Allusions In The Raven

In Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven”, the readers are shown the speaker’s grief stricken mind slip into insanity due to the loss of his love, Lenore. This mysterious poem illuminates many literary devices, such as metaphors, allusion, and symbolism. Metaphors are used to develop and emphasize the somber tone to the poem while also reflecting how his grief stricken mind influences his perception of the raven. Allusions to Greek mythology and the Bible also emphasize dark aspects of the poem and give subtle details to the speaker’s past. With symbolism, the importance of the raven is brought to a new understanding of the speaker’s emotions and overall giving the poem a new meaning. Undying love is difficult to move on from and can wear on one's

These elements are used to develop the extent of his grief, approaching insanity, and longing for Lenore. When the raven first enters his sitting room, it sits “upon a bust of Pallas” (41). Pallas is the Greek goddess of wisdom. The speaker owning such a decorative piece can allude to him once being a wise man, perhaps a scholar, but the raven is sitting on the bust signifying grief and loss sitting on his knowledge. It causes the one underneath to be less noticeable. The speaker continues to ponder the bird’s presence. It is unclear why the bird visits him, but the speaker, driving by his longing for Lenore, believes he is sent from the angels to share a message to him from Lenore. He wonders if “is there balm in Gilead” (89) that will cause him to forget the pain that the memory of Lenore is bringing him. When the speaker realizes that the raven visits him with no intent of sharing anything about Lenore, he grows angry at the raven and tells it to go “back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!” (98) while in a rage. The Plutonian shore is referring to Pluto, the Greek god of the underworld. This is one of the many indicators that ravens are perceived as evil and of the speaker reaching his breaking