the
beginnings of words, to create rhythm and influence the mood
of the poem. For example, "While I nodded, nearly napping,
suddenly there came a tapping." The repetition of the n sound
creates a mood suited for slumber. The sudden tapping
startles the speaker as well as the reader.
The meter, or pattern of beats, of "The Raven" is designed to
give it a musical rhythm when read aloud. "The Raven"
comprises eight stressed-unstressed two syllable feet per line
(trochaic octameter). Poe adds to this rhythm by including
internal rhyme in each stanza, such as with "weary"/"dreary"
and "napping"/"tapping."
Poe uses assonance, or the repetition of a vowel sound, to
establish tone. For example, "over many a quaint and curious
volume of forgotten lore." The repetition of the long o sound
creates a tone that is mysterious.
In addition, Poe uses onomatopoeia, or words that mimic
sounds, to great effect. For example,
"tapping/rapping/napping" produce a staccato sound that
mimics the sound of the tapping present in the poem. It was
meant to be read aloud to evoke an effect, and also to
reinforce the poem's focus on speech. The raven speaks,
providing the refrain of "Nevermore" in many of the stanzas.
The name of the speaker's lost love, Lenore, rhymes with the
only word the raven utters, "Nevermore." It ties the woman to
the idea of finality, of loss and endings, reinforcing the theme
of the poem. With the use of alliteration, meter and internal
rhyme, assonance, onomatopoeia, and the refrain of
"Nevermore," Poe uses the sounds of the poem itself to evoke
his unity of effect and create an atmosphere of melancholy.
Poe's Philosophy of
Composition
Poe wrote the essay "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846)
after the success of "The Raven" to describe the process of
composing fiction.
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Author Biography 2
One Reading, One Effect
Poe believed that to be successful a work should be read in
one sitting and produce a single effect on the reader. In order
to solidify his desired effect, Poe wrote "The Raven" backward,
beginning with the third to last stanza. He chose his subject
with the idea that the death of a beautiful woman would be
most affecting: "death, then, of a beautiful woman is,
unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world—and
equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such
topic are those of a bereaved lover." He also believed in the
unity of impression, which was why he specified that a poem
should be able to be read in one sitting. To step away and
come back later would ruin the effect. Many of Poe's works
were written with this method.
Sound and Meaning
Poe experimented with tone to produce this desired effect on
his audience: "Melancholy is ... the most legitimate of all the
poetical tones." He wanted "to produce continuously novel
effects, by the variation of the application of the refrain—the
refrain itself remaining, for the most part, unvaried." In "The
Raven," Poe stresses the monotony of the refrain "Nevermore,"
as he manipulates its various meanings and possible
intonations to bring forth the desired emotional effect of
melancholy. Poe also states that the long o is the most
sonorous of all sounds in the English language. This deep,
ringing sound approximates the low moan of sorrow, loss, and
perhaps even the supernatural: "over," "ghost," "only," and so
on.
a Author Biography
Childhood and Education
Edgar Allan Poe's life was short and troubled. When Poe was
born on January 19, 1809, his father David and mother
Elizabeth already had one son, Henry. After Poe was born they
had a daughter named Rosalie. Both parents were actors.
Before the young Edgar turned three, his mother had died from
tuberculosis and his father had abandoned the family. Similar
losses followed him throughout his life. He lost both his brother
The Raven Study Guide
Henry and his wife Virginia to either tuberculosis or cholera.
Soon after Poe was orphaned, he was taken in by a wealthy
merchant named John Allan and his wife Frances, who had
known Poe's mother. Poe's siblings went to live with other
families. Poe started attending the University of Virginia in
