Mental Disorder In The Raven

“The Raven” is a great piece of literature written by the 19th century poet named Edgar Allen Poe. Poe was known for his dark and gothic style of writing, which led to one of his most famous pieces of poetry, “The Raven”. The story tells about a raven that came one day in the middle of the night that taunted the sorrowful narrator, who appeared to have lost a loved one named Lenore. When the raven sat on a statue of the Greek goddess Athena, the narrator believed that the raven was sent as a memory, a prophet, of Lenore. However, for every time the narrator had asked a question, the raven would say nothing else but “Nevermore”. As the narrator descends his way into madness from the unresponsive raven, he then beckons the raven to leave his

When he opens the door, he is greeted with nothingness, only the echo of the name Lenore, which is creepy to say the least. Later in the story, the narrator smells “perfume” in the air, believing that it was a gift from the angels to help him forget Lenore, telling us he’s definitely got a few screws loose. In addition to this, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the narrator might have a mental disorder called psychosis, characterized by a disconnection from reality. Symptoms of this include hearing voices, hallucinations, social isolation, delusions, and paranoia. Trauma is one of the causes for psychosis, so perhaps the death of Lenore caused this. The raven could be a hallucination, and the voice of the raven could be him hearing voices. In the beginning of the story, it's said that the speaker was surprised that anyone would visit him, showing that he is socially isolated. Along with all that, we can see throughout the story that he is very paranoid. Almost all the symptoms fit and explain the madness of the speaker throughout the

Some say that maybe the raven was real, and he was a house pet and that’s why he could talk. Maybe the perfume and the echos was just because he is in grief. Still, the situation is so strange that it's hard to believe that the narrator is still sane. Why would a raven come into a stranger's house and sit there, repeating the same word no matter how much the speaker screams or yells at it? Why would there be continuous echoes of his lost beloved’s name and suddenly smell perfume in the air? What’s more, the narrator shouldn’t even be sane, since the idea of this poem is that the speaker is driven to insanity by the raven, a symbol for the death of Lenore that causes him so much