Is there dramatic irony in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven?"

There
are, indeed, examples of dramaticin 's , although the situational irony in
Poe's famous poem is, to this educator, more pronounced. Situational irony refers to instances
within a work of literature in which the opposite of what one expects to happen is what does
happen. In The Raven, there is no well-defined outcome; the narrator/ is
befuddled and emotionally-drained. Readers of The Raven anticipate some
resolution to the mystery of the large black bird that has invaded the sanctuary in which the
lovelorn narrator sits, alone and despondent. Poe, however, does not offer any such sense of
resolution, ending, as the poem does, with the narrator resigned to his diminished mental state
and the raven continuing to sit atop the bust of Pallas. That, to this educator, is situational
irony. An example of dramatic irony, however, definitely exists.

Perhaps the
best example of dramatic irony in The Raven involves the bust of Pallas on
which the bird is perched throughout the poem. Pallas is a figure from ancient Greek mythology.
He is a Titan, or giant -- among the most powerful of the gods. His stature, however, does not
protect him from the wrath of a woman, in this case, the goddess Athena, who kills and flays
him. That Poe's narrator is presented as an emotionally-ruined man, sitting forlornly alone in
his study in which sits a bust of this particular figure from mythology, is no coincidence. Poe
was clearly using that legend to reinforce the notion of his narrator as having been driven to
despondency by a woman, .

The Raven offers far more
pronounced instances of situational irony -- the mere fact of a bird being the interloper in the
narrator's chamber rather than a human is in itself an example of situational irony -- but Poe
did include dramatic irony in his poem as well.