At first
the speaker does not take the Raven very seriously. He assumes it is a tame bird that somehow
escaped from its owner and is only seeking temporary shelter. He describes it in a facetious
manner.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or
stayed he,
But with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber
door--
He actually smiles at the bird and jokes with it:
Then the ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into
smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it
wore...
Tell me what thy lordly name
is...
He assumes that the Raven will leave him eventually, and he
is still feeling some amusement in the middle of the poem:
But the
Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling...
But he
begins to speculate about what, if anything, the bird means by ""Nevermore." The
narrator is beginning to take the black bird more seriously.is not a symbol of a lost maiden but
a symbol of death and always had been a symbol of death since the saintly days of yore. When we
are young we are immortal because we do not know we are mortal. When it occurs to us that some
day we are going to die we think it is funny because that event is so far off that the day will
never arrive--or maybe somebody will invent an immortality pill before our turn comes! The poem
is about the way we view death throughout our lives. At first it seems amusing, then intriguing,
then a little frightening, then ominous, then like a big black cloud hanging over us and
everyone else, including those we love, and making life seem meaningless and horrible.
The Raven makes the speaker remember his lost , whom he had hoped to meet again in a
later life. Actually the speaker had been half-hoping that the tapping he heard at his window
might be the ghost of Lenore, which is why the only word spoken when he looked out the window
"was the whispered word, "Lenore?" The name is followed by a question mark to
show that the poet is wondering if he is being visited by his dead paramour. When the Raven
tells him he will see her "Nevermore," he reacts with anger.
"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!--prophet still, if bird or
devil--
He asks if there is balm in Gilead? This is a way of
asking if there is any truth to the customary, conventional religious answer to the mystery of
death, specifically as contained in the Bible. Is there really any hope of resurrection? And the
Raven tells him "Nevermore," meaning that death is nothing but eternal oblivion
without any hope.
He tries to expel the Raven from his home.
"Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked,
upstarting--
This is the speaker's way of saying that he will
simply refuse to think about the subject of death. After all, what good is there in thinking
about something so unpleasant? But the bird refuses to leave. This is how the shadow of death
stays with us as we grow old. We have given up hope and can only await our final hour.
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the
floor|
Shall be lifted--nevermore!
was preoccupied with death, as shown, for instance, in "," in which he dwells on the
idea that death is inescapable, and in the story "," in which he includes the poem
"The Conqueror Worm" and has his heroine express the horror and desperation which
apparently haunted Poe himself and made him such an unhappy person.
"O God!" half shrieked Ligeia, leaping to her feet and extending
her arms aloft with a spasmodic movement, as I made an end of these lines --"O God! O
Divine Father! --shall these things be undeviatingly so? --shall this Conqueror be not once
conquered? Are we not part and parcel in Thee? Who --who knoweth the mysteries of the will with
its vigor? Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the
weakness of his feeble will."
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