It’s hard to follow along with lyrics for nine minutes without a change or break. Breaking it into three or four discreet sections I hoped would alleviate the monotony. From the beginning I saw it as the equivalent of a high school musical presentation, a direct descendent of the age of burlesque or cabaret. In the end, Poe’s The Raven is devoid of hope and finally, devoid of sanity as not only does the raven refuse to offer solace, the narrator realizes it will never leave, instead blocking the door with its presence and its reminder of nevermore. In Poe’s The Raven, the narrator tries talking to the bird, asking questions, quizzing it on its knowledge, reaching for any thread of hope that he might find. There it stays, repeating only the one word the narrator dreads most, nevermore. It’s never clearly spelled out if she is merely gone from his life, or gone from this Earth, but one can assume the latter thanks to the imagery that Poe includes.ĭistracted by a tapping which doesn’t go away, we are greeted with the appearance of Poe’s raven who perches on a bust of the goddess Athena, over the door. In Poe’s The Raven, the poem begins with the narrator searching through ancient books of magic for a way to bring back his lost love. In that the poem could be considered prophetic, or perhaps the author simply knew what the future had in store for him. A year and a day after the publication of Poe’s The Raven, his wife Virginia died, and Poe slipped into madness. Unfortunately it didn’t bring him much in the way of income, when he desperately needed as he tried to make a life in New York City, accompanied by his wife ill wife and her mother. Though most of his fame was brought on by his macabre tales and stories, Poe’s The Raven took off and brought him national, as well as world-wide acclaim. Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven represented the pinnacle of the author’s success.

The raven edgar allan poe song