Raven

Edgar Allan Poe lived quite a difficult life, and this shows through his bodies of work. His poems and short stories were based on his life. Themes such as death, suffering, loneliness, love, and guilt are found throughout his work. He used his writings as a type of therapy, which was both good and bad. His mental state was rather poor, and it is definitely reflected within his writings, especially in three of his most popular writings. One of his writings was, “The Raven.” It expressed Poe’s feelings of loneliness and love, which he experienced a lot in his life due to the deaths of people he loved. It did not stop there, in fact it continued until he died. Another one of his writings was, “The Black Cat” which expressed guilt and an inability to overcome what one has done.

Poe’s troubles began before he was born. His mother had contracted tuberculosis while she was pregnant with him, and she never fully recovered her health. Then, Poe’s father David abandoned the family when Poe was only nine months old. This left his wife, Elizabeth with three children in the 1800s, and it extremely affected all of them. The Poes’ encountered poverty and their health issues continued. Elizabeth’s health only worsened when she had to support herself and her three young children.

Elizabeth battled tuberculosis for a number of years before passing away in December of 1811. This affected Poe extremely, he even spent the entire night with his dead mother, which scarred his psyche from a very young age. According to Poe, tuberculosis was his family’s disease and it did continue to haunt him throughout his life. Poe would witness tuberculosis claim the lives of many women important to him. Following his mother’s death, Poe and his siblings were split up into foster care with different families. After dealing with abandonment issues as the result of his father’s departure, the loss of his mother to illness, and being split from his siblings, Poe’s mental state was already destroyed. Poe’s suffering, however, was not over.

Poe was lucky to be placed with a very nice family – John and Frances Allan – but unfortunately, Frances was prone to suffer from tuberculosis just like his mother did. John, however, was nothing like David. John wanted the best for Poe and tried to give him the money he needed to allow him to follow his dreams. However, when John paid for Poe to go to school, it ended up being a poor situation, leaving Poe to turn to gambling and drinking which led even further to debt.

In the 1800s, debts, especially large debts, often resulted in jail time. A person with debts had very few options but one was joining the army. The fear of not being able to pay off his debts caused Poe to join the army in 1827. Poe regretted enlisting in the army almost immediately because his first volume of poetry was published shortly thereafter. Inspired by being published, Poe turned to John for help getting discharged so that he could pursue his career in writing. John was able to help Poe with his discharge, but it changed their relationship. From then on Poe and John argued about finances until John remarried and Poe was completely cut off. Although John and Poe were able to reconcile somewhat, when John died, he left nothing in his Will to Poe.

Left on his own, Poe was lucky to find a job as an editor. However, Poe could not escape his problems with drinking and his editor’s job was at risk. Eventually, a problem with counterfeit banknotes caused Poe to lose his editor position which, in turn, caused Poe to suffer from depression. Poe’s private life also contributed to his drinking problem and depression. In 1836, Poe married his fourteen year old cousin Virginia Clemm. Their marriage was plagued with illness. Both Poe and Virginia were continuously ill, which triggered Poe to drink more heavily especially the more Virginia got sick. This made him neglect his work, and when Virginia passed away in 1847, Poe’s poems became more and more dark. Virginia’s death affected him so much so, that he was quoted saying “I shall hardly last a year longer, alone!”” (Giammarco 4).

One of Poe’s most famous poems is “The Raven”. In this poem there are themes of madness, loneliness, and love. “The Raven” takes place late in the middle of a cold December night. Awoken by a tapping sound on his window, the narrator is forced to confront himself. Alone in the dark, he speaks directly to the darkness in an effort to understand what is happening to him and why. He stands there waiting for an answer but “the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, And the only word there was spoken was the whispered word, ‘Lenore?’ This I whispered, and echo murmured back the word, ‘Lenore!’ – Merely this and nothing more” (Poe 27-30). Lenore is the narrator’s recently deceased wife. The correlation to the love Poe lost with the death of his wife is obvious but the deeper meaning is the cruel loss of love Poe felt when his mother died and the utter loneliness he feels due to that loss.

The reader is then introduced to the raven. The poem states that the raven entered and “Perched, and sat, and nothing more” (Poe 42). The only word spoken by the raven is, “Nevermore” (Poe 48). Even when the narrator mutters to himself, the raven’s response is “Nevermore” (Poe 60). Although the raven only speaks one word, it brings out the narrator’s true feelings and his inner turmoil over the love he has lost.

