Raven an Explication of Edgar

Raven An Explication of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" "The Raven" is without question the most famous poem written by the nineteenth-century master of the macabre Edgar Allen Poe, and is probably one of the most well-known American poems, period. First published in 1845, the poem has remained popular for the more than a century-and-a-half that it has been in print, enjoyed (if that's the right word for a poem as dark as this one) by readers of many ages, abilities, and perspectives.

It has become an icon in popular culture, as well, and was even recited with animation as part of a Halloween special on the long-running television series the Simpsons. Like most of Poe's work, the poem is especially appropriate for Halloween; not only is the primary subject of the poem (at least in the subtext) the dead former love of the poem's speaker, but the setting and the tone of the poem also greatly enhance its inherent spookiness.

Although this poem has been enjoyed by generations of readers, however, it has not always received the highest praise (or even the lowest praise) from scholars and literary critics. The heavy use of rhyme and the highly repetitive meter have both been cited as representative of Poe's poetic baseness, and the poet's own sense of derision for his readers has been well documented.

The length of the poem, too, can be seen as far too great for the amount of depth that Poe brings to his subject; though written as a narrative, there is a definitely observable lack of progress in the "plot" of the poem, and the repetition of the final "-ore" rhyme in many ways serves to increase the monotony of and seeming pointlessness of the poem.

A careful reading of the poem, however, reveals that each of these aspects of "The Raven's construction actually adds to its meaning and its genius. The use of rhyme is one of the most readily apparent and obvious of the poetic techniques that Poe employs in this poem. There is an incessant use of both end rhyme and internal rhyme, in a pattern that has almost no variation throughout the poem.

Sometimes the internal rhyme replaces end rhyme, such as in the first tow lines of the second stanza: "Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, / and each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor" ((lines 7-8). "Remember," "December," and "ember" all rhyme, and this pattern is repeated several times throughout the poem (though with a different rhyme).

This gives it what could seem like a sing-song feeling and this ruin the spooky aspects of the poem, but a proper reading that actually emphasizes the rhymes can make it seem more like a piece of black magic, as scary as the witches in Macbeth. The meter has a very similar effect, and could very easily make the poem feel like a nursery rhyme if careful attention isn't paid to it during a reading.

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 of grief, loss, and even horror that the speaker of the poem is experiencing. The poem seems to keep going over the same ground again and again because this is.