Grief and Madness - Exploring the symbolism behind "The Raven"
- Ayushmaan Mishra
- 1 hour ago
- 2 min read
"The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe is one of my favorite poems of all time! It doesn't just tell a story about a raven breaking and entering a deranged man's house, however. The poem sheds a dark and longing story about how grief and despair sometimes overcomes sanity.
The poem begins with setting a gloomy atmosphere, with the protagonist using words such as "bleak December", "dying ember" and most importantly, "sorrow for the lost Lenore", showing that the reason for his sadness is the death of his loved one, who is "nameless here for evermore". He hears someone rapping on the window, and at first he thinks it must be some visitor, but as he opens the window and finds no one there, he starts calling out Lenore's name, showing his delusion starting to creep in.
One of the first things the raven does after flying into the man's house is perch upon the bust of Pallas. Pallas (more commonly known as Pallas Athena) is the goddess of wisdom, so the raven, often a symbol of death, sitting on a statue of a goddess of wisdom foreshadows the later paragraphs of the man soon becoming more and more preposterous.
At first the man is amused by the presence of the raven, asking what its name is, to which the raven replies, "nevermore," switching the repeated use of "nothing more" in the previous stanzas to "nevermore", which is the only word that the bird seems to say: when the speaker asks if all hope is lost for him, the raven agrees, chirping "nevermore"; when the man asks the bird if he'll ever be able to forget Lenore, the bird says "nevermore", stating that no matter how hard he tries to distract himself from the memory of Lenore, a part of her will always haunt him.
The speaker believes that the bird is a sort of demon that has plagued his house; he accuses the raven of being a prophet, with his mind now plunged in farcicality. He finally asks the raven if he'll ever be able to stop feeling pain, if he'll ever be able to move on, to which the raven just replies, "nevermore". The poem ends with the raven still sitting on the bust of Pallas, its shadow haunting the man no matter how much light fills the room, its presence symbolizing that the man's pain will never leave his soul for as long as he lives.
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