1826, but he had to leave after just a year due to drinking,
gambling, and excessive debt, brought on in part by his foster
father's refusal to provide him with the resources he felt
befitting a man of his station. He joined the army in 1827, and a
year later he published his first book of poems, Tamerlane and
Other Poems, followed by Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor
Poems in 1829. Neither collection brought him much attention
or money. He entered the United States Military Academy at
West Point in 1830, but the Academy dismissed him when he
flaunted their rules. (One longstanding rumor has it that he
showed up for drills wearing only a belt and a smile.) He never
graduated.
Early Career and Writings
After leaving West Point Poe wrote for several years before
landing a staff position in 1835 as a literary critic at the
Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, Virginia. That same
year, when he was 27, he married his 13-year-old cousin
Virginia. Poe became an influential editor at the literary journal,
but real fame came from his own writing. Although his early
poetry didn't win him the praise he wanted, his later poems
were highly respected. Works such as "Lenore" (1843), "The
Raven" (1845), and "Annabel Lee" (1849) unite technical
precision with vivid imagery and explore themes such as
unrequited love, death, and despair.
Poe's writing follows principles of composition he explored as
a literary critic and theorist. In essays such as "The Philosophy
of Composition" (1846), he developed ideas about artistic
creation and the short story that are still extremely influential.
Chief among these are his emphasis on brevity and portraying
characters truthfully; exploring the ways people think, feel, and
behave in real life; and ensuring every element in a work, from
the first sentence to the last, contributes to "unity of effect."
For Graham's Magazine, he reviewed American author
Nathaniel Hawthorne's first volume of stories, Twice-Told
Tales. Hawthorne was not well-known at the time, and Poe's
praise for Hawthorne's innovative writing style and "unity of
effect" helped change that.
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Characters 3
Poe also left his mark on short fiction. His stories featuring the
fictional detective C. Auguste Dupin helped create the modern
detective genre and directly influenced later fictional
detectives such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.
Stories such as "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans
Pfaall" (1835), which involved a trip to the moon, and "Mellonta
Tauta" (1849), which included futuristic transatlantic air travel,
were some of the first science fiction ever written. Finally, Poe
is known as the father of modern horror, especially
psychological horror. He raised Gothic fiction—fiction that
combines horror, death, and sometimes romance—to high art
in stories such as "The Black Cat" (1843), "The Fall of the
House of Usher" (1839), and "The Pit and the Pendulum"
(1842). His work has inspired hundreds of adaptations,
imitations, and parodies.
Death and Legacy
Poe fought depression and alcoholism his entire adult life.
These worsened after his wife Virginia died in 1847. He died
just two years later, on October 7, 1849, after being found
delirious in a gutter. The cause of his death remains a mystery;
it has been variously attributed to alcohol poisoning, rabies (a
fairly common virus at the time), pneumonia, or suicide, among
other causes.
"The Raven" was among the works that cemented Poe as a
literary sensation. More than a century later, the poem remains
one of Poe's most famous and widely read works, exploring
themes common in his writings, such as death, loss, and the
supernatural. It also showcases his imaginative prowess,
musicality, and deftness with descriptive and emotionally
evocative language.
h Characters
The Speaker
The speaker is a scholar mourning the loss of his beloved
Lenore. He tries to keep his mind off of her by reading, but he
is beset by melancholy thoughts of her. When a raven enters
his room, he is at first amused, and then angered by its
responses to his questions of life, death, and the afterlife. He
The Raven Study Guide Characters 4

