The literary piece, The Raven in my view is about a lonely man that tries to ease his sorrow for his lost Lenore by distracting his mind. He is then interrupted by a tapping at his chamber door when he looked out; he saw darkness and whispered Lenore. However, another knock is mention and he saw a raven. In this poem, Poe uses several symbols to take the poem to a higher level. The symbols he used were the raven and midnight.
The raven is use to express the feelings of Poe and it symbolize the mourning and never ending sadness. To me the raven is used to represent Lenore and death. Poe probably considered a parrot as the bird instead of the raven. He displayed it in a depressed tone and as a bird of ill-omen. He found the raven more suitable for the mood in the poem.
In my opinion midnight in the poem symbolize an end of something and also the anticipation of something new, change, to happen. The chamber in which the narrator is positioned to indicate the loneliness of the man and sorrow he feels for the loss of Lenore. The room is richly furnished and reminds the narrator of his lost, which helps to create an effect in the poem. The tempest outside is used to more signify the isolation of the narrator, to show a sharp contrast between the calmness in the chamber and the tempestuous night.
After this poem again, I concluded that the author was depressed. The narrator displayed this loneliness/despair from his life experience into his writing. Poe probably experienced some type of traumatic event or lost that allowed him to become depressed. However after doing research my conclusions were right. Poe became depressed after the death of his wife. He also became addicted to many drugs and alcohol, which was supposedly used to remove the pain he was suffering. I found it interesting to have saw how Poe his poems to portray his life. Therefore, he used the raven as a symbol that was sent by Lenore. The lost of Lenore probably signifies the lost of his wife and resembles the mournful/never ending sadness he experience.
Se-Ann
Where did you find that Poe probably considered using a parrot for this poem?
I agree with you however that Poe probably used his own life experiances to write this poem. There are many similarities between Poe and the narrartor as you have noted. Lenore's death probably was written as a way for Poe to express his sorrow for his own lost wife.
Posted by: Tiffany at October 10, 2004 09:55 PMI was making a comparision, stating that he probably instead found a parrot as a bird, rather than the raven because he saw it as evil.
Posted by: Se-Ann Williams at October 10, 2004 10:13 PMi don't think that poe wanted to overcome his sorrow of his wife's death because she died after he had written and published the 'the raven' (at least that's what his biography in the penguin classics books says).
however i do feel that he expressed some sort of depression or sorrow...so it definitely is autobiographical. and it is known that he had alcohol problems, as well as a gloomy character before his wife's death^^