Poetry Explication of The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe

The Raven Allan Poe, poem is about the encounter of a heart broken man and a raven. It is ahorrific kind of writing as described by the striking image of the Raven. I choose to explicate this poem by looking at its meaning, words, images, and elements within it. We get a haunted feeling and a grasp of its deep story line makes it fascinating.

Meaning

The poem is simply a dark mirror image describing the sorrowful lose of a lover by a young man. Death and loss of hope is also eminent (Poe 60-61). The narrator represents a young man who has lost her poignant lover as he tries to bury all those melancholic feelings through books. This does not seem to help, as his night of loneliness turns worse by a visit of a Raven, who repeatedly chants words of doom as the speaker gazes at it. The theme of sadness as epitomized by the character of the speaker, and death as shown through lose of a loved one dominate the poem. The characters in the poem present two sets of the world. The imagery of Angels and the lamplight the writer uses reflect light while Raven represents the symbols of doom. The poem is a culmination of an afterlife of the man with her lover Lenore and his dread of overstretching loneliness.

Words

The poem explains itself through the diction (words) used, and they help one to analyze the poem. For example, the Raven description by use of such words as ‘grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore’ gives a vivid description the Raven (Poe 78-98). It is termed to be horrible and disgusting in appearance. The writer also uses words that express fear such as evil, plutonian, denser and nevermore. They indicate the scariness of the condition. Hope is limited only doom seems possible. In the poem, the words midnight and December feature. They symbolically bring the meaning of an end of something, which was happening and, beginning of hope of something new to happen. The writer uses the word chamber to seal the magnitude of loneliness that the speaker experiences.

Image

Imagery used in the poem assembles all the feelings that surround it. According to the speaker, Lenore, her lover, and the Angels who descent; describes an image of a world that glitters with light and hope. Look at the hope that the speaker attaches to the two images. It is a great one indeed. The other image of light that comes clean is the lamplight that gives him the ability to se in the scary night of December. On the contrary, the speaker expresses his suffering using such images as the Raven and the month of December. Both represent the dark days of agony and loneliness he is going through due to lose of her lover. When you merge the images in this poem into two, light and darkness, they give out a picture of life and death. This is the situation the speaker in going through in his life.

Elements

The poem ‘Raven’ carries diverse elements: rhyme, repetition, tone, image, symbolism, moreover, poetic sound patterns that express his feelings. For example, Rhyme adds emphasis to the meaning of the poem (Poe 35-36, 59-60). In each verse of the poem, the stress is emphasized in the word ‘more’ or ‘nevermore’. The poem’s tone comes overtly. Through the speaker, one can realize that most of the stanzas he is lamenting. This automatically gives you a sad tone. The horrid description of the Raven present an ugly physical appearance the speaker sees of the Raven. Poe has successfully configured repletion to highlight the deep-sited meaning in the poem, The Raven.

Work cited
Poe, Edgar. The Raven. Boston: MobileReference,com, 1895.