what is the plot of the poem the raven by edgar allen poe?

Answer 1

"The Raven" is about guilt, like so many other of Poe's writings. We are only told that the speaker has lost his love, Lenore. His reaction to the loss has been colored by mysticism ("volume of forgotten lore"), and we know he is filled with fear at receiving a visitor (perhaps Lenore herself, "the whispered word 'Lenore'"), before he even sees the mysterious raven ("from the night's plutonian shore"—Pluto being the Roman god of the Underworld—known as Hades in the Greek mythology—implying that the Raven is from the world of the dead or afterlife, maybe even hell itself), with its single word of judgment, "Nevermore."

"Guilt" should not be taken here in either the standard legal or moral senses. Poe's characters usually do not feel "guilt" because they did a "bad" thing—that is, the story is not didactic. There is no "moral to the story." Guilt, for Poe, is "perverse," and perverseness is the desire for self-destruction. It is completely indifferent to societal distinctions between right and wrong. "Guilt" is the inexplicable and inexorable desire to destroy oneself eo ipso.

The speaker quickly learns what the bird will say in response to his questions, and he knows the answer will be a negative ("Nevermore"). However, he asks questions, repeatedly, which would optimistically have a "positive" answer, "Is there balm in Gilead? Will I meet Lenore in Aidenn?" To each question the Raven's predestined reply is "Nevermore", which only increases the speaker's anguish.

The themes of self-perpetuating anguish and self-destroying obsession over the death of a beautiful woman are in themselves the most poetic of topics, according to Poe (see his essay "The Philosophy of Composition"). The torture which the bird has brought to the speaker was already in the speaker's ruminating character—the bird only brought out what was inside. The raven itself is a mechanical process: deterministic, preordained, one word being the bird's "only stock and store." The speaker throws himself against this process in a form of masochism, and lets it destroy him and consume him ("my soul from out that shadow shall be lifted—Nevermore!")

Why or how Lenore was lost, we do not know, but the speaker is torn between the desire to forget and the desire to remember. Death without cause is standard for Poe (See "Ligeia," "Eleonora," "Morella," "Berenice," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Oval Portrait," "Annabel Lee," "Lenore," "A Pæan," "The Bells," and others). The female beauty dies without cause or explanation—or she dies because she was beautiful. In the end, the speaker clings to the memory, for that is all he has left. What the raven has taken from him so cruelly is his loneliness—but this cruelty he brought upon himself, for he cannot resist the urge to interrogate the raven. He is fascinated by the bird's repeated, desolate reply. The speaker repeatedly asks it questions in the hope that it will say "yes" (forevermore)—or perhaps out of a morbid desire to be again told "no" (nevermore).

Although the bird seems a hallucination, it is in fact real (this is not to say that the speaker does not hallucinate at all, however), with real black feathers and a real croaking of the single word, "Nevermore." Ravens can be taught to speak. Poe's raven is thought to have been inspired by the raven Grip in Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens. Dickens's bird has many words and comic turns, including the popping of a champagne cork, but Poe felt that Dickens did not make enough of the bird's dramatic qualities.

Answer 2

Here is an interpretation of the poem I have always found interesting. It says that the poem is nothing more than about unending lament. The speaker is grieving for the lost Lenore and the raven is a manifestation of that grief, there to tell him that his sadness will never end. This is best seen in the lines "is there balm in Gilead?" where he is asking if there is a way to heal his sadness to which the bird replies no. The bird makes it worse by answering "Nevermore" to his question about if Lenore is being clasped in "Aidenn" (heaven/paradise). He also asks the bird to "take thy beak from out my heart" which is his asking if the sadness will ever end. Also, at the end of the poem he asks if his soul will ever be lifted out of the shadow of the raven (grief) to which he answers himself no.

Unending grief is a recurrent theme in a lot of Poe's work. "Annabel Lee" is good poem to compare to "The Raven"

Answer 3

Edgar Allen Poe lived in Baltimore, Maryland and did most of his work there. He was a severely depressed person and the poem, "The Raven" was mainly about himself. The bird is black and he, Poe, felt that way. "Quoth, the Raven, nevermore" He felt as though that death was sure to become him and it did.

I hope I helped you with your question.

I was born and raised in Maryland, so we were taught about this.

Answer 4

The bird is knockin' -- is it a ghost? a demon?

yikes.