Personification In The Raven Essay

In “The Raven” Edgar Allen Poe’s use of vivid figurative language sets the melancholic tone for the darkness that is derived from that of death. Poe use of personification to convey the narrator’s loss of beloved love, simile to convey guilt from haunted memories and metaphor to convey madness from an omen of death contributes to the overall theme for “The Raven”. Edgar Allen Poe’s expressive word choices, sentence structure, and imagery to convey the tone play important roles in the writing of “The Raven”. In the poem “The Raven” there are many examples of literary terms. One of which is personification. Personification is a figure of speech in which nonhuman subjects are given human qualities or abilities. The narrator no longer

Metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two things by stating one thing in terms of something else. All these thoughts: of pain, love, lose, and death, brings the narrator’s sane thoughts to madness: “But the silence unbroken, and the darkness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore!” (711). The narrator begins to see, hear,: “Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;” (712), and communicate with a deathly thing, that does not exist: “Though they crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore—Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!” Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.” (712). Poe’s sense of darkness draws the reader into the narrator’s world of rash and reckless decision making. No longer is the reader reading a poem based on a man recalling the heartache of his departed sweetheart, but a poem based on a man reawaking death by living death: “Leave no loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take they form from off my door!” Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”

“The Raven” is a poem that speaks of love ending in loss and death, and life coming from sadness and madness. Edgar Allen Poe’s writing style can be characterized as one that depends on a descriptive simplicity of word choice and the sentence structure, the persistent use of personification, simile, and metaphor, pervasive use of internal monologue and unforced fixation of emotions. The somber and dreary tone, in the last line on “The Raven” can be connected to the themes of: devastating loss of love, conscious-stricken endless guilt, and the delusional madness in the