What are some reasons why the narrator is reliable and unreliable?

One would
think that any narrator of a poem or other work in which the supernatural appears would by
definition be "unreliable." However, with regard to works written in previous eras,
this attitude on our part could be judged a form of "presentism"the attribution of our
own current beliefs to the past. Yet regardless of when a literary work was written and the
general belief systems of people in its time, the manner in which the
supernatural is presented and the attitude displayed toward it are significant. In "",
the speaker's tone and style in addressing his readers suggest that even within the context of
Poe's work overall; this particular poem shows us a picture of mental instability that is
especially striking and real. That is to say that the disordered mental state of the speaker,
not the existence of the supernatural, is as genuine as it appears in the work.

Much in "The Raven" suggests , at least from our present-day perspective,
though one can say the same about many other works of the period in which it's doubtful the
author intended the use of any such device. The early nineteenth century was an age in which
hyper-emotional, intense, and exaggerated states of mind and emotion were considered
"normal," or were meant to be taken in a straightforward, serious way. Still, it is
impossible to know for sure how Poe (as is really the case with any writer, since we're not
mind-readers) intended the meaning of the poem to be taken. From Poe's
critical writings such as "The Poetic Principle" one learns that he often regarded the
content of poetry to be subordinated to the "sound" of it, or in other words, that he
valued poetry as a kind of music. This is what "The Raven" tends to be. The speaker
creates a harmonious sound, a kind of jingling (though the term has the effect of trivializing
it) that almost makes the question of "reality" irrelevant.

Under
normal circumstances a man witnessing the entry of a talking bird into his home would express
shock and fear. The speaker, however, narrates his reaction in an unsurprised, trance-like tone.
It's as if the events described are taking place in an alternative universe where the tapping of
the bird, the connection between the bird and the "lost ," and the obsessive
repetition of "nevermore," if regarded objectively, are like the manifestation of a
psychotic state.

It is a truism of popular wisdom that "if you know
you're crazy, then you're not crazy." In "The Raven" the speaker doesn't give any
evidence of knowing this, unlike some of the other personages in the Poe canon, like the
narrator of "," who is fully aware of at least the sadistic element that drives his
psychosis. Even if one accepts the existence of the supernatural and believes the scenario of
"The Raven" is a rational one (so that the speaker could be telling the
"truth" and is thus "reliable" in the limited sense of repeating all the
details of his story literally), his hypnotized manner is nevertheless far removed from any
reality most people would recognize. In his tone, his reactions, and his awareness of what other
people regard as "normal," we have to judge him one of the most profoundly
"unreliable" of Poe's characters.