I will help you by giving you a few "hooks" on which to
base your understanding of this excellent poem. Hopefully, after reading my response you
will be able to revisit the poem and understand a lot more. To start off with, let us
look at a summary of the poem.
As the poem begins, we are
presented with the speaker of this narrative poem, who is a weary student. He is
studying at midnight and also mourning his dead love, Lenore. He hears a faint knock,
and opening the shutter, he finds a mysterious raven. The talking bird amuses the
speaker at first, but its refrain of "Nevermore" in answer to the speaker's pleading
questions about meeting Lenore after death, drives him to despair and madness. As the
poem closes, the bird settles in to stay, a brooding symbol and symptom of the speaker's
desperate state of mind.
What is key to what this poem is
about is the major theme of the poem. Poe himself said this poem explored one aspect of
the dark side of human nature - to quote Poe, "that species of despair which delights in
self-torture". We are presented with the figure of a troubled individual who is
desperately mourning his lost love, Lenore. When the Raven enters he asks questions of
it about Lenore, and is pushed into ever greater despair by the single word response,
"Nevermore", which is placed in direct conflict with "Lenore", both in rhyme and in
position. Of course, in the jargon of psychology, the narrator projects or puts onto the
bird whatever his own wild imagination dredges up and thus tortures himself in his
depressed state.
This is to say that the Raven of course is
just a raven rather than a messenger from hell, but the raven suits the speaker's
mournful tone and his tormented projections, and thus becomes a symbol of death, loss,
or despair.
Hope this helps! Now go back and read the poem
and enjoy.
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