gives in to despair.

The Raven
The raven says only one word—"Nevermore"—that the speaker
interprets in different ways to answer his own questions. The
bird serves as a device to explore the speaker's grief.

Lenore
Lenore is a young woman. The speaker refers to her as a "rare
and radiant maiden."

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The Raven Study Guide
Full Character List
Character Description
The speaker is a man sitting alone in his
The Speaker
room thinking about a lost love.
The raven is a bird that flies into the
The Raven
speaker's room.
Lenore Lenore is the speaker's dead love.
k Plot Summary
Stanzas 1–3
On a midnight in December, the speaker reads over old books
for the purpose of easing his sadness over the death of his
beloved Lenore. He falls into a doze, only to wake when he
hears a knock on his door. As he sits debating who could be at
his door, his imagination begins to run away with him.
Stanzas 4–6
He finally convinces himself that it is just a late-night visitor at
his door and asks for forgiveness for his hesitation in
answering. He'd been napping, he explains to the visitor as he
approaches the door, and wasn't sure he'd actually heard the
knocking, thinking it might have been a dream. However, when
he opens the door, there is no one there. He stands in the
doorway, gazing into the darkness and doubting his senses. He
thinks he hears a whispered word—"Lenore"—before going
back inside his room. Soon he hears a tapping at his window.
He suspects it is the wind and goes to investigate.
Stanzas 7–9
When he opens the window a raven steps inside. It flies into
the room and perches on the bust of Pallas Athena that sits
above his door. At first the speaker is amused by the raven's
manner. He asks the bird's name, to which the raven replies,
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Plot Summary 5
"Nevermore." The speaker is surprised that the raven can
speak, even though the word it says doesn't make sense in
context. The raven says nothing else, sitting silently on the
statue.
Stanzas 10–12
The speaker mentions with a sense of sorrow that the
raven—like everyone else in his life—will leave him in the
morning. Once again, the raven croaks, "Nevermore." He is
shocked, but then explains away the bird's utterance as a sign
of the bird's previous owner's terrible misfortunes. He still finds
the bird interesting and amusing, and so takes a seat in front of
the bird and the bust. He tries to figure out what the bird
means by "nevermore."
Stanzas 13–15
As he sits, he thinks of his lost love, Lenore, who will never
again sit in the chair. At the thought of her, the speaker feels
something in the air and smells incense in the closed room. He
gets angry, asking for a potion of some kind that will make him
forget Lenore and the memories of her that torture him. The
raven replies, "Nevermore," enraging him further. The speaker
calls the bird a prophet, but whether for good or evil remains to
be seen. He asks the bird if there is "balm in Gilead" that will
quell the pain of his remembrance. The Raven answers once
again: "Nevermore."
Stanzas 16–18
Next, the speaker asks the bird if he has any hope of reuniting
with Lenore in heaven. The raven replies with the same answer
as always, driving the speaker into further fits of rage.
Furiously he orders the raven to leave him to his loneliness and
despair. The raven again says, "Nevermore." The final stanza,
which moves into the present of the speaker's retelling, sees
the raven still sitting in the chamber, perched on the bust of
Pallas Athena. The speaker has succumbed fully to his despair
and sees himself engulfed in the raven's shadow forever.
The Raven Study Guide
c Plot Analysis
The Supernatural
References to the supernatural are rife within "The Raven."
While Poe never confirms whether the raven is a supernatural
entity or a product of the speaker's subconscious, an argument
can still be made from clues within the text.
He first hears a knock on his chamber door, only to open it and
find no one there. Yet before opening it, he is struck with a
terror of the unknown. Overcoming his fears, he gazes into the
empty corridor and thinks he hears a whispered "Lenore" in
response to his own whispered question. He's already grieving
for his lost love, already primed to be haunted by her ghost as
he tries to lose himself in study to stop dwelling on his
memories of her.
With the arrival of the raven, more supernatural elements creep
into the poem. The raven itself is often used as a supernatural
emissary, a way of communicating with the unknown. The
speaker questions where the bird might have come from. He
equates the bird's source with Pluto, the Roman god of the
Underworld, cementing further the idea of ghostly
communications about the afterlife.
In a later stanza, the speaker thinks he smells incense from
"some unseen censer swung by Seraphim," which brings the
supposed presence of angels into the poem. Is the speaker
hallucinating or is he being visited by a heavenly being? Is he
being haunted by actual creatures or by the grief in his own
mind? The angels are a heavenly force, negated by the raven's
own darkness and its answers of "nevermore" to the speaker's
queries.
The raven is given more sinister intent by the end of the poem,
as it stays perched on the statue of Athena. It looks down on
the speaker, seemingly casting some kind of spell on him,
snaring his soul in its shadow. Whether the speaker
succumbed to his grief or the sinister force animating the
raven is something we are left to ponder. The poem walks the
line between suggesting the presence of forces of the
subconscious and forces of the supernatural, giving it much of
its narrative punch.
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Plot Analysis 6
Setting and Mood
Poe uses atmosphere to build the dread evident in the last line
of the poem. Every choice he makes is designed to create one
singular effect on the reader. To that end, Poe chooses the
time of day and year for a specific purpose. It is midnight, the
closing of the day, in December, the last month of the year. The
day is ending and the year is ending, reinforcing the imagery of
death already present in the poem, as when the speaker notes
how "each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the
floor." Images and words combine to evoke death—the dying of
the day, of the year, of the fire, of Lenore. This line also
enhances the supernatural element of the poem by introducing
the idea of things beyond our knowledge at work with the
mention of a ghost, soon to be reinforced by a mysterious
knocking and the feeling of a strange presence.
The room the speaker sits in also sets the mood of the poem,
and it is complete with all the trappings of Gothic literature.
The speaker sits alone in the dark on a bleak, stormy
December night. He's studying to distract himself from
constant thoughts of Lenore, his dead love. Shadows are
thrown throughout the room by the light of the dying fire. He's
disturbed by the arrival of the raven in a flurry of wind and
swirling curtains, an entrance rife with drama and portent.
Poe seeds the poem with images of darkness that encroach
more and more on the speaker. It's night, the fire is dying, and
there is a storm brewing outside the room. When the speaker
opens the door, all that greets him is a darkened, empty
hallway. The raven is a black bird that casts a long shadow that
will eventually envelop the speaker, symbolizing the darkness
in his soul.
Rationality and Madness
As "The Raven" progresses, the speaker is consumed with his
memories of Lenore. She's mentioned in passing in the second
stanza, "Nameless here for evermore." She is always on his
mind, as shown in the fifth stanza: "And the only word there
spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?" / This I whispered,
and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!"—." When he
opens his door to find no one there, he immediately makes the
jump to Lenore. This is another instance of the Gothic
sensibility that infuses the poem—the possible presence of the
supernatural. Was there someone at the door or did the
The Raven Study Guide Plot Analysis 7