The themes of self-torture, loneliness and love run throughout the poem. Clearly, the narrator is Poe himself and the darkness is a reflection of his own life and mind. Shanna Dhahir wrote an enlightening article about The Raven and how it connects to Poe. Dhahir states the most meaningful connection perfectly, “The story that Poe remained with his mother’s corpse for a whole night in December 1811 has often been cited as a childhood trauma which have contributed to the emotional collapse…” (Dhahir 4). The Raven is set during the month of December; the month when his mother died. The confusion of the narrator and his search for an answer from anything, even darkness and a raven is believed to be based on what was going on inside Poe’s mind when his mother died. Poe was so young and he sat alone with her dead body for an entire night that it, of course, left a deep scar on his psyche.

Poe’s decision to have the narrator’s wife die, rather than the narrator’s mother, is also important. Poe is expressing that the feelings one experiences after losing a loved one are raw and unyielding. It does not matter if you are a child or an adult with a greater capacity to “understand” death. The pain and loneliness transcend rational thought and wound the very core of our existence. This is why Poe places his feelings caused by the loss of the two of the most important women in his life, even though there were years apart, into one poem. Dhahir explains, “The sorrow which the man in “The Raven” undergoes following the death of his beloved Lenore also has its parallel in Poe’s personal life, namely his grief over the loss of his young wife, Virginia, who like his mother, died of consumption, or what is now known as tuberculosis” (Dhahir 5).

Finally, the invasive, unrelenting and unresponsive nature of the raven speaks to Poe’s thoughts on death. Death comes uninvited into our lives, disturbs our peace, and haunts our every thought. Making matters worse, the feelings caused by death can leave a person feeling isolated and confused. The Raven reveals what is perhaps Poe’s greatest fear; being alone, truly alone and without love. This is a primal fear that I believe we all share even if we do not admit it.

One of Poe’s most famous short stories, “The Black Cat” centers on guilt. The story begins with the narrator explaining that he is scheduled to die the next day but refusing to why or the background for his statements. The narrator discusses his cat; his rather large, beautiful, solid black cat. The cat is called Pluto. The narrator and the cat are best friends the cat follows him everywhere. However, the narrator is an alcoholic who gets very angry at everyone. His anger and rage starts grow out of control and he starts to mistreat his wife and their other animals. The narrator, however, spares Pluto from his tantrums. But addiction to alcohol and uncontrolled anger are like a spark and a dry forest; a deadly combination.

One night the narrator comes home extremely drunk and believes that Pluto (a cat) is ignoring him. Annoyed, the narrator grabs Pluto and, in self-defense, Pluto bites him. The narrator becomes enraged and cuts out one of Pluto’s eyes. After a night of rest, the narrator is sober and is horrified by what he did to Pluto but not enough to make him stop drinking. THe narrator rationalizes his actions and blames Pluto for making the narrator act. The close bond between Pluto and the narrator is broken and forever changed. Now, Pluto avoids the man all the time.

Irrationally, the narrator refuses to recognize the consequences of his own actions and, instead of being remorseful, he gets irritated by Pluto’s behavior. Again seized by anger, the narrator punishes Pluto by hanging the cat’s food from a tree. That same night the house burns down. Although the narrator’s family survives, he thinks that Pluto died in the fire. This is when Poe introduces the reader to guilt.

A month after the fire, the narrator sees a cat that is so similar to Pluto, but this one has a white patch on his chest. This cat then follows him home and the narrator wants to like the cat but his feelings of guilt for Pluto give him pause. Eventually, the guilt causes the narrator to hate the “new” cat. But the similarities, down to the missing eye, makes the narrator fear the cat. The cat is a direct reminder of his crime against Pluto to him. Anger again gets the better of the narrator and he attempts to kill the cat with an axe. Unfortunately the wife tries to get in the middle of it and the man ends up killing his wife. He then hides the body behind a wall in the basement.

After this happens the cat goes missing for three days but the man does not lose sleep over the cat missing. However on the fourth day of the cat missing the police show up asking questions about the disappearance of his wife. As they are investigating the house the man sells himself out by checking on the wall he rebuilt after hiding his dead wife behind it. He ends up tapping on the wall and it sounds hollow giving himself away right to the police.

