What is the meaning behind “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe?
Poe fell into the Category of the American Romantics, although he is what would be called a Gothic Romantic. Poe strived to convey sensation through his words, and the poem “The Raven” deals obviously with death, but also with the conflict of wanting to remember and wanting to forget. Partly he wishes that his lost Lenore was still there, and hopes that the sounds he hears are her, but he also as stated in the first few stanzas, tries to forget by reading old books. The Romantics dealt a lot with sensation and natural qualities, and I believe that that is what Poe is trying to convey in his poems albeit through a dark and mysterious diction.
Poe wrote the poem as a narrative, without intentionally creating an allegory or falling into didacticism. The main theme of the poem is one of undying devotion. The narrator experiences a perverse conflict between desire to forget and desire to remember. He seems to get some pleasure from focusing on loss. The narrator assumes that the word “Nevermore” is the raven’s “only stock and store”, and yet he continues to ask it questions, knowing what the answer will be. His questions, then, are purposely self-deprecating and further incite his feelings of loss. Poe leaves it unclear if the raven actually knows what it is saying or if it really intends to cause a reaction in the poem’s narrator. The narrator begins as weak and weary, becomes regretful and grief-stricken, before passing into a frenzy and, finally, madness.
