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Many of the poems lines are written in two groups of trochaic tetrameter -- two sets of four feet, with each foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. This is a reversal of the iamb that makes up the standard foot in much of English poetry (and prose, when scanned). There is a great regularity to this meter, which gives a sense of falling, but there are also many regular moments where this meter is broken by leaving off the final syllable: "And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door" (line 22). This gives a sense of emphasis and a sudden stop at the end of the line, like the suspenseful pause in a ghost story, thus giving a deeper sense of the macabre to the poem than a purely regular meter.
The final aspect of this poem that comes under heavy scrutiny is its length. Considering nothing really happens in the poem, it might seem strange that its narrative continues for so long, and some critics have claimed that there is really no point to the poem's length. Yet an understanding of the poem's subject makes the length simply yet another tool for emphasis. The broken, falling meter and the strong witchcraft-like effect of the rhyme reflects the perpetual sense...
The poem seems to keep going over the same ground again and again because this is exactly what is happening in the speaker's own mind as he ponders about his lost Lenore. The raven's presence unsettles the speaker "Till I scarcely more than muttered 'Other friends have flown before - / on the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before'" (lines 58-9). Even in the explicit language of the poem, the speaker is going over the same past events in his head, and even relating these new events and circumstances back to his previous experiences -- i.e. his loss of hope. This makes the length a necessary tool to fully bring out the sense of the speaker's interior struggle.
Edgar Allen Poe is not, perhaps, America's greatest poet or author. It is unfair to discount him simply as a purveyor of horrors without any real literary ability. The surface impressions that "The Raven" leaves in the minds of the reader might be too strong to easily overcome, but it is worth the effort to delve past these impressions and truly examine the poem. In doing so, the reader is able to fully appreciate Poe and his poems for what they truly are.
Edgar Allan Poe: The Man of the Crowd On page 164 of class's anthology there is a work by Edgar Allan Poe entitled "The Man of the Crowd." What interests me about this work is the way that Poe deals with the horror or loneliness and isolation that is so much a part of humanity. In this connection, the question that I want to research is whether this loneliness is really
Both stories told of men who dared to escape their fate, whether it was inevitable death from a plague or the dire consequences of his action, these men seek means to remove themselves from their environment and distance themselves from their actions. Prince Prospero used his wealth as a shield, and he honestly thought he managed to bar Death from his gates. Death cannot be and will never be denied.
After his mother died in 1811, Poe became a ward of John Allan, a wealthy Richmond merchant. The Allan family lived in the United Kingdom from 1815 to 1820 before returning to Richmond. In 1826, Poe enrolled at the University of Virginia. He had to drop out later due to a gambling debt he could not afford to pay. His first book was published in 1827 and three years
Another Poe classic short story entitled the Tell Tale Heart also displayed his unique way of gaining the attention of the reader by use of dark and gloomy descriptions. This story is about going mad and losing one's mind. Poe may have really experienced this process as this story definitely takes a personal tone. The reader cannot help to feel the chaotic feelings that madness brings when grasping the Poe's
Watson, and his several forays into the real world to solve mysteries that confounded others. In this regard, Magistrale reports that, "Dupin solves crimes in part from his ability to identify with the criminal mind. He is capable of empathizing with the criminal psyche because Dupin himself remains essentially isolated from the social world" (21). In fact, Dupin also has a "sidekick" who serves as his narrator. According to
The narrator proceeds to ask the raven a series of questions to which the raven only responds "nevermore," driving the man mad with its lack of answers. The poem ends presumably with the raven still sitting on the bust in the man's house. The questions the man asks are all purposely self-deprecating and demonstrate a strong loneliness that exists in him. This possibly represents Poe trying to relieve himself