This story is really deep when one thinks about it. This story focuses on the fact that the narrator is a drunk. When one is drunk they are a different person, which some believe reflect upon Poe’s own life. The story shows that drunk actions are really the true thoughts of a sober person. Robert Shulman wrote an article on Poe and the powers of the mind. Robert brings a up a very smart point to what Poe expresses through the story. He states, “Poe also dramatizes his insights into the unconscious tendency of the mind to protect itself by rigidly suppressing threatening inner forces” (Shulman 155). Expressing the fact that although the mind might come up with thoughts that are completely gruesome our body tries to deny that type of mindset.

One’s mind even tries to convince itself that even when one does a horrible action is reasoned for. This leaves one uneasy and struggling with the act that one has done. When one drinks the subconscious really comes to life. After letting out the thoughts of the subconscious it does not allow one to forget what they have done and the guilt grows so much that one ends up telling what one did. This story seems to reflect Poe’s view of himself that when he drinks he acts out, and that it has destroyed his own psyche more than it already was. The guilt eats up one’s inside until it becomes too much that the truth has to come out.

When looking at Edgar Allan Poe’s works, one thing is constant. It is dark. It is meant scare the reader because it puts that person into the mind of someone demented and damaged. Considering everything that Poe went through – whether it be the loss of his mother or his own experiences with alcohol or depression – it is very reasonable to believe that he has inserted himself into these characters. Through each word he’s written, and every deranged plot point he has created, he gave his readers a piece of his own private life. This is true with a lot of artists. They express themselves through their work. Their work is the artistic embodiment of themselves as human beings. Through “The Raven” and “The Black Cat” and so many other works Poe published, his following is able to see what type of person he was, and it is a sad and depressing picture, indeed.

Pain, grief, and regrets are all things one cannot forget about. Similarly, in Edgar Allan Poe’s fictional works of literature, “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Raven,” pain, grief, and regrets do not go away. In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” there is an insane narrator who decides to take the life of an old man. The reason behind the murder is because of the old man’s “vulture” looking eye (Poe 355). The guilt he feels after murdering the old man leads him to admit his crime. While, in “The Raven,” there is a scholar, who grieves over his lost Lenore. He regrets taking her for granted until she passes away. After all the pain the speaker is going through, a Raven comes and adds more depression and darkness in his life. Henceforth, the desolation envelops the speaker. Throughout “The Raven” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Poe exemplifies allusion and symbolism to create an effective story and poem.

To begin, Poe creates adequate pieces of literature by utilizing allusion, or a reference of something in the passage to another well-known figure. In “The Raven,” when a Raven is already inside the speaker’s house, it is “Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above [the narrator’s] chamber door” (Poe 41). The Raven lands on a bust of Pallas, alluding to the Greek goddess of wisdom, Athena. Since the speaker has a statue of Pallas, it indirectly characterizes him as a scholar. In addition, the Raven repeats the word “Nevermore” throughout the poem; later on, the speaker says, “Tell me what thy lordly name is on the night’s Plutonian shore”” (Poe 47).

The Plutonian shore alludes to Pluto, the Roman god of the underworld. Such precision of diction causes the allusions to become powerful to the overall meaning behind the poem. To continue, in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator is about to murder the old man, and ” [he] had directed the ray as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot” (Poe 357). The narrator refers to the old man’s eye as “the damned spot”, which alludes to Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

In Shakespeare’s play, one of Lady Macbeth’s most prominent lines are, “Out, damned spot”. This is Lady Macbeth’s way of getting rid of her guilt for murdering King Duncan. Similarly, the narrator in “The Tell- Tale Heart,” attempts to get rid of his guilt, that is tormenting him, for killing the old man. Both characters suffer from delusions, but unlike Lady Macbeth, the narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” has gone mad long before committing the murder. This directly characterizes the narrator as preposterous. Poe supplies allusions throughout his works to make them deeper, and more valuable.

Continuing, Poe also uses symbolism, or using something or someone to represent an idea, to create compelling stories and poems. In “The Raven,” a Raven vexes the speaker with its nonsense, but, “Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore.’…With such name as, ‘Nevermore.”” (Poe 48, 54). A Raven is typically seen as an omen of death, bad luck, or even evil. The Raven symbolizes the speaker’s depression and grief over his lost love, Lenore. Adding on, the word “Nevermore,” that repeats throughout the story, is also the Raven’s name, for it also represents Lenore will never come back. Usage of the term, “Nevermore” darkens the already depressing mood of the entire poem.

