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Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
Edgar Allan Poe
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from https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-raven/summary-and-analysis
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 mortal 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 somewhat 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 the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing farther 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 fancy 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!
Summary, Analysis
On a cold night, at midnight, the narrator is sitting by himself, “weak and weary,” reading an old book full of “forgotten lore” and nodding off. When he is suddenly awakened by something knocking at his door, he assures himself that it’s “nothing more” than a visitor.
The cold night, book of “forgotten lore,” and sudden knock establish the gothic mood and at the same time mark the narrator as a scholar. That the narrator drowses off before the knock makes it unclear if he’s awake or dreaming through the rest of the poem, whether what happens is supernatural or subconscious. Note also how he at first explains the knock rationally, using “nothing more” to assure himself the knocking has a rational origin, though the fact that he has to assure himself at all indicates his uncertainty. Both his rationality and doubt are on display.
The narrator then explains that he remembers that all this happened back in December. As the fire slowly dies, each dying ember like a “ghost,” he wishes for the night to pass so that he might escape from his sorrow over Lenore, his dead beloved. To distract himself from thinking about her, he says, he has been reading, but without success.
The framing of the poem as a memory emphasizes how the events of the poem continue to haunt him. Here the poem also introduces the fact that the narrator is grief-stricken over his dead love Lenore, and is trying to escape that grief by reading. The fire, too, is dying. The poem vividly establishes its concerns with death and memory, and casts memory (both of his dead love, and of the raven) not as something desired but as a burden the narrator wishes he could escape, but can’t.
When the curtains rustle, the narrator is suddenly frightened. Once again he tells himself that it’s merely a visitor, and “nothing more.”Finding some measure of courage, he calls out to whoever is knocking at the door of the room, and apologizes that he was taking so long to come to the door because he was napping.
As his fear increases, the narrator again asserts his rationality, using “nothing more” to deny the knocking could be supernatural and then acting “normal” by calling out and apologizing. But all of this effort to assure himself that there are rational answers to the knock show how, lost in grief, his rationality is already under siege. Meanwhile, the mention of napping again raises the possibility, without giving an answer one way or another, that the narrator is actually dreaming all this.
The narrator opens the door, only to find that nobody is there. He stands at the entrance to his room, staring into the darkness, equally hopeful and fearful, “dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.” He whispers “Lenore” into the darkness and hears in response only an echo – Lenore! – and “nothing more.”
Although the narrator began the poem trying to forget Lenore, in a moment of irrational hope he allows himself to wonder ifshe could possibly have returned from the dead. Suddenly it’s clear that narrator, while fearful, also wantsthe supernatural: he can’t escape the memories of his lost love, and desperately wants her to return, even if it’s as a ghost. But now the “nothing more” is turned against him to dash those hopes: earlier he used the phrase to assert rationality, but now that he is hopeful of his lost love’s supernatural return, the real world asserts itself and he is forced to realize the name is just an echo and “nothing more.”
Suddenly, the narrator hears a knocking at his window, and he opens it. The Raven flies in, perching atop a bust of Pallas above the door. At first, the narrator finds the bird’s “grave and stern decorum” amusing, and asks it for its name. To his bemusement, the bird responds “Nevermore.” The narrator remarks to himself that what the Raven says must be “stock and store,” words picked up by copying those from a previous master. But, unable to contain his curiosity, he grabs a velvet chair and sits directly in front of the bird, trying to understand what this “ominous bird of yore” means by “Nevermore.” All the while, he imagines that Lenore might be near.
Pallas Athena is the Greco-Roman goddess of wisdom and learning. The bird’s landing place on the statue thereforeimplies a kind of opposition to such rationality. Note how at first the narrator finds the bird merely amusing, and he quickly develops a rational answer to how the bird learned the word “Nevermore.” But curiosity – the desire to learn more, to venture into the unknown – drives him to want to understand the bird. And his sense of Lenore’s presence implies that his curiosity is driven by a not-all-that rational sense that the bird might be able to give him news of his lost love. Also note how similar the bird’s “nevermore” is to the narrator’s earlier “nothing more,” except that he used “nothing more” to assert rationality, while the bird’s “nevermore” will do exactly the opposite.