speaker imagine the knocking? Is the speaker being haunted
by Lenore? Is it all in his head? Is he mad? Is he a reliable
speaker? These are questions we have to ask as we continue
on with the speaker's story.
The speaker's emotional state shifts throughout the course of
"The Raven," and the narrative voice reflects this change. In the
first stanza he is calm, if weary and melancholy. As the poem
progresses, his agitation grows as his imagination or the
supernatural begins to assault him.
Once the raven appears, the speaker attempts to explain its
presence and strangeness through rational means. Again,
there is an air of the otherworldly about the bird's arrival: "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." The raven is described with human characteristics; the
speaker uses aristocratic terms, giving it a proud air. It does
not ask permission, but rather steps inside as if it owns the
place.
The speaker is first pleased by the arrival of the raven, and
amused by its behavior. He wonders if it was sent by angels as
some messenger to bring him comfort. Here the speaker's
state of mind is suspect. He is attributing human behavior to an
animal. Is he mad? Has he gone insane from the grief of losing
Lenore or is there more to this raven than meets the eye?
give him—"Nevermore"—but compelled to ask anyway. The
breakdown of his mental state is reflected in his narration. He
alternately begs and yells at the bird in later stanzas, eventually
ordering it out of his house. The narrative voice changes from
one of logic to one of madness.
When the bird tells him that he will not be reunited with Lenore
in the afterlife, the speaker loses hope entirely, his reason
overthrown. This is evident in the final lines of the poem: "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 is no
longer seeking escape from his remembrance, he is wallowing
in his grief. The speaker's despair has overwhelmed him, his
logical arguments abandoned as the bird sits atop the bust of
Pallas Athena, the goddess of wisdom, looking down on him.
The final image intimates that rationality (Athena) has been
overthrown by irrationality (the raven). With the final line, we
can see that he has succumbed to a grief-driven madness and
the dread that has been haunting both the speaker and the
reader has finally arrived.

His rational arguments continue to break down as the raven

gives him one word answers. At first, the speaker is amused by
the bird's aspect, going so far as to ask for its "lordly name,"
and surprised when it answers him. But as the poem
progresses, the speaker's explanations and questions become
more desperate and his mental stability must be called into
question. He thinks he smells incense: "Then, methought, the
air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer / Swung by
Seraphim," reminding us of his deteriorating mental state and
the Gothic sensibilities of the poem. Are there angels present
or is this just a delusion brought on by grief? He grows more
anxious and angrier with each of the raven's utterances of
"Nevermore." Now, he believes the bird was sent by dark
forces to torment him, to deprive him of the hope of being
reunited with Lenore.

Eventually the speaker yells at the bird, calling it, "Prophet!"

said I, "thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—" and
pleading with it to give him answers to his questions. He verges
on hopelessness, already suspecting the answer the bird will

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The Raven Study Guide Quotes 8

by the foul weather. The raven is given a noble descriptor and

g Quotes assigned a feeling of great age and import.

