37 pages • 1 hour read
Edgar Allan PoeA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Early in “The Raven,” the speaker frames the entirety of the narrative as a memory (“Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,” stanza 2). “The Raven” is, quintessentially, a poem about the burden of memory. It opens with the speaker reading to distract himself from thinking about Lenore (“vainly I had sought to borrow / From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore,” stanza 2), but his grief only intensifies and deepens as the poem progresses. The inescapable rapping at his chamber door may represent the intrusive thoughts associated with losing a loved one. While many love poems highlight the joys of romance, Poe’s highlights the reverse: that the memory of love lost can inflict insurmountable psychological harm.
Even if Lenore is not taken as a real person—and many scholars agree, it is safest to read “The Raven” not as an autobiographical poem, but rather as a Romantic exploration of human nature—Poe’s point is still applicable. Obsessive lingering on something long gone, like a lost loved one or even the friends and hopes the speaker describes in stanza 10, can only be harmful to the psyche.
At the same time, there is a certain hopelessness to the poem’s ending.
By Edgar Allan Poe
A Dream Within a Dream
Edgar Allan Poe
Annabel Lee
Edgar Allan Poe
Berenice
Edgar Allan Poe
Hop-Frog
Edgar Allan Poe
Ligeia
Edgar Allan Poe
Tamerlane
Edgar Allan Poe
The Black Cat
Edgar Allan Poe
The Cask of Amontillado
Edgar Allan Poe
The Conqueror Worm
Edgar Allan Poe
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
Edgar Allan Poe
The Fall of the House of Usher
Edgar Allan Poe
The Gold Bug
Edgar Allan Poe
The Haunted Palace
Edgar Allan Poe
The Imp of the Perverse
Edgar Allan Poe
The Lake
Edgar Allan Poe
The Man of the Crowd
Edgar Allan Poe
The Masque of the Red Death
Edgar Allan Poe
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
Edgar Allan Poe
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
Edgar Allan Poe
The Oval Portrait
Edgar Allan Poe