The narrator then perceives that the air has become “denser, perfumed from an unseen censer,” and says it must indicate the presence of “Seraphim,” or angels, sent from God to help him recover from his grief over losing Lenore. He wonders if he might be able to “quaff this kind nepenthe” — to forget about her entirely. The Raven, however, answers “Nevermore.”
Earlier the narrator hoped to be reunited with Lenore by supernatural means. Now suddenly he senses another possibility, that he might be saved from his painful memories by supernatural means: the “nepenthe,” a mythological potion of forgetfulness. But whereas earlier the narrator explained the Raven’s words as rote learning from a former master, now in his growing mania, he takes the Ravenseriously and is crushed when it answers his pleas with “Nevermore.”
Growing more anxious, the narrator asks the Raven if there is “balm in Gilead” —if heaven will give him some hope of seeing Lenore again. The bird, as usual, responds “Nevermore.” The narrator asks again if he and Lenore might meet once more “within the distant Aidenn,” or Eden, but again the bird responds “Nevermore” in response. Now furious and heartbroken, the narrator screams at the bird to return to “the Night’s Plutonian shore!” and never return. But the bird does not depart.
The narrator’s relentless questions, despite the fact that the bird always answers the same way, show how the narrator’s rationality has not just failed in helping him understand the bird, but pushed him to despair and near-madness. First, in his fervor to understand the bird’s meaning, he has lost sight of the fact that the bird might not have any meaning at all – that its words might be nonsense. Once he gives that up, his mind slips into a kind of interpretive frenzy, finding meaning in everything, and seeing the Raven’s “nevermore” as denying all his hopes of reuniting with Lenore. He’s fallen down a kind of rabbit hole, in which he tries to figure out the unknowable – the raven, death – and with each failure only tries harder until he erupts in fury and despair.
As the poem ends, the narrator is overcome by despair, while the Raven “never flitting, still is sitting” on the bust of Pallas. The narrator concludes by saying he continues to live in the bird’s inescapable shadow.
The Raven’s refusal to leave parallels the narrator’s memories of Lenore, which likewise never dissipate, suggesting that death and grieving for the dead are inescapable. Further, the Raven sitting, forever, on the bust of Pallas suggests that the narrator’s ability to reason has been permanently diminished and overwhelmed by the unknowable. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether the Raven is a supernatural visitor, a product of the narrator’s dream, or a random bird that learned one word. In each case, it is the narrator’s own doubts in the face of loss, memory, and the unknown that have driven away his rational peace forevermore.
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.
At the beginning of the poem, the narrator is mourning alone in a dark, cheerless room. He portrays himself as trying to find “surcease of sorrow” by reading his books. One might read this as an effort to distract himself and thereby escape the pain of the death of a loved one. One might also interpret the narrator’s reading of books of “forgotten lore” to indicate that he is looking for arcane knowledge about how to reverse death. In either case, his reaction to the death of a loved one is rather typical: to try to escape the pain of it, or to attempt to deny death.
Before the Raven’s arrival, the narrator hears a knocking at the door of his room, and after finding no one there calls “Lenore?” into the darkness, as if sensing or hoping she has returned to him. Following the Raven’s arrival, he eventually asks the bird if there is “balm in Gilead,” implying a hope that he might see Lenore once more in heaven. In either case, the narrator’s desperate desire to be reunited with Lenore in some way is obvious.
In “Lenore,” another of Poe’s poems featuring a deceased woman named Lenore, the narrator, confronted with the loss of his wife, reassures himself with the prospect that he will see her again in heaven. In “The Raven,” however, the narrator ultimately takes a gloomier view. After the Raven arrives, cutting short the narrator’s sense that Lenore might be visiting as a ghost and answering his hopeful questions about Gilead with only the repeated “Nevermore,” the narrator resigns himself to believing that he will never encounter Lenore again. Poe leaves unclear whether the Raven is telling the narrator the truth or giving voice to the narrator’s own anxieties about having lost Lenore for good. Either way, the poem concludes on the pessimistic note that nothing can exist beyond death, that there is no “balm in Gilead.”
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