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-Poe's mother played Juliet in theatre, where a young Edgar watched her character kill herself over and over again -She died when he was two years old, leaving him pretty much an orphan -Poe's new stepfather never failed to make him feel inadequate -One can detect evidence of his opium use in many of his poems, ''The Raven'' being one of them -Poe's employment of apt alliteration to the poem is largely what makes it great -''The Raven'' was first published in 1845 -The poem resembles an earlier work of his titled Lenore in it's manner of alliteration and assonance, along with subject matter -The poem makes a few references to classical culture, such as the bust of Pallas and the raven itself -It is written in troaic octameter -Poe himself remarked that every aspect of the poem revolves around logical arrangement
Quoth the raven, ''Nevermore''
The Raven: The Course of Memory
I believe this poem to embody what poetry is about. It is taking the depth of lingual communication to a new dimension: conveying ideas not only with the dictionary meaning of the word, but with the phonetic quality of a word itself contributing its own story. That quality is the axial narrative in any analysis of this poem. The pulsing stresses and phonemes that culminate to a long voweled “nevermore” stimulate the part of your mind that one employs to interpret wordless music into volumes of significance. This coupled with the words themselves create a truly mesmerizing piece of literature that you will never forget for its uniqueness. Perhaps also with a little inspiration from Poe’s favorite poppy plant, our talking raven is probably inspired by Grip, Charles Dickinson’s raven from his poem Barnaby Rudge. The poem deals largely with an inner theme of self-torture. The scholar, seeking to “borrow from his books surcease to sorrow”, calls out Lenore’s name into the dark, mostly understanding that there would be nothing but “darkness there, and nothing more”. After the arrival of the raven, the narrator continues to ask it questions about seeing Lenore again and being free of his pain, even though he knows that the answer will be nevermore.