In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” when the narrator is describing his fear, he is histrionic as many will say, for he quotes, “One of his eyes bled that of a vulture… Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold… I made up my mind to take the life of the old man and thus rid myself of the eye forever” (Poe 355). Because of the “vulture” looking eye of the old man’s, the narrator is frightened to the point of insanity. The eye is the object that causes an internal conflict within the narrator. The narrator is deciding whether to commit his crime to the police or suffer from the beating dead man’s heart. When the police arrive because someone hears a deafening scream at night, the narrator soon starts hearing a noise, and soon “find[s] [out] that the noise was not within [his] ears…but the noise steadily increased… It is the beating of [the old man’s] hideous heart!” (Poe 359).

The beating of the dead man’s heart symbolizes the narrator’s guilt for killing the old man. Additionally, the beating heart can also create the overall theme in the story: Guilt will always come back after committing wrongdoings. The adoption of symbolism deepens the meaning behind Poe’s pieces of literature.

The implementation of allusion and symbolism throughout “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Raven,” further enhances Poe’s short stories and poems. Allusions to Greek mythology and Shakespeare amplifies the meaning behind each of his stories and poems. His usage of symbolism reveals the fear and guilt in “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Poe’s subtle incorporation of Shakespearean literature and talent at ending stories on constant cliffhangers help him construct riveting short stories.

Herman Melville’s “Bartleby” and Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” are similar in many respects. They possess similar motifs and themes, similar use of symbolism, even coincidences between the two strong enough that one might be motivated to consider them outright connections. In particular, it is the mystery that surrounds both tales that caused myself to search for what they were “about”. Searching for meaning in text can be a sort of default state for readers. However, in these two short stories that drive seems to be stronger. And it’s that desire to search for meaning that is the object of this paper’s explorations. Or, perhaps more specifically, it is an exploration on why we choose to search for meaning in these stories. What about these texts seems to call the reader’s attention so strongly?

I believe it is the sudden occurrence of oddity in both of the stories, as well as the fact that there is an overwhelming amount of symbolism, irony, and cleverly used diction present in the texts. And, most importantly, I believe our desire to search for meaning stems from the fact that the stories themselves involve a character searching for answers.

I’ll begin by establishing the fact that I don’t believe the search for meaning to be outright useless. Nor do I believe the drive to do so is some sort of fault in readers. Indeed, in his appropriately titled essay “The Search for Meaning,” Joseph R. Royce explains in great detail the reasons in which the search for meaning is an innate human desire and loosely defines the search for meaning as something that “ultimately implies an effort to arrive at something irreducible.” (515) But it is this word, “irreducible,” that drives me to call into question the validity of always searching for meaning in a text. “[Arriving] at something irreducible” implies a degree of purposeful ignorance of the rest of the text. It conjures images of gold-hungry miners digging ever deeper into the mountain of text, ignoring the possibilities of the mountain itself.

Nevertheless, the presence of a desire to search for meaning should be considered a compliment for the author. For only an ineffectual text would have this desire be absent. The ways in which this desire for meaning is created is what I would like to focus on, rather than the meaning itself.

The parallels between the two texts are quite numerous. The similar themes are obvious: both titular characters seem to be symbols of, or at least associated with, death. Both say the same phrase repeatedly. But more importantly for our goals here is that both stories are crafted similarly. James L. Cowell and Gary Spitzer analyze the development of mood in the texts. They explain that the change of mood in “The Raven” “which Poe said he intended to range from the fantastic at its beginning (…) to a later ‘tone of the most profound seriousness” mirrors that of “Bartleby” in which the ludicrous descriptions of Turkey and Nippers turn to a sad seriousness as Bartleby slowly grows more numb and isolated (41, “”Bartleby” and “the Raven”: Parallels of the Irrational”).

But while the shift itself is obvious, the reason behind it is enigmatic. It is difficult to pinpoint the exact circumstance that creates such an eerie turn of events. While the change in Bartleby himself is slow and creeping, as he denies more and more tasks until he lapses into a sort of comatose, deathly demeanor, the change in tone seems to happen much more quickly. Suddenly, “the air is unwholesome” and the narrator is moving his office in a desperate attempt to flee Bartleby’s disconcerting presence (par. 173). In “the Raven” there exists an even more abrupt change. The narrator quickly goes from “napping” to being filled with “fantastic terrors” within just two paragraphs (par.1, 3).

