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Summary
A lonely man tries to ease his \"sorrow for the lost Lenore,\" by distracting his mind with old books of \"forgotten lore.\" He is interrupted while he is \"nearly napping,\" by a \"tapping on his chamber door.\" As he opens up the door, he finds \"darkness there and nothing more.\" Into the darkness he whispers, \"Lenore,\" hoping his lost love had come back, but all that could be heard was \"an echo that murmured back the word \'Lenore!\'\"
With a burning soul, the man returns to his chamber, and this time he can hear a tapping at the window lattice. The raven perched on the bust of Pallas, the goddess of wisdom in Greek mythology, above his chamber door.
The man asks the Raven for his name, and surprisingly it answers, and croaks \"Nevermore.\" The man knows that the bird does not speak from wisdom, but has been taught by \"some unhappy master,\" and that the word \"nevermore\" is its only \"stock and store.\"
The man welcomes the raven, and is afraid that the raven will be gone in the morning, \"as his Hopes have flown before\"; however, the raven answers, \"Nevermore.\" The man smiled, and pulled up a chair, interested in what the raven \"meant in croaking, 'Nevermore.'\" The chair, where Lenore once sat, brought back painful memories. The man, who knows the irrational nature in the raven's speech, still cannot help but ask the raven questions. Since the narrator is aware that the raven only knows one word, he can anticipate the bird\'s responses. \"Is there balm in Gilead?\" - \"Nevermore.\" Can Lenore be found in paradise? - \"Nevermore.\" \"Take thy form from off my door!\" - \"Nevermore.\" Finally the man gives in, realizing that to continue this dialogue would be pointless. And his \"soul from out that shadow\" that the raven throws on the floor, \"Shall be lifted -- Nevermore!\"
Introduction
In this poem, one of the most famous American poems ever, Poe uses several symbols to take the poem to a higher level. The most obvious symbol is, of course, the raven itself. When Poe had decided to use a refrain that repeated the word \"nevermore,\" he found that it would be most effective if he used a non-reasoning creature to utter the word. In \"The Raven\" it is important that the answers to the questions are already known, to illustrate the self-torture to which the narrator exposes himself. This way of interpreting signs that do not bear a real meaning, is \"one of the most profound impulses of human nature\"
Poe had an extensive vocabulary, which is obvious to the readers of both his poetry as well as his fiction. Sometimes this meant introducing words that were not commonly used. In \"The Raven,\" the use of ancient and poetic language seems appropriate, since the poem is about a man spending most of his time with books of \"forgotten lore.\"
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