Figurative Language In The Raven By Edgar Allan Poe

As humans, we all have the emotion of fear. People can experience fear in separate ways. For example, the way people cope or deal with fear, they can disconnect from society, or can spiral into a panic, or they can overthink imagining the worst. Through the use of literary devices and figurative languages, Poe creates an atmosphere that is suspenseful, and uneasy. The main persona, being the narrator, is read in a first person narrative. This makes us, the readers, in close alignment with the narrator himself. He is locked in the Spanish Inquisition, a judicial institution that lasted between 1478 and 1843. He is locked in a room with only his thoughts. However, the guard was the only person that he occasionally saw to drop off his food. His

There is a lot of repetition in the story. He repeats himself multiple times in many different paragraphs. Like, “Oh! For a voice to speak!-oh! horror!- oh! any horror but this!” (Poe 1843, pg. 19). The author also uses a figurative language strategy called anadiplosis. This is where he uses the last word in the previous sentence in the following clause. This is used throughout the entire story. This shows that he, (the narrator), can't remember what he is talking about. He has to continuously repeat passages, words, and phrases, because he forgets what he is talking about. He can't remember what’s reality and what's really happening. It adds an extra rhythm to the sentence. For example, “I WAS sick- sick unto death…” (Poe 1843, pg. 3). Another, “... I could not force my imagination to regard as unreal. Unreal!- Even while I breath of…” (Poe 1843, pg. 19). What this entails is that when he says a word like sick or unreal, it makes him think of another phrase he is going to say. It instructs his memory to think of another phrase he was going to say. With the use of this language and this literary device, it provides the reader with pauses in between clauses that would typically be a straightforward

When using these tools while writing it helps the readers to understand the topic. It puts a new perspective to the topic or subject within the passage. When writing in first person it connects with the readers as a way to connect. It's a way to make them feel as if they are in the story. When reading the short story there is this suspenseful underling and you feel a bit uneasy reading it. It also introduces and talks about the theme of death throughout the story. Death is a natural way of passing in this world. However, being sentenced to death is a much scarier concept of thinking. The way people deal with their fear of death may be the same as the narrator felt in the story. These very strong connections to the living world and death can make you think of the world in a different way. With all these tactics, Poe created a narrative that was overall a suspenseful reading that altered the way people differ between the living world and the nonliving