"Once upon a midnight dreary." "But, with mien of lord or lady,

— The Speaker
perched above my chamber door—
/ Perched upon a bust of Pallas."
This opening line establishes the mood of the poem by offering
a bleak setting. — The Speaker

The speaker likens the bird to a nobleman or woman,

"Vainly I had sought to borrow / personifying it and giving it human characteristics. It enters his

From my books surcease of rooms as though it belongs there and then sits on the statue of
Athena, the goddess of wisdom.
sorrow—sorrow for the lost
Lenore."
"Tell me what thy lordly name is on
— The Speaker the Night's Plutonian shore!"

The speaker introduces Lenore and her death. He uses study — The Speaker
to fend off his sorrow and grief at her passing.

The speaker speaks to the raven as if to a human, as if it will

answer him. He makes reference to the god of the underworld,
"And the only word there spoken and ties the raven to images of death and darkness.

was the whispered word,

"Lenore?"" "Quoth the Raven "Nevermore.""

— The Speaker — The Speaker

Upon finding no one at his door, the speaker briefly wonders if The raven's response to every question the speaker asks is
it is Lenore's spirit reaching out to communicate with him, "Nevermore." The speaker assigns different meanings and
giving a supernatural air to the poem and making us doubt the intonations to the bird's response.
speaker's reliability.

"Other friends have flown before—

"In there stepped a stately Raven
/ On the morrow he will leave me,
of the saintly days of yore."
as my Hopes have flown before."
— The Speaker
— The Speaker

The raven appears at the speaker's window, brought by there

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The Raven Study Guide Quotes 9

The speaker fears the raven will abandon him, as hope has as a prophet—foretelling the future—or as an infernal beast. He
abandoned him. Lenore's death has left him grieving and wonders if the raven has been sent by the devil or simply
despairing of the future without her, to the point that he feels arrived due to the storm. He is assigning supernatural agency
hopeless. This drives home his feelings of isolation. to the bird.

"Then, methought, the air grew "Is there—is there balm in Gilead?"
denser, perfumed from an unseen
— The Speaker
censer / Swung by Seraphim
whose foot-falls tinkled on the Gilead is heaven, and the speaker asks the raven if he will be
reunited with Lenore when he dies. That would give him hope
tufted floor." and make the memories easier to bear.

— The Speaker

"Tell this soul with sorrow laden if,

The speaker thinks he smells incense in the air and ascribes it
to angels from heaven, where he believes Lenore awaits him.
within the distant Aidenn, / It shall
Whether he is visited by the supernatural or is just hallucinating clasp a sainted maiden whom the
due to madness is left up to interpretation.
angels name Lenore."

"Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe — The Speaker

and forget this lost Lenore!"

Again the speaker asks for confirmation that he will meet
Lenore in the afterlife, hoping for a more palatable answer. His
— The Speaker grief is turning to madness as he begins to hound the bird for
an answer it cannot give.
The speaker wishes to forget his memories of Lenore since
they cause him so much pain. He'd rather forget her than go on
remembering what he's lost. "Take thy beak from out my heart
and take thy form from off my
""Prophet!" said I, "thing of door!"
evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—
— The Speaker
/ Whether Tempter sent, or
whether tempest tossed thee here The speaker orders the bird away after receiving an
unsatisfactory answer. It has killed his dream of reunion with
ashore."" Lenore.

— The Speaker

"And my soul from out that

The speaker associates the raven with the supernatural, either
shadow that lies floating on the

