I was hoping to do a whole verse-by-verse analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s, “The Raven” but honestly, who’s got the time?
I’ve been tweeting it all month, thus proving to the world a) my love of literature and/or b) my quintessential nerdyness. Feel free to check it out at #tweettheraven or follow along @bookshelfbattle
Anyway, here are some thoughts:
1) Take out all the darkness and the poem’s construction in and of itself is beautiful. The rhyme scheme, the positioning of the words – it is a very carefully crafted piece of art and the painstaking time it took to put it together shows.
2) What’s it about? I suppose it could just be about a bird that flies in, parks its birdy butt on a bust above the narrator’s chamber door and refuses to leave. I don’t know about you but I hate it when that happens.
3) But it is really more than that. The narrator lost his love, the late Lenore (assumably the name was chosen because it rhymes with “nevermore.” He interrogates the the feathered intruder – Will he ever find peace and forget Lenore? Will he ever see her again in Heaven? All his questions are met with a stern and absolute, “Nevermore!”
4) So what’s the meaning? The raven in this poem is a voice of an unrelenting, irrevocably unflinching, “No!” Sometimes in life, a door closes and once shut, can never be opened again. Whether it is the death of a loved one or a missed opportunity, no matter how much we sit around and try to distract ourselves with TV, movies, video games, iPads (or quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore) there is still that little voice in our heads, not unlike that of a pesky little raven, that reminds us, “No! You can’t have X (whatever it is you miss). Get over it! Move on! Not happening! NEVERMORE!”
So that’s it. Thank you fellow literature enthusiasts. This has been The Raven in four easy steps.
Bookshelf Battle 