It is this unexplained eeriness and oddity that caused me to question and wonder. What is really going on? Not only is the text odd, but it is unexpectedly so. What did I miss? One might be driven to search for the answer to these questions and, failing that, attempt to dig deeper into the mountain.

Both texts possess quite a fair share of symbolism and irony as well. The Raven, knowing nothing but the phrase “nevermore,” perches atop a bust of Pallas, god of wisdom. Similarly Bartleby, a character who says nothing but “I prefer not to,” stares at a bust of Cicero, a figure known for his speaking prowess. Both of these occurrences are interesting, even when not viewed as significant because of their similarity to each other. They speak to a subtext and deeper layers of possible thought.

In addition, both authors’ use of diction is telling. Poe calls the raven a “fowl,” a possible pun on the word “foul.” (9,13) Bartleby is repeatedly described as “cadaverous” and is often depicted “standing in one of those dead-wall reveries”, referring to his blank, corpse-like expression (87, 92, 110, 155). This acts as foreshadowing for his eventual death. The clever use of diction indicates, again, that there is deeper layers to the text. It shows the reader that there is things one can discover upon closer reading. And, after noticing this, a reader is inclined to look for more.

These masterful uses of symbolism, irony, and diction are purposefully created by their respective authors. They were not happy accidents of unintended meaning. They operate, for the purposes of our discussion, as the miner’s metal detector, showing that there is in fact a reason to read closely. There is a mystery, macabre though it may be, to discover here.

In both texts there is an overwhelming sense of rationality clashing with irrationality. The protagonists meet with a character which defies expectation. They are confronted with extremely strange circumstances, yet both characters seem to have been making conscious choices to deal with the least amount of excitement as possible. The narrator in “The Raven” is at home reading “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore” while the narrator of Bartleby “has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best” (Poe, 1; Melville, 3). But the sudden appearance of a talking raven and a zombie-like Bartleby disrupts their calm life and there is no explanation as to the reason of their appearance and demeanor.

Following these perplexing encounters, both narrators attempt to ask for more information from the object of their confusion. One wonders about “what this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore / Meant in croaking ‘Nevermore” while the other implores Bartleby to “tell [him] any thing about [himself].” (Poe, 12; Melville, 102) Neither receive a satisfactory answer to their inquiries. I believe this to be one of the primary reasons that a reader might search for answers: the answers are purposefully hidden. The narrators themselves are hopelessly searching for meaning. It follows that a reader might also join in the pursuit, if not consciously.

Royce describes a “barrier between man and ultimate reality.” (518) To the right of this barrier is that which is untestable and unknowable. He describes the desire for people to breach this barrier and guess what lies beyond it, despite its seeming pointlessness, as well as labelling the methods of these guesses. This is relevant to our discussions as the occurrences within the texts are inherently untestable. The interactions within the text are not real and therefore the truth -the ultimate, final truth- of its meaning is nonexistent. This fact is compounded by our presence in a time after the death of the authors, the only ones who might offer us a glimpse of this final truth.

As the narrators of “The Raven” and “Bartleby” attempt to breach their own barrier, across which Bartleby and the raven lie, so too do we attempt to breach the barrier that the narrators themselves inhabit. The narrators can’t reach the gold in the mountain, but perhaps we can. It is inherently futile; the answers are unknowable. But, as Royce posits, the desire stems from the need to question more than the need for actual answers.

These texts are written in such a manner as to cause the reader to search for meaning within them. The abrupt and unexpected eeriness causes one to wonder what it was that produced the disconcerting feeling. The presence of symbolism, irony, and particular diction allows the reader to know that there is things not necessarily apparent on the surface. And finally, the fact that the texts themselves seem to involve such an intense desire for answers causes the reader to do the same.

Exploring the ways in which this desire is created is an important exercise as it, perhaps more than any other, allows one to reflect more intimately on the texts effects on themselves. In other words, discussing what makes us curious allows us to celebrate the author’s craft more directly. By investigating a certain node of attention we discover what about the text created that node. In keeping with the prevailing metaphor, we stop digging for gold and instead appreciate what about the mountain caused us to dig in the first place.