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Andrew Nott
Ms. Merritt
English 9
15 March 2013
The Harbinger of Death
By looking at Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, “The Raven”, it is evident that he uses cognitive
effects and patterns to grieve for a lost mistress and trudge through a home of despair, only to be
visited by a stoic raven heralding a simple message filled with meaning. This is important
because without the visitor, he never would have broken his stupor or accept his lost mistress.
Edgar Allan Poe’s poem creates an extremely disheartened tone through repetition,
rhyme, and imagery. This can be seen in the line, “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I
pondered, weak and weary,” (Poe 1-2), which opens up the scene with a dark, cold, tired tone,
the image of midnight embedded right from the start. “Dreary” and “weary” rhyme, making
them memorable and adding to the tone of disheartened coldness. This theme is repeated
throughout the poem, as seen in this line: “And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost
upon the floor.”(Poe 14-15), which instills a sense of death, a departure of warmth, and the cold
presence of lingering ghosts. This is interesting because it doesn’t only imply that the room is
cold, but that it was once warm, making the reader curious as to what happened that could take
the life out of the room.
Edgar Allan Poe uses patterns such as repetition to lend a backbone to the poem, tying
every block together in a simple, yet noticeable, way. “More” is repeated at the end of every
block, in one form or another, and always rhymes with a word in the previous line. This can be
seen at the end of the first block, “at my chamber door; Only this, and nothing more.” (Poe 10-
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11), and second block, “the angels name Lenore, Nameless here forevermore.” (Poe 21-22).
This repetition ties the poem together, giving a larger meaning to the word “more”, and
introduces emphasis on it for reasons unknown to the reader. Later on, the dark raven squawks
but one word repeatedly: “Nevermore”. This is interesting because Poe manages to take a
common word and apply a dark connotation to it through repetition and assigning it to a
character. From this point, “more” is associated with dark, longing, and lost; qualities that a
raven is associated with.
Rhyme is heavily used throughout “The Raven” to give a rhythm to the poem. Rhyme is
particularly noticeable in the line, “While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a
tapping, As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.” (Poe 5-8), giving the lines
great rhythm and making them highly memorable. Interestingly, “rapping” and “tapping” mean
the same thing, so repetition is also used, distinguishing the lines even further.
In The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe uses personification to lend character to otherwise silent
presences. This plays a key part in the poem, giving life to both his woeful soul and a
mysterious raven perched outside his door. This is first seen in the line, “Presently my soul grew
stronger; hesitating then no longer,” (Poe 33-34), and addresses his soul as if it were another
person in the room. Instead of the main character directly feeling emotions, they are projected
into the “soul” character, making them much easier to visualize.
The Raven is about a man coping with the loss of a lost love named Lenore. This can be
seen in the line, “From my books surcease of sorrow, sorrow for the lost Lenore,. For the rare
and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore, Nameless here forevermore.” (Poe 18-22),
which shows that he has not yet accepted her death, keeping his mind off of her with books and
lingering around his house. On a dreary December midnight he is visited by a mysterious raven
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that repeats “Nevermore”, implying that Lenore’s soul is gone forever, and he shall see her
“nevermore”. A harsh reality, he opposes the bird, but it stays perched above his door, a
constant reminder of his lost love, Lenore.