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The Raven Study Guide
floor / Shall be lifted—nevermore!"
— The Speaker
The speaker has given in to his despair. The raven sits on the
bust of Athena and watches over the speaker as he sits in the
chair and gives himself over to his madness.
l Symbols
The Raven
Poe wrote in his essay "The Philosophy of Composition" that
he meant for the raven to be the primary symbol in the poem.
Ravens were often viewed as harbingers of death, evil, and the
supernatural. The speaker is lost in grieving remembrance of
Lenore when the raven appears to him. The bird can be viewed
as a supernatural emissary, a way of communicating with the
unknown.
Ravens were also viewed as messengers, especially in Norse
mythology where the two ravens that served Odin, the father
of the Nordic gods, were called Thought and Memory. The
speaker is torturing himself with memories of his lost love, and
the raven could be a physical manifestation of those memories.
Unfortunately, when the speaker asks the raven for assurance
that he will see Lenore in heaven, the raven tells him,
"Nevermore." Here, the raven represents a different kind of
ending in death. Instead of reuniting in the afterlife, the lovers
will be parted forever. Death is truly the end. The raven is the
death of hope that was sustaining the speaker.
The raven also symbolizes the unconscious or the unknowable.
The speaker is a scholar, a man of thought and fact and logic.
He is rationality, the ego or a person's sense of reality and
identity. The raven represents the unknown, flying in from a
dark storm at midnight, a physical embodiment of the id or
impulse behavior. The speaker attempts to reason with the
bird, explaining its presence at his window, its ability to speak,
its apparent knowledge; but his reason ultimately fails him. The
bird is the incarnation of the unknowable, and no matter how
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Symbols 10
he tries, the speaker cannot figure out the logic of the bird's
one-word answers. The triumph of the unknowable over the
rational, the id over the ego, is expressed in the final image of
the raven, perched on the bust of Pallas Athena (the goddess
of wisdom and patron of scholars), looking down at the
defeated speaker. The unknowable has won.
The Bust of Pallas Athena
Pallas is a reference to Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of
wisdom and battle strategy. The speaker is a scholar, so it
makes sense that he would have a small statue of her in his
chambers. The bust of Athena also represents the rational
mind or ego and logical thought. The raven lands and perches
atop the bust, placing itself above reason and logic. It
supplants the speaker's ordered mind, taking precedence over
rationality. Even as the speaker attempts to ascertain the
raven's presence in his room through reasonable questions, we
can see him growing more and more unstable with every
answer of "Nevermore." He's approaching his breaking point.
When, in the final stanza, the raven sits unmoving atop the bust
of Athena, it symbolizes order overthrown by chaos, and the
speaker's loss of rational thought. The known has succumbed
to the power of the unknown.
There is also a physical juxtaposition of the statue and the bird.
The bust of Athena is made of marble or other pale stone. The
raven is a black bird. We see a contrast between the light and
the dark, white and black, day and night, life and death. This
type of symbolic contrast is common in Gothic literature. The
bust and the bird serve as visual representation of the two
forces that pull at the speaker and help sustain the effect of
the poem.
Pluto
Pluto is the Roman god of wealth and the underworld (taking
the Greek Hades' position in the pantheon). The speaker
mentions that the raven could have come from "Night's
Plutonian shore." This a reference to darkness (Night) and
death (Pluto), and ties in to the idea of ravens being
The Raven Study Guide
messengers or harbingers of death or ill omen. Coming from
"Night's Plutonian shore" also reinforces the idea that the bird
might actually possess the knowledge the speaker seeks
about the afterlife and could explain why he questions the
raven about seeing Lenore again.
When the speaker rages at the raven after getting an answer
he does not like with "Prophet still, if bird or devil," he ties the
raven more closely to the underworld by calling it a devil. While
the ancient Greeks and Romans did not have a Christian hell,
they did believe in a level of punishment in the underworld that
functioned like hell. The raven is associated with the darkness
and death of the underworld.
m Themes
Madness and Despair
"The Raven" is a poetical study of grief. The speaker attempts
to stave off his sorrow at the passing of Lenore using rational
means, but grief is not rational. As the poem progresses, he
veers further and further away from rational thought. The bust
of Athena, the goddess of wisdom, looks down on him from the
very beginning of the poem, but she—representing rational
thought—is overcome in the end by the symbolic despair
embodied in the raven.
Throughout the poem, the speaker is trying to convince himself
of something. First, he convinces himself that he is not being
haunted by Lenore when he opens the door to his chamber to
find no one there. He clings to his rational explanation of the
sound of knocking. When the raven appears, he attempts to
reason its presence at his window, saying that it escaped from
its master and fled the storm. Its speech, he supposes, is the
bird parroting a word it heard from said master.
The speaker is trying to ground the strange circumstances in
the ordinary, but with little success. As he continues to
question the bird, he grows increasingly upset with every
response of "Nevermore." His reason begins to break down, as
he becomes desperate for a different answer. His rational
attempts to deal with the raven cannot overcome the
strangeness of the situation in the face of his grief. The
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Themes 11
speaker obsesses over his reunion with Lenore, losing his hold
on rationality.
The speaker is the one who assigns context to the raven's
answers. The raven only speaks one word, which the speaker
ascribes meaning to. He asks the same question in several
ways, hoping for a different answer, even
though—rationally—he realizes the raven is probably repeating
the only word it knows. His grief has driven him to madness.
Once his hope is dashed by the raven's final answer, he
succumbs to his grief-fueled despair. The raven has
overthrown reason, as symbolized by its perch upon the bust
of Athena. Rational thought has succumbed to madness.
Death and the Afterlife
"The Raven" explores man's relationship with death,
specifically the effect of a loved one's death on those left
behind. We see the progression of the speaker's grief
throughout "The Raven." He sits alone in his room—a room and
a chair where Lenore once sat, as he says in a later stanza:
"But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
/She shall press, ah, nevermore!" The speaker is engulfed in
memories of Lenore, and he retreats to his books to find
solace from remembering. It is possible that the speaker looks
through his books of "forgotten lore" seeking a way to bring
Lenore back from the dead. It would certainly be in keeping
with some of Poe's other works, such as "Ligeia" or "The
Masque of the Red Death," where characters attempt to cheat
death. Regardless, the speaker is attempting to stave off the
pain of Lenore's loss through study.
Upon the raven's arrival, the speaker asks for the creature's
name: "Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian
shore!" The speaker, and Poe by extension, already equates
the raven's presence with death, tying the two together with
his reference to Pluto, Roman god of the underworld and
overseer of the afterlife. Because ravens were often seen as
messengers, associating the raven with Pluto suggests that
the bird brings a message from beyond.
In a later stanza, the speaker asks, "Is there balm in Gilead?"
Gilead is another name for heaven; the speaker is asking if he
will see Lenore again in heaven. Death may have taken Lenore
from him too soon, but he desperately hopes to be reunited
The Raven Study Guide Suggested Reading 12

