"The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe

I never used to like poems before--so I have barely read any poems in my life. The only reason I know Edgar Allan Poe is because people talk about him a lot. Today, I finally got to encounter his poem: The Raven. After reading this poem, I searched for more poems written by Poe and realized that most of his pieces are gloomy, dark, and somewhat creepy. The Raven is one of the examples.

The word "raven" already gave me a gloomy feeling. Author's repeated rhymes in each stanza gave me a chill somehow because it was creepy, especially when I was listening to the poem. The constant knocking sound, which I assume it was more of an auditory hallucination from an intense longing for his lover Lenore, caused the man to get up and open the door. Each time he opened, there was no one except a talking raven that flocked into the house. The raven keeps saying "Nevermore" to everything the man asks (again, auditory hallucination). One time the man almost explodes and slowly fades away when he askes if Lenore can be seen when he reaches heaven--the raven's answer was "Nevermore."

Due to this reason, the raven symbolizes death, because the character in the poem says "“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!"" which he thought it as a devil that came to take his life away. In the end, I believe the man died because he says "And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted—nevermore!"

Illustration of the man's final line

It is probable that this poem could have been about Edgar Allan Poe himself because he was a very dark and deppressed writer. He may have been sad that his cousin and wife died and was imaging himself alone with a raven only. This poem shows even more greatly that maybe he had killed himself.