Informative Blog entry about The Raven

While reading Poe, however, I kept asking myself, "WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?" This poem could be taken in many ways: the bird is not real, the man/woman narrating (you never do discover the gender--wouldn't that be something to study?!) is in a mental institution, the narrator is in the living room of their stately manse (as Zach believes), reflecting upon Lost Lenore. The possibilities are endless. One interpretation by Wikipedia, is that the bird is a figment of the narrator's imagination, "an uncomely real [hallucination], with real black feathers and a real croaking of the single word, 'Nevermore.'" While Wikipedia maintains a certain skepticism about the hallucination theory, the Online Companion to the Norton Anthology accepts the symbolism more readily:

"Poets frequently turn to birds as poetic voices of nature and symbols in their poems...Compare Poe's symbolic use of the raven with that in one of these poems, and think about why Romantic poets in particular are attracted to birds as symbols."

As for the style of the poem, Poe goes crazy over repetition once more--NEVERMORE! However, I must concede that the final lines of each stanza are constructed pretty well, especially at the beginning of the poem; later, though, it seems like Poe got tired of thinking up tricky lines and just started writing, "Quoth the Raven Nevermore". He was probably too busy writing "The Bells" and the "Tell Tale Heart" to notice his little lapse in style diversity.

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