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Edgar Allan Poe’s Seamless Crafting of “The Raven”

Uploaded by spootyhead on Mar 05, 2007

Edgar Allan Poe’s Seamless Crafting of “The Raven”

Every writer wants to have a writing of his or hers be a best seller from the instant he submits it to the printer. Very few people ever accomplish this feat. Edgar Allan Poe, however, seemed to have a knack for making popular poems and tales. One of his works, “The Raven,” was an instant success with all kinds of people (Mabbott 350). Although a few writers would agree with T. S. Eliot when he said that Poe’s writing has a “pre adolescent mentality” (Kennedy 111), this poem is thought by many more people to be Poe’s magnum opus; a very in depth and provocative poem which delves into the human mind. This poem achieves its prime rank of his works because of the way Poe fashions it to be veritably flawless in writing technique. He creates a lugubrious, yet paranoid, mood which sets the tone for the whole poem. He also uses stark antithetical contrasts to show differences between expectations and reality. Poe then adds the sense of an unstable mind’s paranoia into the mix. These three ingredients: mood, antithesis, and the insanity of a paranoid mind are integrated to form the perfect recipe for a successful and popular work; “The Raven.”

Edgar Allan Poe’s use of mood is essential to the quality of “The Raven.” From the start of the poem Poe sets a dank and dreary setting by using key words in his poetry. Phrases such as “midnight dreary” and “bleak December” illustrate this as the narrator relates his actions on a dark winter’s night. As the narrator, a student of an anonymous identity, sits reading old books of knowledge, he hears a tapping sound. He goes to the door of his room and is greeted by darkness. He then ventures to the window and opens the shutters. A clumsy raven suddenly flaps into the room and lands on top of the bust of Athena Pallas, the Greek goddess of knowledge. The student initially acts in a light-hearted manner upon the raven’s entrance and goes about making sport out of the unexpected visitor’s presence (Davidson 87). In jest he asks the raven its name, and the fowl responds with the single word, “Nevermore.” The narrator jokingly finds it queer that...

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Uploaded by:   spootyhead

Date:   03/05/2007

Category:   Literature

Length:   9 pages (1,932 words)

Views:   2626

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