with her in the afterlife. Poe takes a darker view as to the Interpretation, vol. 31, no. 1, 1998, pp. 23–31.
afterlife in "The Raven" than in other poems such as "Lenore."
The raven's answer to his question is "Nevermore," destroying Pahl, Dennis. "Sounding the Sublime: Poe, Burke, and the

the speaker's fragile hope in reuniting in the afterlife. There is (Non)Sense of Language." Poe Studies, vol. 42, no. 1, 2009, pp.

nothing to hope for after death. 41–60.

Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Philosophy of Composition." Graham's

Magazine, vol. 28, no. 4, Apr. 1846, pp. 163–67.

Loss and Grief

"The Raven" is a study in loss and grief. The speaker's lover,

Lenore, has died. Thoughts of her consume him, even when he
tries to distract himself. Many scholars have drawn parallels
between the speaker and Poe, who likewise lost his wife at a
young age. (Poe's wife, Virginia, was suffering from
tuberculosis when he composed the poem.) Though "The
Raven" is not considered biographical, the speaker's feelings
of grief are incredibly vivid and affecting. The loss of a loved
one is a universal experience, and Poe chose this theme of loss
to deliver the most profound effect he could.

When the speaker asks the raven if there is any hope he might
be reunited with Lenore after his own death, his question
mirrors those same hopes and fears within the reader. The
speaker's reaction of outrage and anger at not getting the
answer he wanted from the raven reflect common feelings of
anger and grief at being denied what is most desired.

There is another type of loss at work in the poem: the loss of

the past. There are many allusions made to the bygone era: the
speaker reads "forgotten lore," the raven is from "saintly days
of yore," the bust is of Pallas Athena, an ancient Greek
goddess. The antiquated language used in the poem reflects a
time long past. An obsession with the past is also a convention
of the Gothic, as mentioned above. Not only is the speaker in
mourning for a lost love, he is mourning a lost way of life or
world that has succumbed to time.

e Suggested Reading
Fisher, Benjamin Franklin. The Cambridge Introduction to Edgar
Allan Poe. Cambridge UP, 2008.

Freedman, William. "Poe's 'Raven': The Word That Is an Answer

'Nevermore.'" Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism: History Theory,

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