Of a Demon in My View: “The Raven” as a Metaphor for Poe’s Dark Thoughts

Of a Demon in My View: “The Raven” as a Metaphor for Poe’s Dark Thoughts
By Elizabeth Roller

Few authors have better personified the cliché of the tortured artist as well as Edgar Allen Poe. A pale, dark-haired alcoholic, Poe was gothic before The Cure or Siouxie and the Banshees showed up in the 1980s. One of the best examples of his darkness, both inner and outer, is perhaps his most influential and famous poems, “The Raven.” The setting and tone of the poem are obviously dark from the beginning, but the meanings go deeper when one considers Poe’s disturbed and troubled life. Both the titular raven and the poem’s narrator can be viewed as symbols for Poe’s own demons.

The poem’s unnamed narrator is sitting in his chambers when the poem begins. It is late at night, and like most nights in Poe’s works, it’s dismal. He is looking at “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore” (Poe 2). This indicates that the narrator is interested in works of old fiction. Poe also shows an interest in old stories in the text of the poem, where he often refers to there being “a bust of Pallas” (41) and references the Odessy’s drug nepenthe (82) and the Biblical region of Gilead (89). The narrator also seems to have deep worries and his thoughts tend to fall into the dark abyss, not too unlike Poe’s own. In line 26 of the poem, the narrator has thoughts of “doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.” He is tortured by his own pessimism. Poe would be very familiar with this feeling.

Poe also shares the narrator’s feelings of loss, especially the loss of a beautiful woman. Beautiful, young, dead women are a prevalent force in Poe’s work, specifically in poems like “Anabel Lee” and “The Raven”. In “The Raven”, the narrator has recently lost his love, Lenore. He clearly thinks the world of her, referring to her as a “rare and radiant maiden”. Poe’s use of the word maiden here might suggest that, like many of his fictional dead women, Lenore was young and pure. The narrator is still morning his loss of her, because he reads to obtain a “surcease of sorrow---sorrow for the lost Lenore” (10). When the raven comes and perches in his room, the narrator is sullen, thinking that the bird will leave him as Lenore did, saying “Other friends have flown before---On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before” (59). Also, on his couch, he knows “she shall press, ah, nevermore!” (78). Likewise, he knows he will never see her again.
The raven arrives on this dark and dreary night after rapping three times. At first, the narrator is happy to see it, thinking it whimsical. Perhaps Poe felt the same way when he first began to be inspired to write. The first bit of foreshadowing that the bird might not be so pleasant is when the narrator asks him what his “name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore” (47). This suggests that the raven might be sent from the underworld or Hell. When asked this question, the bird replies “Nevermore” (48). His name is Nevermore, and the narrator is knows that he will nevermore see his love Lenore, and Poe knows that he will nevermore see his mother or any of the other dead women in his life. Poe later describes the bird to be “grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous” (71). None of these are positive descriptions. The longer the bird stays and says Nevermore, the more the narrator remembers his own loneliness. He implores the raven to leave, calling it a “thing of evil” (91). The raven does not, and eventually the narrator goes mad with grief, and he sees that the bird “still is sitting, still is sitting” (103) and that it’s “eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming” (105). Poe has shown us a man haunted by a personal demon, someone he can never escape.

Poe might very well have been trying to tell us something. Many great artists, rock stars, authors, and poets have been plagued with demons that seem all consuming. In fact, being tortured might just come with the territory of having artistic vision and being a creative person. Undoubtedly, Poe had hardships in life that most people could not begin cope with. It is only natural to think he had certain dark thoughts he had to combat. Poe had many addictions, yet none of them seem to have benefited him in the end. Even to his death, he could not escape his raven, his demon, himself.